All things in nature have an end; the most beautiful and perfect are the most frail, over which lament philosophers and poets. Why the man was supposed to be different? But why it could not be different?
Feelings and thoughts not only differ from what we call dead matter, but they are diametrically opposite. Conclusions with regards to the spirit, based on an analogy with the matter, have very little or no value. All matter, detached from the experience of sentient beings, has merely hypothetical and non-substantial existence; it is only conjecture to explain our feelings. The spirit, from a philosophical stance, is the only reality that we can prove, and between it and other realities no analogy can be found.
John Stuart Mill – Essays on Religion