"In your body." I inquired,
"In a part of my body, or in all of it? Am I to understand that my spirit is just the shape and size of my body, and that when I am thin of flesh my spirit is not as large as when I am fleshy?"
"No," said they, "we do not like that."
"Oh! your spirit is in your brain," remarked one young fellow.
"Now, then, I have it," said I, "my spirit is just the shape and size of the cavity in my skull."
"No," he replied, "we don't know how it is." And they did not know, because no one had explained it to them. This is what I told them:
"The spirit is not in the body as a hand is in a glove, for that is one thing inside another thing. Spirit has no dimensions. If any boy has a rule in his pocket let him measure my 'conscious will,' and tell me how long it is." They promptly replied that it could not be done. So I continued:
"If my self-conscious will occupies no space, then I, the spirit, am neither in my body nor out of my body. I am nowhere. 'Where' applies to things and not to spirit. The book is in the room because it occupies a definite space. When we say that our spirits are in our bodies we simply mean that our wills are capable of commanding our bodies and making them act. While our spirits are nowhere, yet they do get expressed somewhere. For all practical purposes, spirits are where their instruments express them in time and space."
At this point in my remarks, I turned aside, and poked sharply with my forefinger a friend who stood near. In reply to his inquiring look I said:
"I did not poke you. It was this finger." (Then to the boys) "Did I poke him? My finger touched him because I wished it. My will got expressed right at the end of the finger, and therefore that is where my spirit seemed to be."