Throwing himself upon the moss, he begins watching the play of the water until it becomes “alive with forms of the most singular shape,” with super-mundane beings dancing in the spray, “shaking their heads in the sunshine and throwing off showers of liquid silver from their waving locks.”... “Their laughter sounded like that of the Falls of _Minnehaha_, and from the crevices of the rocks peeped the ugly faces of gnomes and kobolds, watching slyly the fairies.” Then the dreamer asks himself a variety of questions of the most perplexing nature, except, perhaps, to the materialist, who cuts every psychological problem as Alexander cleft the Gordian knot.... “What is the reason that we imagine such things?” he inquires. “Why do we endow ‘dead’ things with human consciousness and with sensation?... Is our consciousness merely a product of the organic activity of our physical body, or is it a function of the universal life ... within the body? Is our personal consciousness dependent for its existence on the existence of the physical body, and does it die with it; or is there a spiritual consciousness, belonging to a higher, immortal, and invisible self of man, temporarily connected with the organism, but which may exist independently of the latter? If such is the case, if our physical organism is merely an instrument through which our consciousness acts, then this instrument is _not_ our real self. If this is true, then our real self is there where our consciousness exists, and may exist independently of the latter.... Can there be any _dead_ matter in the Universe? Is not even a stone held together by the ‘cohesion’ of its particles, and attracted to the earth by ‘gravitation’? But what else is this ‘cohesion’ and ‘gravitation’ but _energy_, and what is ‘energy’ but the _soul_, an interior principle called _force_, which produces an outward manifestation called _matter_?... All things possess life, all things possess soul, and there may be soul-beings ... invisible to our physical senses, but which may be perceived by our soul.” (p. 19.) The arch-druid of modern Hylo-Idealism, Dr. Lewins, failing to appear to rudely shake our philosopher out of his unscientific thoughts, a dwarf appears in his stead. The creature, however, does not warn the dreamer, as that _too_-learned _Idealist_ would. He does not tell him that he transcends “the limits of the anatomy of his conscious Ego,” since “_psychosis_ is now diagnosed by _medico-psychological symptomatology as vesiculo-neurosis in activity_,”[30] and—as quoth the raven—“merely this, and nothing more.” But being a _cretin_, he laughingly invites him to his “Master.” ----- Footnote 30: “What is Religion: A Vindication of Free Thought.” By C. N., annotated by Robert Lewins, M. D. See his Appendices, p. 35, _et seq._ -----