On the Vitality of Matter. -59 



material agency, can separate them, or destroy that life ; and 

 there appears no other alternative but to presume it to be still 

 existing invisible among those aerial vapours to which it was 

 driven by this mode of analysis, waiting for some casual 

 chance to be united to a new shape, and enabled to pursue 

 some new career of being. 



From these premises the conclusion is irresistible, that af- 

 ter experiencing the changes of death and decomposition, 

 material atoms, possessing inherent vitality, are transformed 

 into some unknown shape of moving life^ which establishes 

 the doctrine of the metempsychosis without qualification. 

 Those who affirm that when a living being dies, it only chan- 

 ges its form, will easily believe that men may arise unseen 

 from their sepulchres to people the fields and forests ;* or, 

 indulging the poetry of feeling, they may fancy their depart- 

 ed friends returning among them as singing birds or bloom- 

 ing flowers, or as waving trees overshadowing their dwell- 

 ings.! 



But our later philosophers are not as courteous as Pytha- 

 goras and Ovid, nor as pious as Plato and Epicurus. They 

 make us descend to the most degraded state, and from the 

 decomposing remains of our animal nature they see clouds 

 of loathsome insects floating on the air, winged with pesti- 

 lence and death. They do not indulge in the fine imagin- 

 ings of those heathen ; the former of whom maintained that 

 the spirits of human beings who led virtuous lives were 

 changed into seraphs, fairies, and heroes ; trees, flowers, and 

 fountains : or with the latter, that the gift of life was he- 

 stowed by a divine almighty power ; or with Plato, that it 

 remigrates to the divinity from whence it originated, after 

 leaving its transitory abode in this world. 



In assuming that " life and matter are coexistent," identi- 

 fied, indivisible, and eternal, it is also asserted, " that it is 

 perpetually living, dying, reviving, and recombining in new 

 ishapes and modes of existence."^ If so, then is not the boast 

 of the atheist estabhshed, and accountabiUty and moral ob- 

 ligation destroyed ? 



Based upon this hypothesis is the theory of the Gordius 

 Aquaticus, or horse hair snake ; and as this is the boldest ex- 

 ample, in illustration of this system of physiology, it is select- 

 ed as a test for the 



Pythagoras. i Ovid, I Mason Good. 



