."

"Everything, sir, is hard to understand, because everything means every
other thing. If we could fully comprehend one thing, even the least,--if
there be a least,--we should necessarily comprehend all things," said
the Captain.

Then he talked at large of the relations that bind everything--and of
matter, force, spirit, which he called a trinity.

"Then matter is of the same nature with God?" I asked; "and God has the
properties of matter?"

"By no means, sir. God has none of the properties of matter. Even our
minds, sir, which are more nearly like unto God than is anything else we
conceive, have no properties like matter. Yet are we bound to matter,
and our thoughts are limited."

"How can the mind contemplate God at all?"

"By pure reason only, sir. The imagination betrays. We try to image
force, because we think that we succeed in imaging matter. We try to
image spirit. I suppose that most people have a notion as to how God
looks. Anything that has not extension is as nothing to our imagination.
Yet we know that our minds are real, though we cannot attribute
extension to mind. Divisibility is of matter; if the infinite mind has
parts, then infinity is divisible--which is a contradiction."

"Then God has no properties?"

"Not in the sense that matter has, sir. If God has one of them, He has
all of them. If we attribute extension to Him, we must attribute
elasticity also, and all of them. But try to think of an elastic
universal."

"Captain, you said a while ago that everything is matter, force, and
spirit. Do you place force as something intermediate between God
and matter?"

"Certainly, sir; force is above matter, and mind is above force."

"I have heard that force is similar to matter in that nothing of it can
be lost," said I.

"When and where did you hear that?" asked the Captain, looking at me
fixedly, almost sternly.

The question almost brought me to my feet. When and where _had_ I heard
it? My attention had been so fastened on the Captain's philosophy that
it now seemed to me that I had become unguarded, and that from outside
of me a thought had been sent into my mind by some unknown power; I
could not know whence the thought had come. I had suddenly felt that I
had heard the theory in question. I knew that, the moment before, I
could not have said what I did. But I had spoken naturally, and without
feeling that I was undergoing an experience. I stared back at Captain
Haskell. Then I beca