glory--a new link in a new order of beings--breathing amidst the elements
of a more gorgeous world--arrayed myself in the attributes of a purer and
diviner nature--a wanderer among the planets--an associate of angels--the
beholder of the arcana of the great God-redeemed, regenerate, immortal,
or--dust!

"There is no OEdipus to solve the enigma of life. We are--whence came
we? We are not--whither do we go? All things in our existence have
their object: existence has none. We live, move, beget our species,
perish--and for what? We ask the past its moral; we question the gone
years of the reason of our being, and from the clouds of a thousand ages
there goes forth no answer. Is it merely to pant beneath this weary
load; to sicken of the sun; to grow old; to drop like leaves into the
grave; and to bequeath to our heirs the worn garments of toil and labour
that we leave behind? Is it to sail for ever on the same sea, ploughing
the ocean of time with new furrows, and feeding its billows with new
wrecks, or--" and his thoughts paused blinded and bewildered.

No man, in whom the mind has not been broken by the decay of the body,
has approached death in full consciousness as Falkland did that moment,
and not thought intensely on the change he was about to undergo; and yet
what new discoveries upon that subject has any one bequeathed us? There
the wildest imaginations are driven from originality into triteness:
there all minds, the frivolous and the strong, the busy and the idle, are
compelled into the same path and limit of reflection. Upon that unknown
and voiceless gulf of inquiry broods an eternal and impenetrable gloom;
no wind breathes over it--no wave agitates its stillness: over the dead
and solemn calm there is no change propitious to adventure--there goes
forth no vessel of research, which is not driven, baffled and broken,
again upon the shore.