question is asked, earth, time, and the heart, natural
transformations, stars, fancy, and the brooding intellect, are
full of vague oracles. Let us see what intelligible answers can be
constructed from their responses.

The first theory which we shall consider propounds itself in one
terrible word, annihilation. Logically this is the earliest,
historically the latest, view. The healthy consciousness, the
eager fancy, the controlling sentiment, the crude thought, all the
uncurbed instinctive conclusions of primitive human nature, point
forcibly to a continued existence for the soul, in some way, when
the body shall have perished. And so history shows us in all the
savage nations a vivid belief in a future life. But to the
philosophical observer, who has by dint of speculation freed
himself from the constraining tendencies of desire, faith,
imagination, and authority, the thought that man totally ceases
with the destruction of his visible organism must occur as the
first and simplest settlement of the question.1 The totality of
manifested life has absolutely disappeared: why not conclude that
the totality of real life has actually lost its existence and is
no more? That is the natural inference, unless by some means the
contrary can be proved. Accordingly, among all civilized people,
every age has had its skeptics, metaphysical disputants who have
mournfully or scoffingly denied the separate survival of the soul.
This is a necessity in the inevitable sequences of observation and
theory; because, when the skeptic, suppressing or escaping his
biassed wishes, the trammels of traditional opinion, and the
spontaneous convictions prophetic of his own uninterrupted being,
first looks over the wide scene of human life and death, and
reflectingly asks, What is the sequel of this strange, eventful
history? obviously the conclusion suggested by the immediate
phenomena is that of entire dissolution and blank oblivion. This
result is avoided by calling in the aid of deeper philosophical
considerations and of inspiring moral truths. But some will not
call in that aid; and the whole superficial appearance of the
case regarding that alone, as they then will is fatal to our
imperial hopes. The primordial clay claims its own from the
disanimated frame; and the vanished life, like the flame of an
outburnt taper, has ceased to be. Men are like bubbles or foam
flakes on the world's streaming surface: glittering in a momentary
ray, they bre