98 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
tlius been clearly exhibited. Like the candle, man depends for his 
life and vigour upon the chemical action exerted between the 
atmosphere and combustible matter; the combustion of the 
latter giving rise in each case to heat and vitality. Like the 
flame of a candle, too, man’s health and strength languish and 
faint unless properly and uninterruptedly supplied with that 
mysterious breath of life — oxygen ; whilst the feeble hold which 
the flame, even under the most favourable circumstances, has 
upon the wick, and the ease and totality of its extinction by the 
most trivial circumstance, — not only by a deprivation of ah', but 
even by a puff of wind too much, — should teach us, even in our 
pride of health and strength, that our spark of life may be ex- 
tinguished by the same causes, and our bodies may be left life- 
less as a snuffed-out candle ; the food — the combustible matter 
— may be there all the same ; the oxygen may be in waiting, 
ready to combine with it ; but the spark of fire, that spirit of 
life which man receives direct from his Creator, is absent, and 
without this all else is as nothing. 
One more lesson from our candle, and we have done. What 
becomes of the human soul when it has left the body? What 
becomes of the flame when the candle is extinguished ? Must 
our philosophy halt here? or will it turn round upon us and 
attempt to prove, in scientific jargon, that there is no such 
thing as a future? We think not. We believe that, as the 
relationship between the candle and man bears strict analogy 
from the first kindling of the mysterious vitalizing principle, 
through the varied phenomena of life, in sickness and in health, 
and even in the more mysterious plienomona of extinction, — so 
can the analogy be carried further into the dim shadowy realms 
beyond. 
If there is one question more than another which has occupied 
the attention of modern philosophers, it is that relating to the 
conservation of force, or as it sometimes is called, of energy. It 
has long been admitted that matter can neither be created nor 
destroyed, and the whole tendency of modern discovery is now 
directed to show that energy is equally incapable of extinction. 
So long as it is exerting its action in a definite way, shining 
and glowing as a candle flame, evolving the forces of heat and 
light, we take note of it by means of our outward senses ; but 
when the flame goes out, are these forces annihilated? 
Assuredly not. The energy which hitherto was occupied in 
the production of heat and light has only changed its immate- 
rial form ; it still exists in undiminished quantity, though it is 
now incapable of appreciation by our material senses. For just 
as the forces evolved by burning fuel are transformed into 
mechanical motion in the steam-engine ; and just as mechanical 
motion is equally capable of being re-transformed into heat, 
