Men saw their comrades stricken by some dark force that they could not
understand. The strong limbs grew lax first, and then hopelessly stiff;
the bright eye was dulled; and it soon became necessary to hide the
inanimate thing under the soil. It was impossible for those who had the
quick blood flowing in their veins to believe that a time would come
when feeling would be known no more. This fierce clinging to life had at
last its natural outcome. Men found that at night, when the quicksilver
current of sleep ran through their veins and their bodies were
quiescent, they had none the less thoughts as of life. The body lay
still; but something in alliance with the body gave them impressions of
vivid waking vigour and action. Men fancied that they fought, hunted,
loved, hated; and yet all the time their limbs were quiet. What could it
be that forced the slumbering man to believe himself to be in full
activity? It must be some invisible essence independent of the bones and
muscles. Therefore when a man died it followed that the body which was
buried must have parted permanently from the mystic "something" that
caused dreams. That mystic "something" therefore lived on after the
death of the body.
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