spirit, each one the
equivalent of the all. What else than this can be the ultimate
meaning of the primal, universal, indestructible antithesis or
dual classification of being, the ego and the non ego, self and
not self, the former including each individual in his own
apprehension, the latter including all besides?

There is a philosophical authority which, for those incompetent to
judge for themselves, should properly take the place vacated by
the ecclesiastical authority, which, in our day, is plainly on the
wane. Multitudes no longer believe in the immortality of their
souls on the ground of the resurrection of Christ, or the
assertion of Scripture or creed. Shall they, then, deny it
altogether because the materialistic band clamor that it is a
delusion, and they themselves see no sufficient evidence for it?
There is a more appropriate alternative. Many theories in natural
philosophy have been exploded by the proof of their absurdity, and
the correct explanations are accepted on trust by the multitudes
incompetent to master their logical and mathematical grounds. Very
few understand the proofs of the chief laws of nature, but the
vast majority of men implicitly trust the assertions of those who
do know them. In like manner there is a legitimate sphere for
authority in moral and religious beliefs; only it should be the
authority of the competent and disinterested. Now, it is a fact
that the very greatest philosophers who have ever lived, the
preeminently imperial thinkers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas,
Anselm, Hegel, and the resplendent group of their peers, have
asserted as a necessary principle the real being and eternal
substantiality of the soul. Besides all the combinations of matter
that dissolve, all the phenomena that pass, they affirm the
existence of enduring entities, individual spirits, thinkers
conscious of their thoughts. In central calm, far within the
struggle and vex of the rolling elements, throned in its own
serene realm of law, lives the free, conscious soul, and will live
eternally, actualizing its potentialities. Nothing can
disintegrate it, because it is not an aggregate but a unity, not a
quantitative mass of matter, but a spaceless monad of power. It is
a closed circuit of thinking activity, impenetrable to everything
else. Spirits are the only solids, matter being endlessly
penetrable and transmutable.

We are all obliged to think of ourselves as entities, and not as
mere phenomenal