HENRY L. ZIEGENFUSS. ol! 
only immortality there can be is that of permanence of 
effect. Not in his spirit but in his deeds man is immor- 
tal. 
Whatsoever of truth materialism has to offer we 
cheerfully accept. We endeavor to be hospitable to the 
true sons of science. We will acknowledge fact 
wherever it may be found, and follow it whithersoever it 
may lead. But the same course of conduct we demand 
of others. We beg them not to be narrow and exclusive 
in investigations, contracted in their sympathies, nor 
blind to certain other obvious facts of nature, even if 
they be not written down in the book of the chemist or 
the physicist. 
For the sake of argument we, also, will begin with 
matter and force. But what do we really know about 
these? Matter, we are told, is that which affects our 
senses. Weare conscious of the effects, but what do we 
know of the cause? We know certain of the properties 
of what we call matter, but nothing whatever of its ulti- 
mate nature and internal atomic constitution. We take 
a block of ice. Itisasolid ; it has the characteristics that 
we call weight, density, rigidity, color, coldness, translu- 
cency, and so on; but these tell us nothing whatsoever 
of the thing in itself. Apply heat and the solidity dis- 
appears; it becomes a liquid; rigidity is gone, and 
transparency takes the place of translucency ; warmth 
succeeds coldness. Apply more heat, until the condi- 
tion called steam is reached. Now our aforetime solid 
matter has become entirely invisible, having apparently 
lost all those qualities that it had in the form of ice. 
Or, by electrolysis, let us split up the molecules of wa- 
ter into its components. On the one side we get oxygen, 
on the other, hydrogen. But this hydrogen, for instance 
—what is it? It also, itself, though at ordinary tempera- 
ture it is a wondrously attenuated gas, has been forced 
into the liquid, and even into the solid shape. What is 
