There are those who advocate suicide as a proper means of escape from tiresome environment who deny that any unpleasant consequences could follow, because there is no consciousness after death, but it is incumbent upon them to prove that there is such a state as "death" in the sense they speak of it. It would seem that if there is no consciousness in what is called the state of the dead—if the memory of man is annihilated by what is called death—it should be annihilated by sleep or trance, for they are states in which the body is dead for the time. Of course, the advocate of suicide fortifies his position by denying that there is memory where there is no brain life and action, and that when the brain ceases to be active, memory perishes, but that theory is untenable, because the brain is entirely renewed every seven years or such a matter. A man remembers incidents in his childhood, although meanwhile his brain has changed completely a dozen times. It must be, therefore, that there is something in man which is impervious to the influences which time exerts over the physical body. The "tablets of the memory" continue throughout. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. The advocate of suicide as the better way to rid one's self of trials and tribulations is necessarily a materialist. He preaches the doctrine of immortality of matter and the mortality of spirit, which is a ridiculous absurdity. But he will discourse learnedly about the milliards of bacilli—separate, distinct, individual, living entities—which float about, live, move and have their being nearly everywhere, but if he were asked to catch a few that they might be seen and handled he would promptly say they were altogether invisible to the naked eye, that they are almost sub-microscopic. He would admit that these invisible creatures have existence under the same law that peoples the forest with trees, the earth with animals, and the channels of commerce with men, but he would not admit that any living thing could have life separate from its visible organism; hence, when the physical organism becomes ill, or is subjected to any other uncomfortable conditions of existence, it is its right to escape by quitting life. But materialists are too few and far between to bother with; besides, there never was a materialist who did not hope that his philosophy was in error, and that he should continue to live as an individual, retaining memory and affections after what he calls death. Having that hope he is deprived of the right to advocate suicide, because if he is to live after the death of the body he must admit that he will be a substantial, thinking being, for it is impossible to think of substance without form, and of either without ascribing power to it.