The eccentric Count de Caylus, when on his death-bed, was visited by some near relation and a pious Bishop, who hoped that under such trying circumstance he would manifest some concern respecting those 'spiritual' blessings which, while in health, he had uniformly treated with contempt. After a long pause he broke silence by saying, _'Ah, my friends, I see you are anxious about my soul;'_ whereupon they pricked up their ears with delight; before, however, any reply could be made the Count added, _'but the fact is I have not got one, and really my good friends you must allow me to know best.'_ If people in general had one tenth the good sense of this _impious_ Count, the fooleries of Spiritualism would at once give place to the philosophy of Materialism, and none would waste time in talking or writing about non-entities. All would know that what theologians call sometimes spirit, sometimes soul, and sometimes mind, is an imaginary existence. All would know that the terms _immaterial something_ do in very truth mean _nothing_. Count de Caylus died as became a man convinced that soul is not an entity, and that upon the dissolution of our 'earthly tabernacle', the particles composing it cease to perform vital functions, and return to the shoreless ocean of Eternal Being. Pietists may be shocked by such _nonchalance_ in the face of their 'grim monster;' but philosophers will admire an indifference to inevitable consequences resulting from profoundest love of truth and contempt of superstition. Count de Caylus was a Materialist, and no Materialist can consistently feel the least alarm at the approach of what superstitionists have every reason to consider the 'king of terrors.' Believers in the reality of immaterial existence cannot be 'proper' Materialists. Obviously, therefore, no believers in the reality of God can be _bona fide_ Materialists; for 'God' is a name signifying something or nothing; in other terms matter or that which is not matter. If the latter, to Materialists the name is meaningless--sound without sense. If the former, they at once pronounce it a name too many; because it expresses nothing that their word MATTER does not express better. Dr. Young held in horror the Materialist's 'universe of dust.' But there is nothing either bad or contemptible in dust--man is dust--all will be dust. A _dusty_ universe, however, _shocked_ the poetic Doctor, whose writings analogise with-- Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing. A universe of nothing was more to his taste than a universe of dust, and he accordingly amused himself with the 'spiritual' work of imagining one, and called its builder 'God.'