Marcus Aurelius speaks of death as "nothing else than a dissolution of
the elements of which every human being is composed." May we say it is
like a redistribution of the type after the page is printed? The type is
unchanged, only the order of arrangement is broken up. In the death of
the body the component elements--water, lime, iron, phosphorus,
magnesia, and so on--remain the same, but their organization is changed.
Is that all? Is this a true analogy? The meaning of the printed page,
the idea embodied, is the main matter. Can this idea be said to exist
independent of the type? Only in the mind that reads the page, and then
not permanently. Then it is only an arrangement of molecules of matter
in the brain, which is certainly only temporary. On the printed page it
is a certain combination of white and black that moves the cells of the
brain through the eye to create the idea. So the conception in our minds
of our neighbor or friend--his character, his personality--exists after
he is dead, but when our own brain ceases to function, where is it then?
We rather resent being summed up in this way in terms of physics, or
even of psychology. Can you reconstruct the flower or the fruit from its
ashes? Physics and biochemistry and psychology describe all men in the
same terms; our component parts are all the same; but character,
personality, mentality--do not these escape your analysis? and are they
not also real?