722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



causation beyond matter, who discover causes that are not material 

 (called spiritual), who believe that the Great First Cause (the Unknow- 

 able of materialists) is an infinite spiritual power or basis of all things, 

 and who recognize in man also a spiritual power of which they are 

 conscious, widely different from matter, partaking of the nature of the 

 Divine, and, being a very positive entity the greatest of all realities 

 to us destined, in accordance with the doctrine of the persistence of 

 force, to a duration analogous to that of matter. 



To the materialist, who finds in matter " the promise and potency " 

 of all things, there is no higlier object of reverence and love than the 

 examples of men and women within his reach ; there is no future life 

 to conij^ensate for the wrongs and sufferings of this, the triumph of 

 fraud, or the unmerited agonies of disease and poverty ; there is no 

 apparent controlling purpose of benevolence or justice in the universe, 

 but only a chance medley of strife, in which strong-handed selfishness 

 is best rewarded, and when " man dies as the dog dies " the account 

 is closed, and the self-imposed martyrdom of the loving hero appears 

 a final loss and folly. 



To the spiritualist, the universe has a deeper meaning, a nobler 

 destiny. The wisdom of the Infinite, which is unutterably beyond his 

 reach, is a consoling reality, and the little play upon this theatre, the 

 life-struggle of threescore and ten years, is but the beginning, the 

 gestation and birth of a career corresi^onding to our noblest aspira- 

 tions and our faith in the Divine benevolence. 



Man has such immeasurable powers of adaptation that a strong 

 moral nature may exist under the gloomiest views of materialism 

 (which naturally tend to the pessimism of SchoiDenhauer and Hart- 

 mann), and sustain itself by its constitutional energy and buoyancy ; 

 but there are millions to whom materialism teaches the daily lesson 

 that to " put money in thy purse " is the chief aim of life, and to riot 

 in sensual pleasure on ill-gotten gain, until the candle burns out, is 

 the best wisdom. 



The glow of hope, the removal of anxiety, the exaltation of happi- 

 ness, the enlargement of sympathy and love, which thousands have 

 experienced when they have passed from the dark nescience of ma- 

 terialism to the brilliant certainties of spiritualism, and learned the 

 grandeur of human destiny whether the change has been effected by 

 emotional eloquence and historical argument in the bosom of the 

 Church, or by scientific investigation and experimental inquiry in 

 pneumatology, or by that direct perception of spiritual existence now 

 enjoyed by a few (and destined to be enjoyed by all when the human 

 race shall have attained maturity of development) should satisfy 

 any impartial thinker that the diffusion of spiritual knowledge is as 

 noble and practical a form of philanthropy as a good man can labor for. 



But, in laboring for these ennobling truths, he encounters a strong 

 resistance in the animal nature of man, in the selfish and depressing 



