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Updated: June 15, 2025
If we have only an incomplete knowledge of nature and her ways if we have only superficial, imperfect ideas of matter, how shall we be able to flatter ourselves with understanding or having any certain notions of immateriality, of beings so much more fugitive, so much more difficult to compass, even by thought, than the material elements; so much more shy of access than either the constituent principles of bodies, their primitive properties, their various modes of acting, or their different manner of existing?
The action of the infinitesimal dose was a knotty question. He could not deny the fact that they exhibited marvelous power over disease, but their immateriality staggered his faith at times, in spite of all that he had seen and experienced. But there came a time when he stepped over the line forever. He was "Born into the Kingdom," as the Doctor expressed it.
For, along with the hope of proving the immateriality and immortality of the soul, the fear of seeing them disproved is also dissipated; materialism is just as unfounded as spiritualism, and if the conclusions of the latter concerning the soul as a simple, immaterial substance which survives the death of the body, cannot be proved, yet we need not, for that reason, regard them as erroneous, for the opposite is as little susceptible of demonstration.
This superficial knowledge, however slender it may be, with which our senses furnish us, is the only one we can possibly have; constituted as we are, we find ourselves under the necessity of resting contented with it, and we discover that it is sufficient for our wants; but we have not even the most superficial idea of immateriality, or a substance distinguished from all those with which we have the slightest acquaintance.
An unknown Deity, without body, parts or passions, is of all idols the least tangible; and they who pretend to know and reverence him, are deceived or deceivers. In this Christian country, where men are expected to believe and called 'Infidel' if they cannot believe in a 'crucified Saviour, it seems strange so much fuss should be made about his immateriality.
P. What then is God? P. Is not God spirit? V. While I was awake I knew what you meant by "spirit," but now it seems only a word such for instance as truth, beauty a quality, I mean. P. Is not God immaterial? V. There is no immateriality it is a mere word. That which is not matter, is not at all unless qualities are things. P. Is God, then, material? P. What then is he?
I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion.
It seems to be a less inconsistent thing than the "all in the whole body" soul of Plotinus; but it appears to have purchased its comprehensibility at the expense of its immateriality. Shall we say that Descartes frankly repudiated the doctrine that had obtained for so many centuries? We cannot say that; he still held to it. But how could he?
It is no more superstition than the belief in Bacteria, or in any other living thing invisible to the ordinary human eye. 'Spirit' is a misleading word, for, historically, it connotes immateriality and a supernatural kind of existence, and the Theosophist believes neither in the one nor the other.
It would appear, however, that originally the word spirit was not meant to designate immateriality; but a matter of a more subtile nature than that which acted coarsely on the organs: still of a nature capable of penetrating the grosser matter of communicating to it motion of instilling into it active life of giving birth to those combinations of imparting to them those modifications, which his organic structure rendered him competent to discover.
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