... a preface.

Man consists of the following properties of Matter; oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, kalium [potassium], natrium [sodium], sulphur, phosphorus, iron, magnesium, silicon, chlorine, fluorine, lithium, manganese, copper, lead. I invite the reader to consider this with all the material forces of his being.

These forms of Matter with their energies, of which the body, mind, and soul of man consist, have always been; they burn in the farthest stars, they are knit up in the texture—thinner than gossamer, than vapour, as im­ponderable as fancy—of the primitive substance, the Ether, which fills the interstellar spaces from moon to sun, from orbit to orbit, from galaxy to galaxy, the exquisite material out of which the nebulae are constringed in beads and drops and clots of Matter upon threads of light­ning, meteors, meteorites, that collide into flame, or by what process soever, to become upon con­densation, concentration, contraction, systems and constellations, suns and planets.

The whole Matter of man, however mutable, is therefore everlasting, has no beginning and will have no end; for Matter is indestructible.

—John Davidson, preface to The Theatrocrat: A Tragic Play of Church and Stage, 1905.