If thou wilt mark its heavenly tone,
Hath cunning art
To make thy heart
Hear mine again.
A Discussion With An Infidel.
XVIII. Personal Continuance.
Reader. The next question you treat, doctor, regards the immortality of the human soul, or, as you call it, “personal continuance.” In your opinion the spirit and the body, the soul and the brain, are so intimately and inseparably connected that a soul without a body, as “force without matter,” can never exist. I remember having already answered some of the grounds of this opinion; but as you make “personal continuance” the subject of a special chapter, I presume that it is in this chapter that you have condensed the strength and substance of all your arguments. How do you, then, establish your position?
Büchner. “A spirit without a body is as unimaginable as electricity or magnetism without metallic or other substances” (p. 196).
Reader. Unimaginable! Of course, a spiritual substance is not the object of imagination. Perhaps you mean that it is unthinkable, inconceivable, or unintelligible; which I deny.