Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/191

186, for which reason I attack the problem here, and for the first time in the world's literary history give the reasons why, enlarging somewhat upon the theory advanced years since, from the same source, in the book now called "Soul: The Soul World, and Homes of the Departed," then known as "Dealings with the Dead;" and I now proceed to state the argument; and start with the propositions, that:—No Apes are Immortal: Man is an improved Ape; therefore man is not immortal—by reason of descent. But some men are immortal; they ascended from Ape-ancestors; therefore apes possessed the elements which, in man, conspired to produce immortality. No apes being immortal, or endowed with death-proofness, it follows that his Simian ancestry could not have endowed him with such qualities. Then where did he get them, or it? and How? If he obtained it subsequent to birth, may he not lose it? If his origin is purely mortal, whence his immortality? A stick must have two ends. If man begins as a soul, what hinders him from coming to a full stop; a final cessation; for commencement not only implies, but inexorably means, also? If he is death-proof in part, or totally, what is the rule and law underlying the tremendous fact? Is it gainable? losable? If either, why?

Now all of these are fair questions, worthy of fair reply. In the first place, there are what, in one sense, I may call apparitional or phantom men; individuals who are only so in seeming; who have little mind, less "Soul," and none of the higher, nobler traits, which we associate with the terms and Manhood. Such may have been born so; or, as in civilized life, may have worn away the jewel, and deprived themselves of the very first essential to the attainment of supra-mundane existence; people who talk about, but will never even glimpse the "Summer Lands," or scent their blossoms afar off, because they have wasted their substance, and steadily declined from the first, exhausted soul, spirit, body, therefore Love, consequently are not true Men, but mere phantoms, who at best become but the sentient vehicles for the exploitations of disembodied wags.

Some, so far as immortality is concerned, die in bringing forth some work, or mechanism;—laboring without recuperation, until