"I think," interposed Doctor Morton at this juncture, "that I can throw some light upon the immaterial character of matter, if I may so put it; for even our physical reasoning throws it entirely into the realm of the mental."

"Good!" exclaimed Hitt. "Let us hear from you, Doctor."

The doctor sat for some moments in a deep study. Then he began:

"The const.i.tution of matter, speaking now from an admittedly materialistic standpoint, that of the physical sciences, is a subject of vastest interest and importance to mankind, for human existence _is_ material.

"The ultimate const.i.tuent of matter has been called the atom. But we have said little when we have said that. The atom was once defined as a particle of matter so minute as to admit of no further division.

That definition has gone to the rubbish heap, for the atom can now be torn to pieces. But--and here is the revolutionary fact in modern physical science--_it is no longer held necessary that matter should consist of material particles!_ In fact, the great potential discovery of our day is that matter is electrical in composition, that it is composed of what are called 'electrons,' and that these electrons are themselves composed of electric charges. But what is an electric charge? Is it matter? No, not as we know matter. Is it even material?

We can not say that it is. It is without weight, bulk, dimensions, or tangibility. Well, then, it comes dangerously near being a mental thing, known to the human mind solely by its manifestations, does it not? And of course our comprehension of it is entirely mental, as is our comprehension of everything."

He paused for a moment, that his words might be fully grasped. Then he went on:

"Now these atoms, whatever they are, are supposed to join together to form molecules. What brings them together thus? Affinity, we are told.

And what is affinity? Why, it is--well, law, if you please. And law? A mental thing, we must admit. Very good. Then, going a step further, molecules are held together by cohesion to form material objects, chairs, trees, coal, and the like. But what is cohesion? Is it glue?

Cement? Ah, no! Again, it is law. And law is mental."

"But, Doctor--" interrupted Haynerd.

The doctor held up a detaining hand. "Let me finish," he said. "Now we have the very latest word from our physical scientists regarding the const.i.tution of matter: _it is composed of electric charges, held together by law._ Again, you may justly ask: Is matter material--or mental?"

He paused again, and took up a book that lay before him.

"Here," he continued, "I hold a solid, material, lumpy thing, composed, you will say, of matter. And yet, in essence, and if we can believe our scientists, this book is composed of billions of electric charges--invisible things, without form, without weight, without color, without extension, held together by law, and making up a material object which has ma.s.s, color, weight, and extension. From millions of things which are invisible and have no size, we get an object, visible and extended."

"It's absurd!" exclaimed Miss Wall.

"Granted," interposed Hitt. "Yet, the doctor is giving the very latest deductions of the great scientists."

"But, Doctor," said Father Waite, "the scientists tell us that they have experimental evidence in support of the theories which you have stated regarding the composition of matter. Electricity has been proven granular, or atomic, in structure. And every electrical charge consists of an exact number of electrical atoms spread out over the surface of the charged body. All this admits of definite calculation."

"Admitted," said Hitt, taking up the challenge. "And their very calculations and deductions are rapidly wearing away the 'materialistic theory' of matter. You will admit that mathematics is wholly confined to the realm of mind. It is a strictly mental science, in no way material. It loses definiteness when 'practically' applied to material objects. Kant saw this, and declared that a science might be regarded as further removed from or nearer to perfection in proportion to the amount of mathematics it contained. Now there has been an astonishing confirmation of this great truth just lately. At a banquet given in honor of the discoverer of wireless telegraphy it was stated that the laws governing the traversing of s.p.a.ce by the invisible electric waves were more exact than the general laws of physics, where very complex formulas and coefficients are required for correcting the general laws, due to surrounding material conditions.

The greater exactness of laws governing the invisible electric waves was said to be due to the absence of matter. And it was further stated that _whenever matter had to be taken into consideration there could be no exact law of action!"_ "Which shows--?"

"That matter admits of no definite laws," replied Hitt. "That there are no real laws of matter. And that definiteness is attained only as we dematerialize matter itself."

"In other words, get into the realm of the mental?"

"Just so. And now for the application. I have said that we do not receive any testimony whatsoever through the so-called material senses, but that we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell our own thoughts--that is, the thoughts which, from some source, come into our mentalities. Very well, our scientists show us that, as they get farther away from dense material thoughts, and deal more and more with those which have less material structure, less material composition, their laws become more definite, more exact. Following this out to its ultimate conclusion, we may say, then, that _only those laws which have to do with the non-material are perfect_."

