What force, then, is there in the claim that, simply because the instrument through which the soul manifested itself is dead, the soul itself is dead, or extinct?

The wonderful, almost inspired, conception of beauty, passion and anguish transferred by the artist's brush to canvas, as enduring monuments of the immortality of genius, existed in the mind of the artist before a single line of the grand…

If there be any defect in the picture it is usually a defect of execution, not of conception.

The canvas is but the means by which these conceptions of beauty, passion or anguish are manifested to the souls of others.

Who will argue that the destruction of the frail canvas is the destruction of these conceptions?

They existed before they were transferred to canvas; its destruction does not extinguish them.

We have already seen that the power to think, to reflect, and to judge of the moral quality of thoughts and acts, is not a property of matter.

Wonderful have been the combinations and resultants of the operations of chemists, but life even in its simplest form is beyond their power.

How much further beyond their power must be the production of the soul-power mentioned above!

If so, then this soul-power exists after death, and the argument answers itself.

I conclude, then, that the soul is not only a unit with the power ascribed to it, but that it is also an invisible, immaterial and eternal entity or being.

We have seen that it is not matter; yea, more, that it is not a property of matter; therefore that it is immaterial.

If immaterial and possessing the power to think and reflect, and endowed with moral sensations and perceptions--the highest and best evidences of life--it is a spirit-existence.

As such, what evidence have we that a spirit-existence was ever destroyed?

Existing with no evidence of its destruction or of its destructibility, we ought to believe in its immortality; hence, I conclude, if a man die, he will live again.

To create a doubt, is to loosen them from their moral and religious moorings and to set them hopelessly adrift.

He further declared that religion, on account of its doctrine of hate and vengeance, made men crazy.

I interrupted, and asked him what was the proof of the last statement; he said the proof was manifest, for that men babbled of religion, of God, immortality and hell, after they became crazy.

I answered by saying that I had heard men babble of snakes in their boots, snakes in the bed and snakes everywhere in the room, but I never knew that snakes had anything to do with their madness; in fact, I said, such madness had a…

He divided all ministers into two classes--knaves and fools.

The Indians are fast passing away, and their customs and mode of thought are passing with them and will only linger in dim tradition.

We have no objections to the whites coming and enjoying it with us.

Why do the whites always urge the Indian to go upon reservations?

I told them in the jargon, or Esperanto, that they had paid the debt they owed to the whites and that they were free to go to their homes to see their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and friends.

I thought possibly that Jim's philosophy had a touch of sarcasm, and a good deal of truth in it.