_P._ Consider, then, the primal meaning of the word "spirit:" It is derived from the Latin _spiritus_, the basic meaning of which is _breath_, _wind_, air--nearly the same idea that you attach to the word "atmosphere." So the Greek word _pneuma_, also translated "spirit," means precisely the same thing. The same meaning is likewise attached to the Hebrew word _ruach_, also sometimes translated "spirit." Now, carrying out this use of terms, the wind, air, or atmosphere of the earth (including the ether, electricity, and other imponderable elements) is the spirit of the earth;[2] the atmosphere of any other body, great or small, is the spirit of that body; the atmosphere, or rather sphere, being now without atoms, of a man, considered as an intellectual and moral being, is the spirit of that man; the sphere of a disembodied man or soul is the spirit of that man or soul; and so the Infinite and Eternal Sphere of the Deity which pervades and controls all creations both in the spiritual and natural universe, is the Spirit of the Deity, which in the Bible is called the Holy Spirit.
[2] Query: Have we here the _spiritus mundi_ of the old philosophers?
_I._ Well, those ideas seem singularly consistent with themselves, to say the least, however novel they may appear. But now another point: You have said that atmospheres or spheres surround and pervade all bodies, unless, indeed, they be _dead_ bodies--attributing, as I understand you, a kind of _cosmic_ life to plants, and a mineral life to minerals, as well as a vegetable and animal life respectively to vegetables and animals; do you mean by that to intimate that the sphere is the _effect_ or the _cause_ of the living body?
_P._ Of each living material form, the sphere, or at least _some_ sphere, was the cause. Matter, considered simply by itself, is dead, and can only live by the influx of a surrounding sphere or spirit. It may be said at the last synthesis, that the _general_ sphere even of each microscopic monad that is in process of becoming vitalized, as well as of the great nebulous mass that is to form a universe, is the Spirit of the Infinite Deity, which is present with atoms in the degree of atoms, as well as with worlds in the degree of worlds. This Spirit, as it embodies itself in matter, becomes segregated, finited, and individualized, and forms a specific soul, spirit, or sphere by itself, now no longer deific, but always of a nature necessarily corresponding to the peculiar form and condition of the matter in which it becomes embodied. Life, therefore, is not the result of organization, but organization is the result of life, which latter is eternal, never having had a beginning, and never to have an end. Some of your scientific men have recently discovered what they have been pleased to term "the physical basis of life," in a microscopic and faintly vital substance called _protoplasm_, which forms the material foundation of all organic structures, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. They have not yet, however, discovered the source from which the life found in this substance comes--which would be plain to them if they understood the doctrine of spheres and influx as I have here given it.