ritual' blessings which, while in health, he had uniformly treated
with contempt. After a long pause he broke silence by saying, 'Ah,
friends, I see you are anxious about my soul;' whereupon they pricked up
their ears with delight; before, however, any reply could be made, the
Count added, '_but the fact is I have not got one, and really my good
friends, you must allow me to know best_.'

If people in general had one tenth the good sense of this _impious_
Count, the fooleries of spiritualism would at once give place to the
philosophy of Materialism; and none would waste time in talking or
writing about nonentities. All would know that what theologians call
sometimes spirit, sometimes soul, and sometimes mind, is an imaginary
existence. All would know that the terms _immaterial something_, do in
very truth mean _nothing_. Count de Caylus died as became a man
convinced that soul is not an entity, and that upon the dissolution of
our 'earthly tabernacle,' the particles composing it cease to perform
vital functions, and return to the shoreless ocean of Eternal Being.
Pietists may be shocked by such _nonchalance_ in the face of their 'grim
monster,' but philosophers will admire an indifference to inevitable
consequences resulting from profoundest love of truth and contempt of
superstition. Count de Caylus was a Materialist, and no Materialist can
consistently feel the least alarm at the approach of what religionists
have every reason to consider the 'king of terrors.' Believers in the
reality of immaterial existence cannot be 'proper' Materialists.
Obviously, therefore, no believers in the reality of 'God' can be _bona
fide_ Materialists, for 'God' is a name signifying something or nothing;
in other terms, matter, or that which is not matter. If the latter, to
Materialists the name is meaningless--sound without sense. If the
former, they at once pronounce it a name too many; because it expresses
nothing that their word MATTER does not express better.

Dr. Young held in horror the Materialist's 'universe of dust.' But there
is nothing either bad or contemptible in dust--man is dust--all will be
dust. A _dusty_ universe, however _shocked_ the poetic Doctor, whose
writings analogise with--

Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.

A universe of nothing was more to his taste than a universe of dust, and
he accordingly amused himself with the 'spiritual' work of imagining
on