life is a tissue of sensations, which he distinguishes as they seem
to come more directly from himself or his surroundings. He is
conscious of himself as a joyer or a sufferer, as that which
craves, chooses, and is satisfied; conscious of his surroundings as
it were of an inexhaustible purveyor, the source of aspects,
inspirations, wonders, cruel knocks and transporting caresses.
Thus he goes on his way, stumbling among delights and agonies.

Matter is a far-fetched theory, and materialism is without a root
in man. To him everything is important in the degree to which it
moves him. The telegraph wires and posts, the electricity speeding
from clerk to clerk, the clerks, the glad or sorrowful import of
the message, and the paper on which it is finally brought to him at
home, are all equally facts, all equally exist for man. A word or
a thought can wound him as acutely as a knife of steel. If he
thinks he is loved, he will rise up and glory to himself, although
he be in a distant land and short of necessary bread. Does he
think he is not loved?--he may have the woman at his beck, and
there is not a joy for him in all the world. Indeed, if we are to
make any account of this figment of reason, the distinction between
material and immaterial, we shall conclude that the life of each
man as an individual is immaterial, although the continuation and
prospects of mankind as a race turn upon material conditions. The
physical business of each man's body is transacted for him; like a
sybarite, he has attentive valets in his own viscera; he breathes,
he sweats, he digests without an effort, or so much as a consenting
volition; for the most part he even eats, not with a wakeful
consciousness, but as it were between two thoughts. His life is
centred among other and more important considerations; touch him in
his honour or his love, creatures of the imagination which attach