or memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward
distortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To say
that the principle of life MAY exist in distribution among various
forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true or
false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of existence
after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to the
hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual
and vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner
from all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance
between themselves which it in no degree participates. In what manner
can this concession be made an argument for its imperishability?
All that we see or know perishes and is changed. Life and thought
differ indeed from everything else. But that it survives that
period, beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such
distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and nothing
but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or imagine.
Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the
possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each
animal and plant, a power which converts the substances by which
it is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with itself. That
is, the relations between certain elementary particles of matter
undergo a change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use
the words PRINCIPLE, POWER, CAUSE, we mean to express no real being,
but only to class under those terms a certain series of co-existing
phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain
substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist.
It certainly MAY BE; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical
to allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth.
Does it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs
on which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend,