This animal, besides being a mass of flesh, is too well provided with intellect to be passed off for a dunce; and he not only has ONE, but he might almost be said to be provided with TWO tails." "That has been his chief misfortune, sir.

Matter, in the great warfare between itself and mind, has gone on the principle of 'divide and conquer.' You are nearer the truth than you imagined, for the trunk of the elephant is merely the abortion of a tail; and yet, you see, it contains nearly all the intelligence that the animal possesses.

On the subject of the fate of the elephant, however, theory is confirmed by actual experiment.

Do not your geologists and naturalists speak of the remains of animals, which are no longer to be found among living things ?" "Certainly, sir; the mastodon--the megatherium, iguanodon; and the plesiosaurus--" "And do you not also find unequivocal evidences of animal matter incorporated with rocks ?" "This fact must be admitted, too." "These phenomena, as you call them, are no more than the final deposits which nature has made in the cases of those creatures in which matter has completely overcome its rival, mind.

So soon as the will is entirely extinct, the being ceases to live; or it is no longer an animal.