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the extinction of the assimilating life in a distant seat by properties 

 communicated.* This inference granted, we have to trace still 

 further the process by which according to this method universal 

 death eventually supervenes. 



8. It has been insisted upon that the only conditions of the 

 continuance of life in every seat are the existence of life, fitted for 

 assimilation, and an adequate supply of perfectly formed blood. 

 Hence, according to this view, we are again furnished with two 

 alternatives of the mode in these instances of universal death: 1st, 

 the direct one, implying that foreign properties (or the preternatural 

 state above spoken of) are related, not merely with superior or in- 

 ferior parts of the nervous system to a trifling extent, but with the 

 whole body, producing through the medium of the nervous con- 

 tinuities an'unassimilating state of the diffused principle, according 

 to the process just described, as belonging to the parts above or 

 below the place of the division of the spinal marrow: this is our first 

 alternative; the 2nd is the indirect mode, as when, in consequence 

 of the cessation of the assimilating life in one sphere, a functional 

 one which depends upon it ceases ; which functional life is related 

 with the diffused spirit by its offices, in respect to the formation or 

 the circulation of the blood. 



9. 1. That the injury of the spinal marrow produces universal 

 death by properties communicated every where to the diffused spirit, 

 or that death is produced in the direct way, is an alternative on 

 which we can cite no proofs. At the same time that this mode of 

 death is an improbable one appears from the following considera- 

 tions : 1st, life ceases to assimilate in all the structures, with but 

 few exceptions, and those rather equivocal at the same time; 2nd, 

 If properties originating at the place of the injury should be allowed 

 to possess a relation by which the life of all the structures might in 

 the direct way be rendered extinct, the course of the propagation 

 of these properties (which, as is proved by the succession, is not 

 sudden) must be through the nervous organs, and the contiguous 

 assimilating life must suffer before that which is remote. Hence, 

 although the relation of the properties engaged in the injury 

 should be directly with the spirit in distant seats, life in such seats 

 must otherwise cease, as if no such relation were possible, by the 

 destruction of that existing in the spheres of the nervous organs, 

 upon which functions depend which are necessary to the formation 

 or the circulation of the blood. 



10. 2. On our 2nd alternative, viz. that the diffused life is 

 made by the injury we are considering to cease indirectly or through 

 the medium of the blood; on this alternative it is proper only to 

 remark, that this mode of death must happen from the extension of 



* It is possible, agreeably with the modes of causation, that the new rela- 

 tion may be such as to destroy the assimilating life of another seat, by with- 

 drawing properties necessary to its identity. This, however, cannot be 

 ascertained, and if admitted, does not prove the dependence of the assimi- 

 lating life ot" one seat upon that of another. 



