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V. This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic
conception of the term "substance" itself. We must not regard it as a
quality, but as a sentiment:--it is the perception, in thinking beings,
of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things
on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus--many
things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought
to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings--to the
angels--the whole of the unparticled matter is substance--that is
to say, the whole of what we term "space" is to them the truest
substantiality;--the stars, meantime, through what we consider their
materiality, escaping the angelic sense, just in proportion as the
unparticled matter, through what we consider its immateriality, eludes
the organic.
As the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words, in a feeble tone,
I observed on his countenance a singular expression, which somewhat
alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at once. No sooner had I done
this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell
back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute
afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was
of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only
after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed,
during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out
the region of the shadows?
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