"An Agnostic, who can have no knowledge save that which his senses bring to him, is necessarily a materialist. By 'matter,' or molecular structure, or concourse of atoms, or whatever you please to call it, the Common Sense of mankind, our supreme arbiter of physics and metaphysics, understands that which is perceptible to, or cognizable by, the senses. When Berkeley proves logically that spirit only exists, we admire the ingenuity with which he shows that white is black and black is white. Like the Hindú philosopher he inverts the normal mode of definition by calling the invisible prototypes the only reality. Similarly, when Schopenhauer, the Buddhist of modern Europe, assures us that 'in reality there is neither matter nor spirit,' we note that he has adopted the Hindú idea of _Mâyâ_, or universal illusion; and that he reduces all existence to will and manifestation--will in motion being force, and force producing matter. When it is proved to us that matter does not 'exist,' we recognize a quirk or conceit in the use of the verb 'to exist.' Meanwhile, this chair, this table, these walls, and all with them are of matter, material. And that suffices for everyday use. "We avoid asserting that spirits do not exist; we fear being called upon to prove a negative; and we students are addicted to 'suspension of judgment'--a mental operation apparently distasteful to the multitude. But we affirm that if they do exist, they are material. As you see upon these walls they allow themselves to be photographed; therefore, they have substance, shape, and size; upstairs a simple instrument shows you their connection with weight. We, therefore, conclude that there are ample grounds for holding these spirits to be, like ourselves, of the world, mundane, of the earth, earthy. And when Spiritualists speak of a 'materialized spirit,' I can think only of a form of speech whose genus is _Taurus_, species _Hibernicus_. Similarly Lucretius makes Epicurus argue that the soul is material because all its belongings are of the material world. And Paracelsus, the mighty adept, declared 'the imagination of man is a seed which is material.'