"And those," said Carmen, "are the laws of mind."

"Exactly! And now the history of physical science shows that there has been a constant deviation from the old so-called fixed 'laws of matter.' The law of impenetrability has had to go. A great physicist tells us that, when dealing with sufficiently high speeds, matter has no such property as impenetrability. Ma.s.s is a function of velocity.

The law of indestructibility has had to go. Matter deteriorates and goes to pieces. The material elements are not fixed. The decided tendency of belief is toward a single element, of which all matter is composed, and of which the eighty-odd const.i.tuent elements of matter accepted to-day are but modifications. That unit element may be the ether, of course. And the great Russian chemist, Mendeleef, so believed. But to us, the ether is a mental thing, a theory. But, granting its existence, _its universal penetrability renders matter, as we know it, non-existent_. Everything reduces to the ether, in the final a.n.a.lysis. And all energy becomes vibrations in and of the ether."

"And the ether," supplemented the doctor, "has to be without ma.s.s, invisible, tasteless, intangible, much more rigid than steel, and at the same time some six hundred billion times lighter than air, in order to fulfill all the requirements made of it and to meet all conditions."

"Yes; and yet the ether is a very necessary theory, if we are going to continue to explain the phenomena of force on a material basis."

"But if we abandon that basis--?"

"Then," said Carmen, "matter reduces to what it really is, the human mind's _interpretation_ of substance."

"Yes," said Hitt, turning to her; "I think you are right; matter is the way real substance--let us say, spirit--looks to the human mentality. It is the way the human mind interprets its ideas of spirit. In other words, the human mind looks at the material thoughts and ideas which enter it, and calls them solid substance, occupying s.p.a.ce--calls them matter, with definite laws, and, in certain forms, containing life and intelligence."

"Aye, that is it!" said Father Waite. "And that has been the terrible mistake of the ages, the one great error, the one lie, that has caused us all to miss the mark and come short, far short, of the glory of the mind that is G.o.d. _There is the origin of the problem of evil!_"

"Undoubtedly," replied Hitt. "For evil is in essence but evil thought.

And evil thought is invariably a.s.sociated with matter. The origin of all evil is matter itself. And matter, we find, is but a mental concept, a thing of thought. Oh, the irony of it!"

"Well," put in Haynerd, who had been twitching nervously in his chair, "let's get to the conclusion of this very learned discussion. I'm a plain man, and I'd like to know just where we've landed. What have you said that I can take home with me? The earth still revolves around the sun, even if it is a mean mud ball. And I can't see that I can get along with less than three square meals a day."

"We have arrived," replied Hitt gravely, "at a most momentous conclusion, deduced by the physical scientists themselves, namely, that _things are not what they seem_. In other words, all things material seem to reduce to vibrations in and of the ether; the basis of all materiality is energy, motion, activity--mental things. All the elements of matter seem to be but modifications of one all-pervading element. That element is probably the ether, often called the 'mother of matter.' The elements, such as carbon, silicon, and the others, are not elementary at all, but are forms of one universal element, the ether. Hence, atoms are not atoms. The so-called rare elements are rare only because their lives are short. They disintegrate rapidly and change into other forms of the universal element--or disappear. 'Atoms are but fleeting phases of matter,' we are told. They are by no means eternal, even though they may endure for millions of years."

"Y-e-s?" commented Haynerd with a yawn.

"A great scientist of our own day," Hitt continued, "has said that 'the ether is so modified as to const.i.tute matter, in some way.' What does that mean? Simply that 'visible matter and invisible ether are one and the same thing.' But to the five so-called physical senses the ether is utterly incomprehensible. So, then, matter is wholly incomprehensible to the five physical senses. What is it, then, that we call matter? It can be nothing more than the human mind's interpretation of its idea of an all-pervading, omnipresent _something_, a something which represents substance to it."

