7. CHAPTER VII.
In which it is shown that a man may be more useful after death than
while living.
The reflection that I possessed the power (already
thrice successfully exercised) to transfer my
spirit, whenever I willed it, from one man's body
to another, and so get rid of any afflictions that
might beset me, was highly agreeable, and, under
the present circumstances, consolatory. But there
was one drawback to my satisfaction; and that was
a discovery which I now made, that men's bodies
were not to be had every day, at a moment's warning.
This was the more provoking, as I knew there
was no lack of them in the world, between eighty
and ninety thousand men, women, and children
having given up the ghost in the natural way that
very day, whose corses would be on the morrow
consigned to miserable holes in the earth, where
they could and would be of no service to any person
or persons whatever, the young doctors only
excepted.
And here I cannot help observing, that it is an
extremely absurd practice thus to dispose of—to
squander and throw away, as I may call it—the
hosts of human bodies that are annually falling
dead upon our hands; whereas, with the least management
in the world, they might be converted into
objects of great usefulness and value.
According to the computation of philosophers,
the population of the world may be reckoned in
round numbers at just one thousand millions; of
which number the annual mortality, at the low rate
of three in a hundred, is thirty millions—and that
without counting the extra million or two knocked
on the head in the wars. Let us see what benefit
might be derived from a judicious disposition of this
mountain of mortality—I say mountain, for it is
plain such a number of bodies heaped together
would make a Chimborazo. The great mass of
mankind might be made to subserve the purpose
for which nature designed them, namely—to enrich
the soil from which they draw their sustenance.
According to the economical Chinese method, each
of these bodies could be converted into five tons of
excellent manure; and the whole number would
therefore produce just one hundred and fifty millions
of tons; of which one hundred and fifty thousand,
being their due proportion, would fall to the
share of the United States of America, enabling
our farmers, in the course of ten or twelve years, to
double the value of their lands. This, therefore,
would be a highly profitable way of disposing of
the mass of mankind. Such a disposition of their
bodies would prove especially advantageous among
American cultivators in divers districts, as a remedy
against bad agriculture, and as the only means of
handing down their fields in good order to their descendants.
Such a disposition of bodies should be
made upon every field of victory, so that dead heroes
might be made to repair some of the mischiefs
inflicted by live ones. The English farmers, it is
well known, made good use of the bones left on
the field of Waterloo; and though they would have
done much better had they carried off the flesh
with them, they did enough to show that war may
be reckoned a good as well as an evil, and a great
battle looked upon as a public blessing. A similar
disposition (to continue the subject) of their mortal
flesh might be, with great propriety, required, in
this land, of all politicians and office-holders, from
the vice-president down to the county collector;
who, being all patriots, would doubtless consent to
a measure that would make them of some use to
their country. As for the president, we would have
him reserved for a nobler purpose; we would have
him boiled down to soap, according to the plan recommended
by the French chymists, to be used by
his successor in scouring the constitution and the
minds of the people.
In this manner, I repeat, the great bulk of human
bodies could be profitably appropriated; but other
methods should be taken with particular classes of
men, who might claim a more distinguished and canonical
disposition of their bodies. The rich and
tender would esteem it a cruelty to be disposed of
in the same way with the multitude. I would advise,
therefore, that their bodies should be converted
into
adipocire, or spermaceti, to be made into
candles, to be burnt at the tops of the lamp-posts;
whereby those who never shone in life might scintillate
as the lights of the public for a week or two
after. Their bones might be made into rings and
whistles, for infant democrats to cut their teeth on.
The French and Italian philosophers, as I have
learned from the newspapers, have made sundry
strange, and, as I think, useful discoveries, in relation
to the practicability of converting the human
body into different mineral substances. One man
changes his neighbour's bones into fine glass; a
second turns the blood into iron; while a third,
more successful still, transforms the whole body
into stone. If these things be true, and I have no
reason to doubt them, seeing that I found them, as
I said before, in the newspapers, they offer us new
modes of appropriation, applicable to the bodies of
other interesting classes. Lovers might thus be
converted into jewels, which, although false, could
be worn with less fear of losing them than happens
with living inamoratos; or, in case of extreme grief
on the part of the survivers, into looking-glasses,
where the mourners would find a solace in the contemplation
of their own features. The second process,
namely, the conversion of blood into iron,
would be peculiarly applicable in the case of soldiers
too distinguished to be cast into corn-fields;
and, indeed, nothing could be more natural than
that those whose blood we buy with gold, should
pay us back our change in iron. The last discovery
could be turned to equal profit, and would do
away with the necessity of employing statuaries in
all cases where their services are now required.
But I would confine the process of petrifaction to
those in whom Nature had indicated its propriety by
beginning the process herself. None could with
greater justice claim to have their bodies turned
into stone, than those whose hearts were of the
same material; and I should propose, accordingly,
that such a transformation of bodies should be made
only in the case of tyrants, heroes, duns, and critics.
But this subject, though often reflected on, I
have had no leisure to digest properly. For which
reason, begging the reader's pardon for the digression,
I shall now leave it, and resume my story.
