MATTER
IS
INDESTRUCTIBLE
Nothing can never be
come Something and
Something can never become Nothing
Here lies inter’d
the Body of
ABRAHAM BROWN
jun. Whos departure
from Animal Life
was on the 21st Jany
1803 in the 23
year of his age.
What on earth is one to make of this? What are the intellectual sources the author drew from, whoever he is? The phrase “Matter is Indestructible” can be associated with early ideas on chemistry and atomic theory -- perhaps the writer had read Antoine Lavoisier and John Dalton? The idea of “nothing out of nothing” goes back to classical philosophy, but I have never encountered so snappily epigrammatic a rendering. And the notion that one departs “animal life” -- where does that come from? And where is any trace of orthodox Christian teaching or consolation here, of any flavor?
What follows is all pure surmise on my part, but I think this might well have been composed by Brown’s surviving father Abraham Brown Sr. That insertion of the “junior” suggests the hand of “senior.” I picture an educated old man, perhaps an autodidact, who keeps himself up on the latest scientific and philosophical journals (Lord knows how he found them in turn-of-the-eighteenth-century Cheshire), likely a bit of crank in the eyes of his Baptist neighbors, composing this highly personal memorial to a beloved son. I tested this hypothesis with a local amateur historian who could not contribute much one way or the other, except to note that the Abraham Brown family were neither Congregationalist nor Baptist, but Quakers from Adams, one town to the north.
As it happens, Cheshire offered very few other interesting epitaphs to reward my tramping through the snow. But this one alone proves such a contemplative ramble is never wasted
