See or feel everything in this material world

As far as the realities of the material world are concerned no rational person will commonly regard his not seeing or not sensing a given thing in his everyday life as grounds enough to deny it. He will not condemn as non-existent whatever fails to enter the sphere of his sense perception. This same will hold true a fortiori of nonmaterial realities.

When we are unable to establish the cause of something in a scientific experiment this does not lead us to deny the law of causality. We say only that the cause is unknown to us because the law is independent of a given experiment; no experiment can lead to the negation of causality.

Is it not true that all the things we accept and believe to exist have an existence belonging to the same category as our own or as things that are visible to us? Can we see or feel everything in this material world? Is it only God we cannot see with our senses?

All materialists are aware that many of the things known to us consist of matters and realities that we cannot sense and with which we are not customarily familiar. There are many invisible beings in the universe. The progress of science and knowledge in the present age have uncovered numerous truths of this kind and one of the richest chapters in scientific research is the transformation of matter into energy.

When the beings and bodies that are visible in this world wish to produce energy they are compelled to change their original aspect and transform it into energy. Now is this energy—the axis on which turn many of the motions and changes of the universe— visible or tangible?

We know that energy is a source of power but the essence of energy still remains a mystery. Take electricity on which so much of our science civilization and life depend. No physicist in his laboratory—or anyone else for that matter dealing with electrical tools and appliances—can see electricity itself or feel and touch its weight or softness. No one can directly perceive the passage of electricity through a wire; he can only perceive the existence of a current by using the necessary equipment.

Modern physics tells us that the things of which we have sense perception are firm solid and stable and there is no visible energy in their motions. But despite outward appearances what we in fact see and perceive is a mass of atoms that are neither firm nor solid nor stable; all things are nothing other than transformation change and motion. What our sense organs imagine to be stable and motionless lack all stability and permanence and immobility; motion change and development embrace them all without this being perceptible to us by way of direct sensory observation.

The air that surrounds us has a considerable weight and exerts a constant pressure on the body; everyone bears a pressure of 16 000 kilograms of air. But we do not feel any discomfort because the pressure of the air is neutralized by the inward pressure of the body. This established scientific fact was unknown until the time of Galileo and Pascal and even now our senses cannot perceive it.

The attributes assigned to natural factors by scientists on the basis of sensory experiments and rational deductions cannot be directly perceived. For example radio waves are present everywhere and yet nowhere. There is no locus that is free of the attractive force of some material body but this in no way detracts from its existence or lessens its substance.

Concepts such as justice beauty love hatred enmity wisdom that make up our mental universe do not have a visible and clear-cut existence or the slightest physical aspect; nonetheless we regard them as realities. Man does not know the essence of electricity of radio waves or energy of electrons and neutrons; he perceives their existence only through their results and effects. 

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