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CHAP. III. General Nature of Death of the Organic Life. 



1. WE have spoken in our preceding sections of the 

 manner in which the spirit lives; in this, we have hitherto considered 

 the mode by which it dies: there is only one further stage in in its 

 history, viz. to say, if we can, what becomes of this spirit, our old 

 acquaintance, after it is dead? 



2. The question of what becomes of life at the time of death ? 

 is answered by saying, what becomes of it during life: for the 

 spirit is perpetually dying: it lives by assimilation, or is maintained 

 by succession, or by a perpetual renovation from its elements ; the life 

 which exists at one point of time, resembles, but is not identically 

 the life which existed in a preceding minute. Life exists, and im- 

 mediately changes its form, enduring no longer than while it unites 

 its own elements from earth and air, existing in the nutrient ma- 

 terial with which it is related. Life is, renews itself, and dies. If 

 the life which is present could support a fixed or permanent state, 

 the function which supplies it with air, as a supporter of life, might 

 be suspended, and the living form be still preserved; and the same 

 of the other supporter, containing elements from the earth, viz. food, 

 which might also be withheld : for a principle which is not per- 

 petually passing away, requires no supporters for its perpetual 

 renovation. 



3. One difference between death of the spirit, during the con- 

 tinuance of life, and its final death, is, that the spirit during the 

 living state repeats itself from its elements, before it dies: finui 

 death happens from defect of such repetition. Another difference 

 is, that in final death the spirit, previous to its extinction, is com- 

 monly rendered a modified identity by disease, which is not the 

 identity it preserves when it repeats itself from its elements. This 

 difference may affect the fate of the properties of life in the two 

 instances, disposing them to different relations; but we cannot say 

 in what respects their fates, respectively, may on this account be 

 affected. But this difference does not obtain in the cases of final 

 death, from sudden defect of a supporter of life, as in cases of 

 death by hanging, drowning, hemorrhage, &c. in which examples 

 the spirit was well disposed to assimilate a healthy identity which 

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