Yet the difference
between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists
between life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two
former was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence
of either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves
to our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter
substances be an argument for the prolongation of the existence
of one and not the other, when the existence of both has arrived
at their apparent termination? To say that fire exists without
manifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light, heat,
etc., or that the principle of life exists without consciousness,
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.
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