"Let me add a further quotation from the great physical scientist to whom you have referred," said the doctor. "He has said that the ether is _not_ matter, but that it is material. And further, that we can not deny that the ether may have some mental and spiritual functions to subserve in some other order of existence, as matter has in this. It is wholly unrelated to any of our senses. The sense of sight takes cognizance of it, but only in a very indirect and not easily recognized way. And yet--stupendous conclusion!--_without the ether there could be no material universe at all_!"

"In other words," said Hitt, "the whole fabric of the material universe depends upon something utterly unrecognizable by the five physical senses."

"Exactly!" replied the doctor.

"Then," concluded Hitt, "the physical senses give us no information whatsoever of a real physical universe about us."

"And so," added Father Waite, "we come back to Carmen's statement, namely, that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling are mental processes, in no way dependent upon the outer fleshly organs of sense--"

"Nonsense!" interjected Haynerd. "Why is it, then, that if the eyes are destroyed we do not see?"

"Simply, my friend, because of human belief," replied Hitt. "The human mind has been trained for untold centuries to dependence upon beliefs in the reality of matter, and beliefs in its dependence upon material modes for sight, hearing, touch, and so on. It is because of its erroneous beliefs that the human mind is to-day enslaved by matter, and dependent upon it for its very sense of existence. The human mind has made its sense of sight dependent upon a frail, pulpy bit of flesh, the eye. As long as that fleshly organ remains intact, the human mind sees its sense of sight externalized in the positing of its mental concepts about it as natural objects. But let that fleshly eye be destroyed, and the human mind sees its belief of dependence upon the material eye externalized as blindness. When the fleshly eye is gone the mind declares that it can no longer see. And what it declares as truth, as fact, becomes externalized to it. I repeat, the human mind sees and hears only its thoughts, its beliefs. And holding to these beliefs, and making them real to itself, it eventually sees them externalized in what it calls its outer world, its environment, its universe. And yet, the materialistic scientists themselves show that the human mind can take no cognizance whatever through the five physical senses of the all-pervading basis of its very existence, the ether. And the ether--alas! it is but a theory which we find necessary for any intelligible explanation of the farce of human existence on a material basis."

"Now see here!" retorted Haynerd, rising and giving expression to his protest by means of emphatic gestures. "I'm getting mixed--badly! You tell me that the existence of things demands a creator, and I admit it, for there can be no effect without a cause. Then you say that the universe is infinite; and I admit that, too, for the science of astronomy finds no limits to s.p.a.ce, and no s.p.a.ce unoccupied. You say that the unity manifested in the universe proves that there can be but one creator. Moreover, to create an infinite universe there must needs be an omnipotent creator; and there can be but one who is omnipotent.

I cordially agree. Further, I can see how that creator must be mind--infinite mind. And I can see why that mind must be absolutely perfect, with no intelligence of evil whatsoever, else would it be a house divided against itself. And such a house must eventually fall.

Now I admit that the universe must be the manifestation, the expression, of that infinite creative mind. But--and here's the sticking point--the universe is both good and evil! Hence, the mind which it manifests is likewise both good and evil--and the whole pretty theory blows up!"

He sat down abruptly, with the air of having given finality to a perplexing question.

All eyes then turned to Carmen, who slowly rose and surveyed the little group.

"It is not surprising," she said, smiling at the confused Haynerd, "that difficulties arise when you attempt to reach G.o.d through human reasoning--spirit through matter. You have taken the unreal, and, through it, have sought to reach back to the real."

"Well," interrupted Haynerd testily, "kindly explain the difference."

"Then, first," replied Carmen, "let us adopt some common meeting ground, some basis which we can all accept, and from which we can rise. Are you all agreed that, in our every-day life, everything is mental?--every action?--every object?--and that, as the philosopher Mill said, 'Everything is a feeling of which the mind is conscious'?

Let me ill.u.s.trate my meaning," she continued, noting Haynerd's rising protest. "I see this book; I take it up; and drop it upon the table.

Have I really seen a book? No; I have been conscious of thoughts which I call a book, nothing more. A real material book did not get into my mind; but _thoughts_ of a book did. And the activity of such thought resulted in a state of consciousness--for consciousness is mental activity, the activity of thought. Remember that, even according to your great physical scientists, this book is composed of millions of charges of electricity, or electrons, moving at a tremendously high rate of speed. And yet, regardless of its composition, I am conscious only of my thoughts of the book. It is but my thoughts that I see, after all."