toms? Is there
not something in matter that forever excludes you? Can you tell what
matter really is? Before you cry materialism, you had better find what
matter is. Can you tell of anything without a material basis? Is it
possible to imagine the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible
for you to conceive of the creation of a single atom? Can you have a
thought that is not suggested to you by what you call matter? Did any
man or woman or child ever have a solitary thought, dream or
conception, that was not suggested to them by something they had seen
in nature? Can you conceive of anything the different parts of which
have been suggested to you by nature? You can conceive of an animal
with the hoofs of a bison, with the pouch of a kangaroo, with the head
of a buffalo, with the tail of a lion, with the scales of a fish, with
the wings of a bird, and yet every part of this impossible monster has
been suggested to you by nature. You say time, therefore you can think
eternity. You say pain, therefore you can think hell. You say
strength, therefore you can think omnipotence. You say wisdom,
therefore you can think infinite wisdom. Everything you see, everything
you can dream of or think of, has been suggested to you by your
surroundings, by nature. Man cannot rise above nature; below nature
man cannot fall. Imagine, if you please, the creation of a single
atom. Can any one here imagine the creation out of nothing of one
atom? Can any one here imagine the destruction of one atom? Can you
imagine an atom being changed to nothing? Can you imagine nothing
being changed to an atom? There is not a solitary person here with an
imagination strong enough to think either of the creation of an atom or
of the annihilation of an atom.

Matter and the universe are the same yesterday, today and forever.
There is just as much matter in the universe today as there ever was,
and as there ever will be; there is just as much force and just as much
energy as there ever was or ever will be; but it is continually taking
different shapes and forms; one day it is a man, another day it is
animal, another day it is earth, another day it is metal, another day
it is gas, it gains nothing and it loses nothing. Our fathers
denounced materialism and accounted for all phenomena how? By the
caprice of gods and devils. For thousands of years it was believed
that ghosts, good ghosts, bad ghosts, benevolent and malevolent, in
some myst