ON IMMORTALITY. 149 



liave discovered that man is a machine first, an animal 

 afterwards, and a conscious being by an inexplicable 

 accident only in the third instance ; a machine in which 

 the various physical agencies are mysteriously trans- 

 muted and utilized to repair the parts, and to propel the 

 whole, with consciousness superadded as spectator, but 

 not as director or controller of the machine ; why should 

 it not collapse with the general break-up of the ma- 

 chinery ? why should it not cease when no longer sup- 

 ported by the various physical energies whose transfor- 

 mations within the bodily machine alone made its 

 existence possible ? 



Yes, indeed; our modern savants, and what is of 

 still more consequence, our positive scientific thinkers, 

 reasoning independently from the verified conclusions of 

 science, have, with few exceptions, come to the con- 

 clusion that the belief in a future life so long prevalent 

 amongst men must be finally given up. While only 

 partially assenting to Hamlet's great eulogium on man,* 

 with his nobility of reason, his infinity of faculty, his 

 " express and admirable " mechanism, they have, with 

 all but unanimous voice, accepted Hamlet's cynical 

 conclusion in its most strict and literal and serious 

 sense, that all is but the " quintessence of dust." For 

 man, though the acknowledged "beauty of the world 

 and the paragon of animals," is still only an animal, 

 subject to the common doom of the rest. The dust is 

 the end ; and this is the conclusion even of those who 

 do not accept the remainder of the materialist's creed, 



* The whole wonderful passage is well worth comparing with the 

 Darwinian doctrine of man, standing as it does so much opposed to it 

 at all points save the conclusion : " What a piece of work is man ! 

 how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving, how 

 express and admirable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, 

 how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! 

 And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust ? " 



