Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/61

 will surely be covered with blood-water, but not spoilt by it; because not the drowned brains were virtuous and wise, but his self was, and because the dependence of a watch on its case for protection from dust, &c. does not prove the identity of the two, or that the watch consists only of cases. As spiritual exertions are not bodily ones, but only precede or follow them; and as every spiritual activity leaves traces, not only in the soul, but also in the body; must, then, if apoplexy or age destroy corporeal activity,—must the soul's fire be therefore quenched? Is there no difference between the soul of a childish old man, and that of a child? Must the soul of Socrates, imprisoned in Borgia's body as in a mud-bath, lose its moral powers, and does it suddenly change its virtuous qualities for vicious ones? Or shall in left-handed wedlock (which has no common property of body and soul) the one conjugal half only share the gains, not also the losses of the other? Shall the ablactated soul feel only the blooming, not also the faded body? And if it does, the earth surrounding it must, as our earth does to the superior planets, give it the reflection of our advancing and retrograding. If we shall ever be disembodied, the slow hand of time, that is, ever encroaching age, must do it. If our course is not to be concluded in one world, the gulf between it and the second must always appear to us a grave. The short interruption to our progress by age, and the longer one by death, destroy this progress as little as the shortest interruption by sleep. We anxiously suppose—as the first man did—the total sun-eclipse of sleep to be the night of death, and this again the doomsday of the world."

"That must yet be proved, although I believe it," replied Phylax.