They began to argue, but I stopped them, saying: “I will first tell you what I think. Is there any matter without form? Has not all matter form, and is it not, therefore, as it were, something like an idea in the mind?” Henry wanted to deny this, but thought a moment, and admitted that all matter had some form. I went on: “I am a spirit, that is, a self; and I know things only in my spirit, because I see, hear, touch them. So I don’t believe in matter, so called, at all. I think that our forms, our bodies, and all forms in the universe are an expression of spirit or self.” I said expression was the means for reaching unity, that creatures could not come together unless they expressed themselves to each other, and that I believed all expression was for this purpose. I said, what is called matter, the material conditions of life, are the result of the action of spirit; our bodies, which seem so solid and material, are constantly changed, are not at all the same as matter, but only in form; we are reborn each day according to the spirit. I said that in this sense matter, so-called, was indeed something we were constantly leaving behind us, that every material condition was the result of a previous state of mind. This is true of all human things, and we cannot help thinking it is true of universal things. We know that fire burns, that planets whirl through space, that water runs, and we cannot help feeling these expressions of force to be the expression of something akin to will and spirit. Virginia said, then there must be something much more than human sympathy and understanding, which we long to reach. I answered, I believed so, but I had not wanted to suggest it to them. I said that all our present bodily conditions, the seemingly unalterable conditions called material, were the expression of will and spirit in the past, either of ours or others; that our very existence here, the existence of everything, was the result of will and desire. Marian said: “I don’t think it is just that we should suffer and be, because of another’s will and spirit.” Virginia answered: “It _is_ fair. We are part of the whole.” “That is so,” said Marian. “Of course.” It was a full and sufficient answer. I said I believed that disease could be prevented, even if not cured, by thought, because will and desire controlled the body. I said: “We have our own destiny in our hands, we are free to do as we choose with the future, because will shapes everything.” I was delighted to find that the children had never heard the silly discussions about free will, and did not have to have that bugbear driven out. I said: “We are a part of the will of life.” As another illustration of idea coming before form, I spoke of plants and seeds, how in the seed is the possibility, the idea of an infinity of trees. Virginia said: “In them spirit seems to be asleep, for it must be there.” She said all things slept sometimes, and while they slept the spirit worked in them.