opinions they cannot conscientiously agree. The argument that the rate
is so small is very fallacious. It is as much a sacrifice of principle
to do a little wrong as to do a great one.

November 22 (Hinckley).--Had a long argument with Mr. May on the nature
of the soul and the difference between it and matter. I maintained that
it could not be proved that matter is ESSENTIALLY--as to its
base--different from soul. Mr. M. wittily said, soul was the
perspiration of matter.

We cannot find the absolute basis of matter: we only know it by its
properties; neither know we the soul in any other way. Cogito ergo sum
is the only thing that we CERTAINLY know.

Why may not soul and matter be of the same substance (i.e. basis whereon
to fix qualities, for we cannot suppose a quality to exist per se--it
must have a something to qualify), but with different qualities.

Let us suppose then an Eon--a something with no quality but that of
existence--this Eon endued with all the intelligence, mental qualities,
and that in the highest degree--is God. This combination of intelligence
with existence we may suppose to have existed from eternity. At the
creation we may suppose that a portion of the Eon was separated from the
intelligence, and it was ordained--it became a natural law--that it
should have the properties of gravitation, etc.--that is, that it should
give to man the ideas of those properties. The Eon in this state is
matter in the abstract. Matter, then, is Eon in the simplest form in
which it possesses qualities appreciable by the senses. Out of this
matter, by the superimposition of fresh qualities, was made all things
that are.