Plato in his Phædon represents Socrates as saying in the last hour of his life to his inconsolable followers, “You may bury me if you can catch me.” He then added with a smile, and an intonation of unfathomable thought and tenderness, “Do not call this poor body Socrates. When I have drunk the poison, I shall leave you, and go to the joys of the blessed. I would not have you sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the interment, ‘Thus we lay out Socrates;’ or, ‘Thus we follow him to the grave, and bury him.’ Be of good cheer : say that you are hurying my body only.”

Materialism teaches that there is nothing in the universe but matter and its laws; that there is no spiritual substance; and that what is called mind or soul in a man is but a mode of force and motion in matter, and cannot exist in separation from the body.

If materialism is the truth, you and I cannot die as well as Socrates did. If that part of us which thinks and loves and chooses is not separably from our present material frames, our souls are like the electrical charges in the glands of the poor torpedo-fishes, certain to cease to exist as soon as the cells which originate them have been dissolved.