secrets of my success as a propagandist. Like pictures, they impress
the mind of the hearer with a vivid sense of reality. "Every one knows
the exquisite iridiscence of mother-of-pearl, the tender, delicate
hues which melt into each other, glowing with soft radiance. How
different is the dull, dead surface of a piece of wax. Yet take that
dull, black wax and mould it so closely to the surface of the
mother-of-pearl that it shall take every delicate marking of the
shell, and when you raise it the seven-hued glory shall smile at you
from the erstwhile colourless surface. For, though it be to the naked
eye imperceptible, all the surface of the mother-of-pearl is in
delicate ridges and furrows, like the surface of a newly-ploughed
field; and when the waves of light come dashing up against the ridged
surface, they are broken like the waves on a shingly shore, and are
flung backwards, so that they cross each other and the oncoming waves;
and, as every ray of white light is made up of waves of seven colours,
and these waves differ in length each from the others, the fairy
ridges fling them backward separately, and each ray reaches the eye by
itself; so that the colour of the mother-of-pearl is really the spray
of the light waves, and comes from arrangement of matter once again.
Give the dull, black wax the same ridges and furrows, and its glory
shall differ in nothing from that of the shell. To apply our
illustration: as the colour belongs to one arrangement of matter and
the dead surface to another, so life belongs to some arrangements of
matter and is their resultant, while the resultant of other
arrangements is death."[10]

The same line of reasoning naturally was applied to the existence of
"spirit" in man, and it was argued that mental activity, the domain of
the "spirit," was dependent on bodily organisation. "When the babe is
born it shows no sign of mind. For a brief space hunger and repletion,