Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/46

 nothing! Aye, verily, nearly all your crude speculations, and smooth plausibilities are as void of reality, are as hollow as is the shell of an echo when all the sounds have flown! Your fine-spun hypotheses, concerning the origin of the human soul, its nature and the mode of its existence subsequent to. physical dissolution, are too meager and unsound,—aye! void as is a vacuum of substance and solidity; nor with all your loudly trumpeted knowledge of the state and status of the soul after its departure from the barbarisms of earthly life, to the true social state in realms where civilization is first truly known, have ye much else than the faintest glimmering of the great reality. Philosophers! Verily, much learning hath made you mad; else would ye have assigned the human soul a better than a merely sensual heaven, where lust should be freely sated, and where appetite and its varied gratifications constitute the sum total of enjoyment. What splendid conceptions! What a magnificent destiny! How worthy of the human soul! How great a reward for years of agony! O, philosophy, how very lame thou art! Thou tellest man, through thy oracles, that the spirit-home is situate upon the upper surfaces of sundry zone-girdles of the planet: and by the same rule we may expect thee to describe God as being so many cubits high, and so many yards across the hips! Nay, thou mightest as we describe a thought as containing just so many cubic inches, and deal out music to us by the quart or gallon!