A God, therefore, that is the master of matter, and a human soul that is independent of it--any second world, in fact, of alien and trans-material forces, is reduced, on physical grounds, to an utterly unsupported hypothesis. Were this all, however, it would logically have on religion no effect at all. It would supply us with nothing but the barren verbal proposition that the immaterial was not material, or that we could find no trace of it by merely studying matter. Its whole force rests on the following suppressed premiss, that nothing exists but what the study of matter conceivably could reveal to us; or that, in other words, the immaterial equals the nonexistent. The case stands thus. The forces of thought and spirit were supposed formerly to be quite distinct from matter, and to be capable of acting without the least connection with it. Now, it is shown that every smallest revelation of these to us, is accomplished by some local atomic movement, which, on a scientific instrument fine enough, would leave a distinct impression; and thus it is argued that no force is revealed through matter that is not inseparable from the forms revealing it. Here we see the meaning of that great modern axiom, that verification is the test of truth; or that we can build on nothing as certain but what we can prove true. The meaning of the word '_proof_' by itself may perhaps be somewhat hazy; but the meaning that positive science attaches to it is plain enough. A fact is only proved when the evidence it rests upon leaves us no room for doubt--when it forces on every mind the same invincible conviction; that is, in other words, when, directly or indirectly, its material equivalent can be impressed upon our bodily senses. This is the fulcrum of the modern intellectual lever. Ask anyone oppressed and embittered by the want of religion the reason why he does not again embrace it, and the answer will still be this--that there is no proof that it is true. Granting, says Professor Huxley, that a religious creed would be beneficial, '_my next step is to ask for a_ proof _of its dogmas_.' And with contemptuous passion another well-known writer, Mr. Leslie Stephen, has classified all beliefs, according as we can prove or not prove them, into realities and empty dreams. '_The ignorant and childish_,' he says, '_are hopelessly unable to draw the line between dreamland and reality; but the imagery which takes its rise in the imagination as distinguished from the perceptions, bears indelible traces of its origin in comparative unsubstantiality and vagueness of outline_.' And '_now_,' he exclaims, turning to the generation around him, '_at last your creed is decaying. People have discovered that you know nothing about it; that heaven and hell belong to dreamland; that the impertinent young curate who tells me that I shall be burnt everlastingly for not sharing his superstition, is just as ignorant as I myself, and that I know as much as my dog._'[34]