Page:Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful.djvu/82

 In asserting the existence of a real, spiritual world, we do not carry materialism into the spiritual realm. Material applies to the passive, dead, substances of the natural universe, including the substances that enter into the composition of the sun down to the most fixed rock of the earth. The substances of the spiritual world are superior and interior to all of these.

We recognize that water has a property of plasticity superior to that of rock. Air is still more plastic than water, which constitutes it the medium of sound. Ether is still more plastic than air, which enables it to be the medium of light. No scientist can doubt or fail to conceive of the material substance of ether, so subtle as to penetrate matter of a lower degree and be universally present. We can as easily conceive of a spiritual world likewise separated from the material. We are obliged to introduce into our higher reasoning