"I have looked only cursorily at the writings of the materialists; you have studied them carefully; and you will oblige me much if you would give me the foundation on which the whole structure of materialism rests."
"The materialistic system is very simple," answered Frank. "Materialists reject all existence that is not sensibly perceptible. They deny the existence of invisible and supersensible things. There is no spirit in man or anywhere else. Matter alone exists, because matter alone manifests its existence."
"I understand. The materialist will only be convinced by seeing and feeling. As a spirit is neither spiritual nor tangible, then there is none. Is it not so, friend Richard?"
"You have included in one sentence the whole of materialism," said Frank coolly.
"I cannot understand," said Klingenberg hesitatingly, "how the materialists can make assertions which are untenable to the commonest understandings. Why, thought can neither be seen nor felt; yet it is an existence."
"Thought is a function of the brain."
"Then it is incomprehensible how the sensible can beget the supersensible. How matter—the brain—can produce the immaterial, the spiritual."
Richard was silent.
"At every step in materialism I meet insurmountable difficulties," continued the doctor. "I know perfectly the organization of the human body, as well as the function and purpose of each part. The physician knows the purpose of the lungs, heart, kidneys, and stomach, and all the noble and ignoble parts of the body. But no physician knows the origin of the activity of the organism. The blood stops, the pulse no longer beats, the lungs, kidneys, nerves, and all the rest cease their functions. The man is dead. Why? Because the activity, the movement, the force is gone. What then is this vivifying force? In what does it consist? What color, what taste, what form has it? No physician knows. The vivifying principle is invisible, intangible, perfectly immaterial. Yet it exists. Therefore the fundamental dogma of materialism is false. There are existences which can neither be felt, tasted, nor seen."
"The vivifying principle is also in animals," said Richard.