ents apart, the consciousness of existence is the
only conceivable idea we can have of another life, and the continuance
of that consciousness is immortality. The consciousness of existence, or
the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form,
nor to the same matter, even in this life.

We have not in all cases the same form, nor in any case the same matter,
that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are
conscious of being the same persons. Even legs and arms, which make up
almost half the human frame, are not necessary to the consciousness of
existence. These may be lost or taken away and the full consciousness
of existence remain; and were their place supplied by wings, or other
appendages, we cannot conceive that it could alter our consciousness of
existence. In short, we know not how much, or rather how little, of our
composition it is, and how exquisitely fine that little is, that creates
in us this consciousness of existence; and all beyond that is like the
pulp of a peach, distinct and separate from the vegetative speck in the
kernel.

Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a
thought is produced in what we call the mind? and yet that thought
when produced, as I now produce the thought I am writing, is capable
of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that
capacity.

Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation
of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more
than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint
a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind,
carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally
and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of
unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially
distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know
of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity
of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced
it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can
be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first
connected with, as the thought is of the printing or writing it first
appeared in. The one idea is not more difficult to believe than the
other; and we can see that one is true.

That the consciousness of existence is not dep