materialists, and puts us a little out of sympathy with those in whom
primitive beliefs and emotions survive. A worthy priest who came to look
at our dissecting-room expressed surprise to me that students, thus
constantly in the presence of relics of mortality, should be able to
think of anything but the resurrection and the life hereafter. He was a
bad psychologist. There is nothing so dead as a dissecting-room
'subject'; and the contemplation of the human body in the process of
being quietly taken to pieces--being resolved into its structural units
like a worn-out clock or an old engine in the Mr. Rapper's yard--is
certainly not conducive to a vivid realisation of the doctrine of the
resurrection."

"No; but this absurd anxiety to be buried in some particular place has
nothing to do with religious belief; it is mere silly sentiment."

"It is sentiment, I admit," said Thorndyke, "but I wouldn't call it
silly. The feeling is so widespread in time and space that we must look
on it with respect as something inherent in human nature. Think--as
doubtless John Bellingham did--of the ancient Egyptians, whose chief
aspiration was that of everlasting repose for the dead. See the trouble
they took to achieve it. Think of the Great Pyramid, or that of
Amenemhat the Fourth with its labyrinth of false passages and its sealed
and hidden sepulchral chamber. Think of Jacob, borne after death all
those hundreds of weary miles in order that he might sleep with his
fathers, and then remember Shakespeare and his solemn adjuration to
posterity to let him rest undisturbed in his grave. No, Berkeley, it is
not a silly sentiment. I am as indifferent as you as to what becomes of
my body 'when I have done with it,' to use your irreverent phrase; but I
recognise the solicitude that some other men display on the subject as a
natural feeling that has to be taken seriously."