The answer comes: Beyond? There is nothing. Do not dream, but know the reality. What becomes of its music after the instrument is destroyed? Where is the hum of the bee after the insect has passed on its busy wings? Where is the light in the lamp after the oil is burned? Where is the heat of the grate after the coal has burned? Given the conditions and you have music, heat and light. When these conditions perish you have nothing. As the impinging of oxygen against carbon in the flame produces light and heat, so the combination of elements in the nerves and brain produces the phenomena of life and intelligence. As the liver secretes bile, so the brain produces thought. Destroy the brain and mind disappears, as the music when the instrument is broken. Look you and see the strife for existence. See you the myriads of human beings who have perished. The world is one vast charnel house, its material being worked over and over again in endless cycle. Tooth and claw to rend and tear; arrow, club, spear, sword, and gun to kill; the weak to fall, the strong and brutal to triumph, to multiply, and advance by the slaughter of its own weaker members. The atom you can not see with unaided eye devours and is devoured, and ascending to man, he is by turns the slayer and the slain. There’s not an atom of the earth’s thick crust, Of earth or rock, or metals’ hardened rust, But has a myriad times been charged with life, And mingled in the vortex of its strife; And every grain has been a battle-field Where murder boldly rushed with sword and shield. Turn back the rocky pages of earth’s lore, And every page is written o’er and o’er With wanton waste. The weak are for the strong, And Might is victor, whether right or wrong. Enameled armor and tesselated scale, With conic tooth that broke the flinty mail; The shell protecting and the jaw which ground The shell to dust, there side by side are found; The fin that sped the weak from danger’s path, The stronger fin that sped the captor’s wrath; A charnel house where, locked in endless strife, Cycle the balanced forces, Death and Life. If you seek for a meaning or a purpose you will find none. What you call design is only the harmony of fluctuating chances produced by countless failures. PHILOSOPHY.--Invoke philosophy with her robes of snow, pretending to a knowledge of the world and its infinite destiny; it will tell you of the cycle of being; the succession of generations; that life and death complement each other, and that all you may hope for is change. Unceasing change is the abiding law, and he who grasps to hold, will find but shadows in his grasp.