What is Love?

Author’s Note: I am nowhere near good enough a writer to pull off authentic 1700s English. I won’t even try. Hence, the protagonist of this story who is not Celestia will likely have embarrassingly modern speech.

A small bubble of air remained unabsorbed... if there is any part of the phlogisticated air of our atmosphere which differs from the rest, and cannot be reduced to nitrous acid, we may safely conclude that it is not more than 1/120 part of the whole.

• Experiments on Air, 1785

My name is Henry Cavendish, Fellow of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. I am seventy-eight years old.

Or was.

No, I still am.

I say was, because last I remember, I lay in a withering husk upon my deathbed. But of course, logically speaking, even if dead, I am seventy-eight years old. Unless “old” presumes to speak of only those still living.

When we discuss historical figures already passed, how do we refer to them? When speaking of Newton, did I say that he was one hundred sixty seven years old? No, but we often spoke of the dates of their birth and death. However, I suspect this is because their age was of no practical significance. That does not necessarily mean that age is undefined for the dead, for age is simply the number of years passed since one’s birth.

On the other hand, if age means years spent alive, which it very well could, I would be incorrect in this matter. Incorrect on the tense, but not the number.

Speaking of tense, that may be the root of the problem. For you see, I am dead. Disregarding age entirely, does that mean I am, or I was, or I still am?

I think I still am.

…

Ah! As Rene Descartes said in his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, “Je pense, donc je suis.”

In a later treatise Principles of Philosophy and the latin translation of Discourse as most men of England have read it, “Ego cogito, ergo sum.”

I think, therefore I am.

So having thusly established that I am...

Well, the argument only proves that the consciousness exists. Apparently consciousness can endure beyond the expiration of its physical vessel.

Its original physical vessel.

Descartes went on to make an ontological proof for the existence of God on the basis of the existence of reason. I do not think he succeeded.

I bring this up because unlike most of my colleagues and peers, let alone the common folk, I did not, before today, believe that an afterlife awaited me upon my death. I expected it to be rather like falling asleep -- a cessation of the existence of the the kernel of sentience that is the I who expected such a thing.

But without the part where you wake up the next morning.

...

So I have established that I still am. Results are inconclusive on whether I am still seventy-eight years old, or if I was seventy-eight. Further clarification on linguistics is required for sufficient judgment.

…

Oh dear. I think I’m panicking. Let me begin again.

My name is Henry Cavendish, Fellow of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. I am either seventy-eight years old currently, or at least was at the time of my death, for that is the length of time passed since my birth in 1731 and my expiration in 1810.

I am currently laying on the ground, in the middle of what seems an obtrusively bright afternoon day.

I am surrounded.

I am shaking uncontrollably.

I was a human.

I do not think I am any longer.