What is matter! I take a handful of earth in my hands, and into that dust I put seeds, and arrows from the eternal quiver of the sun smite it, and the seeds grow and bud and blossom, and fill the air with perfume in my sight. Do you understand that? Do you understand how this dust and these seeds and that light and this moisture produced that bud and that flower and that perfume? Do you understand that any better than you do the production of thought? Do you understand that any better than you do a dream? Do you understand that any better than you do the thoughts of love that you see in the eyes of the one you adore? Can you explain it? Can you tell what matter is? Have you the slightest conception? Yet you talk about matter as though you were acquainted with its origin; as though you had compelled, with clenched hands, the very rocks to give up the secret of existence. Do you know what force is? Can you account for molecular action? Are you familiar with chemistry? Can you account for the loves and hatreds of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever eludes you? Can you tell what matter really is? Before you cry Materialism, you had better find what matter is. Can you tell of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to imagine the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you to conceive of the creation of a single atom? Can you have a thought that is not suggested to you by what you call matter? Did any man or woman or child ever have a solitary thought, dream or conception, that was not suggested to them by something they had seen in nature?--Ingersoll. The Origin of Belief in the Soul. * * * I had waited at some distance, and as the day grew stronger, saw that this new grave was not the only one upon that lonely height. On my right was a mound on which lay the betel-box, the pipe, the haversack, and "dah" (or chopper-knife) that in life had been his who lay beneath. I turned to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, when I heard the sound of footsteps. The childless man and woman were passing. I knew the man, and I spoke to him. He had often been my guide in former visits to his village. He stopped. His wife passed on. I asked, tenderly I hope, as to his child. What was the cause of death? "Fever." Then he squatted down, drew out his pipe, filled and lit it. "Whose grave is that?" I asked, pointing to the mound with the betel-box and "dah." "One of the men of my village," he replied; "he died some months ago." "Why do you leave his betel-box, haversack, and 'dah' on the grave? What use can it be to him?" "It is our custom." "But why?" "His 'lah' (spirit) will require them." "But you see his 'lah' has not taken them. They are still there, and they are rotting away."