OF DEATH. 1031 



operations ; a gradual weakening is observable in the Mental as well as in 

 the Corporeal energy ; and a retardation becomes obvious in the current of 

 Organic life. The raind is far less active than in the periods of Maturity; 

 the perceptions are dull, the feelings comparatively obtuse (save where 

 some dominant emotion has gained possession, through the previous habit 

 of yielding to it), the intellectual powers cannot be so readily put in action, 

 and the imagination loses its vividness. There are few instances in which 

 any great works, either literary or artistic, have been executed after the age 

 of threescore. Still the experience of a long life gives value to the judg- 

 ment ; and the counsels of the old, where the bearings of the question can 

 be fully understood, deserve the respect of the young, more especially in 

 cases where temporary ardor of feeling tends in the latter to supersede the 

 dictates of their calmer reason. The mental torpor is correlated, there 

 seems no reason to doubt, with changes in the condition of the Nervous sub- 

 stance, which impair its original activity ; and like changes, occurring in 

 the Muscular substance, diminish its capacity for physical exertion. Hence 

 there is, on the one hand, a marked diminution in the demand for food ; on 

 the other, a like diminution in the rate of the excretory processes, as is seen 

 especially in the exhalation of carbonic acid ( 311, in) and in the excre- 

 tion of Urea ( 411): and in accordance with all these reductions, there is 

 a greatly diminished power of sustaining the heat of the body, the temper- 

 ature of which consequently becomes liable to a serious depression from ex- 

 ternal cold. This retardation of vital activity gradually becomes more and 

 more marked, until, if neither accident nor disease should intervene, the 

 current stops of itself; the formative power seems to undergo a progressive 

 exhaustion, until no assistance from artificial heat, no supply of the most 

 nutritious food, can any longer avail for the generation of new tissue ; the 

 nervo-muscular energy gradually declines, until at last even those actions on 

 which the circulation and respiration entirely depend can no longer be per- 

 formed ; and with the cessation of these functions, the Life of the entire 

 organism becomes extinct. Such we may consider to be the mode in which 

 Death normally occurs. Various abnormal influences, however, remain to 

 be considered, which may bring about this final result at an earlier period, 

 and in different modes (chap. xxi). 



CHAPTER XXL 



OF DEATH. 



879. WE have seen it to be inherent in the very nature of Vital Action, 

 that it can only be sustained during a limited period by any Organized body; 

 for although the duration of certain structures may be prolonged, and their 

 vital properties retained, almost indefinitely, yet this is only when the with- 

 drawal of all extraneous agencies has reduced them to a condition of complete 

 inactivity. The Organized fabric, in fact, is at the same time the instrument 

 whereby Vital Force is exercised, and the subject of its operation; and of 

 this operation, decline is no less a constituent part than development, and 

 Death is its necessary sequence. Hence, in the performance of each one of 

 those Functions whose aggregate makes up the Life of Man, the particular 

 organ which ministers to that function undergoes a certain loss by the de- 



