We wish we could bestow unqualified praise upon the ideas throughout these sonnets. And were there nothing for criticism but what may be called poetic subtleties—such as the German notion of an “ether body,” developed during life, and hatched at death, for our intermediate state of being—we should have no quarrel with Mr. Earle. But when we meet two sonnets (XLVIII. and XLIX.) headed “Matter Non-Existent,” and “Matter Non-Substantial,” we have a philosophical error serious in its consequences, and are not surprised to find the two following sonnets teach Pantheism. In Sonnet XLVIII. the author’s excellent intention is to refute materialism:
“‘Thought is,’ you say, ‘a function of the brain,
And matter all that we can ever know;
…
“‘From it we came; to it at last we go,
And all beyond it is a phantom vain,’ etc.
…
“I answer: ‘Matter is a form of mind,
So far as it is aught. It has no base,
Save in the self-existent.’”