Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/73

Rh How can I believe that there is no such thing as matter, when I weigh over two hundred pounds and carry about this weight daily?

By learning that matter is but manifest mortal mind. You entertain an adipose belief of yourself as substance; whereas, substance means more than matter: it is the glory and permanence of Spirit: it is that which is hoped for but unseen, that which the material senses cannot take in. Have you never been so preoccupied in thought when moving your body, that you did this without consciousness of its weight? If never in your waking hours, you have been in your night-dreams; and these tend to elucidate your day-dream, or the mythical nature of matter, and the possibilities of mind when let loose from its own beliefs. In sleep, a sense of the body accompanies thought with less impediment than when awake, which is the truer sense of being. In Science, body is the servant of Mind, not its master: Mind is supreme. Science reverses the evidence of material sense with the spiritual sense that God, Spirit, is the only substance; and that man, His image and likeness, is spiritual, not material. This great Truth does not destroy but substantiates man's identity, — together with his immortality and preexistence, or his spiritual coexistence with his Maker. That which has a beginning must have an ending.

What should one conclude as to Professor Carpenter's exhibitions of mesmerism?

That largely depends upon what one accepts as either useful or true, I have no knowledge of mesmerism,