it must be confessed that, unfortunately, everything in him was purely
personal. Isolated during his life by his egoism, that egoism is now
suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue to
repeat to posterity the mysteries which genius seeks out at its own
cost.

But perhaps Desplein's genius was answerable for his beliefs, and for
that reason mortal. To him the terrestrial atmosphere was a generative
envelope; he saw the earth as an egg within its shell; and not being
able to determine whether the egg or the hen first was, he would not
recognize either the cock or the egg. He believed neither in the
antecedent animal nor the surviving spirit of man. Desplein had no
doubts; he was positive. His bold and unqualified atheism was like that
of many scientific men, the best men in the world, but invincible
atheists--atheists such as religious people declare to be impossible.
This opinion could scarcely exist otherwise in a man who was accustomed
from his youth to dissect the creature above all others--before, during,
and after life; to hunt through all his organs without ever finding the
individual soul, which is indispensable to religious theory. When he
detected a cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and a centre for aerating
the blood--the first two so perfectly complementary that in the latter
years of his life he came to a conviction that the sense of hearing is
not absolutely necessary for hearing, nor the sense of sight for seeing,
and that the solar plexus could supply their place without any
possibility of doubt--Desplein, thus finding two souls in man, confirmed
his atheism by this fact, though it is no evidence against God. This man
died, it is said, in final impenitence, as do, unfortunately, many noble
geniuses, whom God may forgive.

The life of this man, great as he was, was marred by many meannesses, to