LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 51 



field-thistle; or more humbly, but still usefully, 

 employed in stopping the bung-hole of a beer- 

 barrel. " Alexander died; Alexander was buried; 

 Alexander returneth to dust ; the dust is earth ; of 

 earth we make loam: and why, of that loam, where- 

 to he was converted^ might they not stop a beer- 

 barrel?" 



The fact is, that we are dying every hour, nay, 

 every instant ; and the only difference between this 

 death and the final consummation of life (as far as 

 it regards the body) is, that, in this hourly and 

 gradual death, the place of every dead molecule is 

 instantly supplied by a living one ; while, in the 

 other case, all the parts of the body perish at once 

 and together, and are not reproduced. You are, 

 then, a new and a different being, exercising the 

 same faculties, but doing so with different organs. 

 You still exercise the faculties of vision, of hear- 

 ing, and tasting ; but the eye with which you now 

 see is not the same eye with which you saw ten 

 years ago : it is a new eye ; and you hear with a 

 different ear, and taste with another tongue. In- 

 deed, the eye of to-day is not the same as that of 

 yesterday ; for a part of the eye of yesterday has 

 been taken up by the absorbents and carried into 



the blood, and has been conveyed out of the blood 

 D 2 



