s has now been raised high and strong
enough to have its layer of negations crowned with an affirmation of
pre-eminent importance. The qualities of matter, being known only by
their effects, are evidently causes: and, being causes, must necessarily
be either themselves forces, or, at the least, manifestations of force;
and inasmuch as force involves exertion, it cannot be inert; and
inasmuch as deadness must be incapable of exertion, all force must be
alive; and life without substance cannot be conceived otherwise than as
some species of spirit or mind. Such therefore must be matter. Matter
can be nothing else than pure spirit of some kind.

And may we not with good reason congratulate ourselves on this result of
our investigations? Instead of the vision we were threatened with, of
mind losing itself in matter, our eyes are gladdened with that of the
converse operation, of the transmutation of matter into mind. And on no
account is this metamorphosis to be mistaken for annihilation of matter,
whose stolid grossness has vanished, not in order to give place to empty
nominalism or to a thin mist of mere mental perceptions existing only in
virtue of being perceived, but in order to reappear gloriously
etherealised into living energy. By the change that has taken place,
corruption has put on incorruption; the natural body has become a
quickening spirit; death is swallowed up in victory. Matter reappears
converted, not into a perception of percipient mind, but into percipient
mind itself; yet although thus presumably percipient of its own
existence, it not the less has an existence perfectly independent of
perception, either by itself or by any other intelligence.

Under what head the mind, or combination of living forces, thus
constituting all matter, ought to be classed, is a question, which the
imperfection of human faculties may as well be content to leave
unanswered, though to its being supposed to emanate directly from the
mind of Omnipresent Deity, one insuperable objection may be mentioned,
which should be kept steadily in view. There are few of us who will not
shrink with horror from a notion, according to which man, whenever doing
as he pleases with any material object, applying it, as likely as not,
to some base or criminal purpose, is disposing at his pleasure of a
portion of the Divine essence: few who will not greatly prefer to
believe that the vital principle which manifests itself in the form of a
dunghill or