People's voice. [volume] (Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas) 1890-1917, 1892-04-22

he says: "ln the soul of every man, OF
in the temple inhabited by every soul,
there is one NICHE in which can be found
the statue Of the ideal. In the presence
OF this statue the good man worships,
the bad man blasphemes; that is to say,
ne is not true to the ideal" Here again
the colonel lands US in the midst of an
irreconcilable contradiction. He denies
the supernatural, but attempts to save
himself from the pigsty of materialism
by taking refuge in the ideal.
Deny the supernatural and assert the
ideall
LOGICAL HYSTERIA.
Again, the colonel allows his rhetoric
to run away with his reason and land
him in the middle of a spell of mental
sickness This is logical hysteria. This
is the philosophy of jimjams. This is
another effort of the eloquent orator to
watt his nearer on the flowers of rhetoric
into a FOOLS paradise. What is the su.
pernatural? 1t is not the unnatural. It
Is not antagonistic to nature. 1t Is the
complement of the natural. 1t is the
sequel of the natural. 1t is not against
nature. 1t is simply above that which
has been observed to be the course of
nature, meaning observed through our
senses. 1t is not contrary to sense. It
is supersensuous. The eye of the body
sees matter We apprehend matter
through the avenues of the FIVE senses
This world of matter has been called
"real."
EYE OF THE SOUL
But you may close my eye, blindfold
me, lead me into midnight darkness,
and through the closed eyelids, through
the blindfold, through the darkness |
will see worlds peopled with life and
beauty. This is the ideal. The ideal is
that which man sees through the eye Of
the soul The ideal belongs to the i'm
material, supersenuous, spiritual, super.
natural world The ideal is of the creed
OF the spirit. He who holds the creed Of
the spirit is the idealist. He declares
that from the beginning was the spirit;
that the end will be the spirit. That
matter is that which passes, that it is
temporal, that it is the result of causes
and movements originating in the real
world-the spiritual world-and that
their sequence can only be found in this
same world Of spirit.
SEE 1T OR SMELL IT.
Upon the other hand, the creed of mat
ter denies the reality of all things except
matter. The creed of matter declares
that matter is the beginning and the end
of itself. That matter is the one only
eternal verify that was. is and ever will
be the only fact of time-meaning phys
ical matter The measurement of this
creed is the five senses, the organs by
which we apprehend matter. The creed
of matter asserts that all that is real can
be measured by these organs of sense.
If thing is not delusion you can feel
1t with your fingers, hear it with the
drum of your ear, taste it with your
palate, see it with your optic nerve or
put your nose into it and smell it.
GNAT OR CAMEL?
Such a creed in the denial of super
sensuous, supernatural world must re-
duce the ideal to delusion. The ideal
then merely becomes a subjective phan-
tom which the imagination projects
from suggestions gathered from matter.
The materialist who holds to the ideal
reduces the ideal simply to sham, a
a delusion, and from a delu-
sion he takes the standard by which he
measures his own life. For the colonel
says, Here the good man worships, the
bad man blasphemes." To deny the
supernatural and profess the ideal-this
is to strain at gnat and to swallow a
camel'-a whole camel, hoofs, hair,
hide, hump and all. To deny the super
natural is to place ones self of ne 'sity
on the platform of matter. To pr, aim
4
this creed of matter is to proclaim the
Gospel of Dirt.
To assert the creed of matter is to stake
ones life on that 1htch is least knoirn and
deny tchdt man knolcS best.
MIND STUFF AND WORLD STUFF.
Because: First-Science has led the
world up to point at which matter be-
comes the one unknowable mystery of
the universe. The firmer has been the
grasp of science on matter the louder and
more startling has become the heartbeat
of the God of Spirit in matter. The fact
is that the scientific world cannot even
today agree upon a definition of matter
They do not know whether it is hard OF
soft, whetherit is extended or unextend.
ed, whether it is the antithesis of mind
or whether it is all mental. Sir William
Thompson, for instance, We Id attribute
to it the quality of III S." but up
jumps Boscovitch and proceeds to knock
all the hardness out of it. He proceeds
in other words, to demolish the alto
theory of matter, and to the satisfaction
of his end Of the scientific world he
shows conclusively that matter is not
composed of atoms. Upon the other
hand, Clifford and Haekel and Tyndall,
when they approach matter, talk to us
about mind stuff" and world stuff
We sit down and take our head in our
hands and wonder whether it is COM
posed mostly of mind stuff" or more Of
~ ID stuff or whether it is "all
stuff
WHAT Is GRAVITY
The fact is that the little we know
about matter has increased the myster.