Thus, the matter which forms the bodies of men and animals is not destroyed; it only changes its form, and under its new conditions it aids in the composition of fresh organic substances. In all this the human body does but obey the common laws of nature. That which it undergoes, every organized substance, vegetable or animal, exposed to the combined influences of air, water, and temperature, equally undergoes. A piece of cotton or woollen stuff, a grain of wheat, a fruit--they all ferment, and reduce themselves to new products, exactly as our bodies do. The cere cloth which enfolds a corpse is destroyed by precisely the same process which destroys the corpse. But, if the material substance which forms man's body does but transform itself, journeying through the globe, passing from animals to plants and from plants to animals; it is quite otherwise with life. Life is a force. Like the other forces, heat, light, and electricity, it is born, and it transmits itself; it has a beginning and an end. Like light, heat, and electricity--the physical agents which make us comprehend life, and which have certainly the same essence and the same origin--life has its producing causes, and its causes of destruction. It cannot rekindle itself when it has been extinguished; it cannot re-commence its course when its fatal term has arrived. Life cannot perpetuate itself; it is a simple condition of bodies, a fugitive and precarious condition, subject to countless influences, accidents, and chances. The life is therefore greatly inferior in importance to the soul, which is indestructible and immortal. The soul is the essential element in all nature. It has active and positive qualities in all respects where the two other elements, the body and the life, have only negative qualities. Whilst the body dissociates itself and disappears, while the life becomes annihilated, the soul can neither disappear nor become annihilated. We have seen what becomes of a man's body after his death, and also of his life; let us now examine into the condition of his soul. No philosopher, no learned man, none of those who know the immensity of the universe and the eternity of the ages, can admit that our existence on the earth is a definite thing,--that human life has no link with anything above or beyond itself. Man dies at thirty, or twenty years old; he may live only a few months, or a few minutes. The average length of life, according to Duvilard's tables, is twenty-eight years. At present it is thirty-three. One fourth of mankind die before their seventh year, and one half do not outlive their seventeenth. Those who survive this time enjoy a privilege which is denied to the rest of the human race.[2]