William Story said, with happy grace, that the great body of the people might be excused for such a thought.
Margaret enjoyed the pun, and said that the great Greek body was sensuous and ate, but that the Greek soul knew better than to suspect the Gods of opening their mouths.
E. P. P. waked up at this moment, and asked what Margaret would say to Berkeley’s theory.
Margaret said she did not know what it was!
E. P. P. said, the evolution of all things from the soul, the non-existence of matter.
James P. Clarke thought it very difficult to decide how far spirit and matter were one. A man’s identity was not in the particles which came and went every seven years, but in the spirit. Yet these particles constituted the wall of separation between himself and others. His identity was in his spirit.
George Ripley begged leave to disagree. He thought we knew as much about matter as about spirit, and that Berkeley’s theory was as good as any.
Margaret said that if God created matter, of course it was evolved from spirit; that matter could not be antagonistic to that from which it was evolved. To express a complete idea, we had only to say, “Jehovah, I am.”
“Or,” Charles Wheeler added, “to be silent.”