To those who begin with matter, the search for Soul is very necessary; because to all such Soul is unknown and unveriflable, and so the necessary search is very hopeless. They may well say, with one of this ilk: "It is a hard conundrum, this of the soul, and perhaps we shall be obliged ultimately to give it up."
If we allow the existence of matter as something other than spirit, of an intrinsic and peculiar nature and substance of its own, the extent of whose capabilities are unknown to us, then it may, for aught we know, be capable of thinking and feeling, and be the subject and source of all the conscious processes and states known to us. In that case, we never can discover Soul as aught but a mode of matter. Matter being supposed to be known, all that is discerned in connection with it must, in all reason, be considered as one of its innumerable possible modes and forms.
This assumption of matter being once allowed, by no possible process could we prove that there is any Soul, or what Soul is, or is not. It is argued that "if the soul is material, that elimination of the soul called ' death ' should at once cause a material difference in the body." That is true: and in fact, death, as a sensible phenomenon, always constitutes a difference in the body; and it is nothing else; and all material tests and appliances could have only material results, as, both in processes or means, and end, there would be only sensible phenomena, which are called material.
