Note 44 — INTUITIVE EVIDENCE OF THE EXISTENCE OF SPIRITS. (continued 12)

In this last sense it is used as synonymous with essence. By chemists, latterly, spirit of turpentine is called oil of turpentine. All the volatile oils obtained by delicate distillation, usually with water, like oil of turpentine, are called essential oils or essences.

As respects the employment of language to express ideas when a new view is originated, there is a choice of evils; we are placed between Scylla and Charybdis. There is no alternative but to use an old word in a sense more or less new, or to coin a new one. In either case there is a manifest disadvantage; and the question arises, shall we teach a new meaning for an old word, or present to those to whom we would convey our ideas a new idea with a new word to designate it? The word matter, it will be found, has, in Webster’s dictionary, ten meanings assigned to it. Though in some of its acceptations it may be considered as applicable to every thing that exists, so as to qualify space so far as to distinguish it from nihility. Nevertheless, it has been used as distinguishing those substances which are neither spiritual nor mental. The antagonism of spirit and matter in the words, “There is a spiritual body and a material body,” is not warranted in chemistry, since the distillate or spirit evolved by distillation is a material body, however it may be more volatile or of less density than the caput mortuum left in the alembic or retort.