ls of heaven surround you. I desire this power for you. Rest
assured that these bounties now overshadow you.

17 April 1912
Talk at Hotel Ansonia
Broadway and Seventy-third Street, New York

Notes by Howard MacNutt

During my visit to London and Paris last year I had many talks with the
materialistic philosophers of Europe. The basis of all their conclusions
is that the acquisition of knowledge of phenomena is according to a fixed,
invariable law--a law mathematically exact in its operation through the
senses. For instance, the eye sees a chair; therefore, there is no doubt
of the chair's existence. The eye looks up into the heavens and beholds
the sun; I see flowers upon this table; I smell their fragrance; I hear
sounds outside, etc. This, they say, is a fixed mathematical law of
perception and deduction, the operation of which admits of no doubt
whatever; for inasmuch as the universe is subject to our sensing, the
proof is self-evident that our knowledge of it must be gained through the
avenues of the senses. That is to say, the materialists announce that the
criterion and standard of human knowledge is sense perception. Among the
Greeks and Romans the criterion of knowledge was reason--that whatever is
provable and acceptable by reason must necessarily be admitted as true. A
third standard or criterion is the opinion held by theologians that
traditions or prophetic statement and interpretations constitute the basis
of human knowing. There is still another, a fourth criterion, upheld by
religionists and metaphysicians who say that the source and channel of all
human penetration into the unknown is through inspiration. Briefly then,
these four criteria according to the declarations of men are: first, sense
perception; second, reason; third, traditions; fourth, inspiration.

In Europe I told the philosophers and scientists of materialism that the
criterion of the senses is not reliable. For instance, consider a mirror
and the images reflected in it. These images have no actual corporeal
existence. Yet if you had never seen a mirror, you would firmly insist and
believe that they were real. The eye sees a mirage upon the desert as a
lake of water, but there is no reality in it. As we stand upon the deck of
a steamer, the shore appears to be moving, yet we know the land is
stationary and we are moving. The earth was believed to be fixed and the
sun revolving about it, but although this appears to be so, the rev