I said that those words did not mean anything definite to me. They might be true, but I did not understand them. Ruth said she did, and it was what she meant; that matter was, like the bad, something to be overcome and left behind.
“I think,” said Virginia, “that matter is the tool of spirit; the body is the servant of the mind.”
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.