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“Precisely that,—that nothing does.”

“I told them that we were infinitesimal parts of some mighty human machinery, and although life was the most valuable thing we knew of there was something beyond our comprehension a million times more valuable; that even though we as individuals perished, our energies didn’t.”

The doctor was chuckling. “I hope they’ll take your word for it! ... We may be immortal for all I know. But if we are, I see no reason why cats and chickens should not be. In the dissecting room they’re very much like men.”

“They are; they must be! Though not as individuals. The death of a man or the death of a cat simply scatters so many units of vitality in other directions! Tiens! when our dam broke, up at the canyon, all the electric lights went out. That was the death of our little lighting plant. But the water power that generated our current is still there, immortal, even if the water is rushing off in a direction that doesn’t happen to light our lamps, a direction that makes Keble grieve and Mr. Brown swear.... That’s a rock on which Keble and I have often split. I think he sincerely believes he’s going to a sort of High Church heaven, intact except for his clothes and his prayer-book. I wish I could believe something as naïve as that.”