ech is an
evolution, and this lecture, given many times in the Eastern States
under various titles, did not touch really high-water mark until King
reached California and had cut loose from manuscript and tradition. An
extract seems in order:

Most persons, doubtless, if you place before them a paving-stone
and a slip of paper with some writing on it, would not hesitate to
say that there is as much more substance in the rock than in the
paper as there is heaviness. Yet they might make a great mistake.
Suppose that the slip of paper contains the sentence, "God is
love"; or, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself"; or, "All men
have moral rights by reason of heavenly parentage," then the paper
represents more force and substance than the stone. Heaven and
earth may pass away, but such words can never die out or become
less real.

The word "substance" means that which stands under and supports
anything else. Whatever then creates, upholds, classifies anything
which our senses behold, though we can not handle, see, taste or
smell it, is more substantial than the object itself. In this way
the soul which vivifies, moves and supports the body is a more
potent substance than the hard bones and heavy flesh which it
vitalizes. A ten-pound weight falling on your head affects you
unpleasantly as substance, much more so than a leaf of the New
Testament, if dropped in the same direction; but there is a way in
which a page of the New Testament may fall upon a nation and split
it, or infuse itself into its bulk and give it strength and
permanence. We should be careful, therefore, what test we adopt in
order to decide the relative stability of things.

There is a very general tendency to deny that ideal forces have any
practical power. But there have been several thinkers whose
skepticism has an opposite direction. "We can not," they say,
"attribute external reality to the sensations we feel." We need
not wonder that this theory has failed to convince the
unmetaphysical common-sense of people that a stone post is merely a
stubborn thought, and that the bite of a dog is nothing but an
acquaintance with a pugnacious, four-footed conception. When a man
falls downstairs it is not easy to convince him that his thought
simply tumbles along an inclined series of perceptions a