I do not mean in what is called death--for that is no more than an occasional deposit of matter to be resumed in a new aspect, and with a nearer approach to the grand results (whether of the improvable or of the retrogressive classes)--but those final mutations which transfer us to another planet, to enjoy a higher state of being, and leaving us always on the high road towards final excellence." "All this is very ingenious, sir; but before you can persuade me into the belief that man is an animal inferior to a monkey, Dr.Reasono, you will allow me to say that you must prove it." "Ay, ay, or me, either," put in Captain Poke, waspishly.
"Were I to cite my proofs, gentlemen," continued the philosopher, whose spirit appeared to be much less moved by our doubts than ours were by his position--"I should in the first place refer you to history.

All the monikin writers are agreed in recording the gradual translation of the species from the human family--" "This may do very well, sir, for the latitude of Leaphigh, but permit me to say that no human historian, from Moses down to Buffon, has ever taken such a view of our respective races.

There is not a word in any of all these writers on the subject." "How should there be, sir?
History is not a prediction, but a record of the past.

Their silence is so much negative proof in our favor.

Does Tacitus, for instance, speak of the French revolution?
Is not Herodotus silent on the subject of the independence of the American continent ?--or do any of the Greek and Roman writers give us the annals of Stunin'tun--a city whose foundations were most probably laid some time after the commencement of the Christian era?
It is morally impossible that men or monikins can faithfully relate events that have never happened; and as it has never yet happened to any man, who is still a man, to be translated to the monikin state of being, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that he can know nothing about it.