242 
CREMATION 
Those elements no longer required by the dead are quickly set at 
liberty in gaseous form, ascending, like aerial springs into the sea of 
the atmosphere, thence to be absorbed by animal and vegetable life, 
just as the ocean receives the polluted waters of rivers, only to purify 
and send them back, to run again in ceaseless circles, a never-ending 
journey. 
Decomposition of the dead must surely be one of the most 
merciful of the Creator’s provisions for the living. But for it, 
it would only be a question of time as to how long life could be 
sustained; for, supposing life to have commenced and continued its 
course by drawing upon a fixed and unrenewable quantity of matter, 
it would long since have shown signs of local, if not general, exhaustion, 
resulting in a final extinction of living forms. 
In all countries plants and animals have in vast numbers, and 
endless variety, become extinct, whilst of those still surviving many 
show indisputable signs of an extinction more or less remote. 
Side by side with these, other forms have arisen in apparently 
undiminished numbers and variety, destined, like those which have 
gone before, to make room for others, which posterity must be left 
to study. However this may be, the human race does not yet excite 
a widespread interest on the score of extinction. 
Man’s extraordinary and unique power of adaptability to his 
environment, in nearly every climate which his insatiable curiosity 
leads him to explore, appears to ensure for him an endless succession of 
descendants, each possessing some modification of that which gave 
him birth, a constant modification being associated with the greatest 
vitality. 
Go to the mountain stream, and, where it issues forth in all 
its sparkling freshness, ask it whence it cometh and whither it 
goeth? What will it say, and truly say, to the student of Nature? 
“I come from the avalanche; an iceberg I have been; I flooded 
the Ganges with its freight of dead and dying ; I come from the 
swamp, and the ocean spray ; I moistened the grape, bedewed the 
grass, rode here on the storm. I go to wait on life ; to search out 
the haunts of man, whose pollution I will bear in my bosom to the 
sea of forgiveness, burying myself in its fulness, only to rise again 
pure and free to visit every clime ! ” 
In like manner question the human body. 
Listen, student of Nature ; and, like the river, it says, “ I know no 
rest. No rest is mine till the sun has ceased to work, I come from 
the inland grave, and the salt sea wave. In the countless forms in 
which I have borne a part, I have long since lost all trace of my origin. 
The form of man is not new to me. I have shared in all his glories, 
all his crimes. The Mastodon, and greater than he have used my 
substance, sharing it with all other forms of life, animal and vegetable. 
Fire is not new to me. Heat is at once my jailer and my liberator. 
When by its action I am freed from the bonds of one, I go to wait on 
other forms of life,” 
