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dered questionable, by the possible relations of the preparatory 

 organs, which may be to separate from food particles which con- 

 tain only one elementary part of life ; and the relation may be with 

 a certain quantum of these elements, leaving the excrementitious 

 matter still possessed of elementary life; while the other part of 

 elementary life, viz. that derived from air, not being related with 

 the preparatory organs, follows the fate of its other combinations; 

 and consequently these elements, not being received as consti- 

 tuents of blood, require to be furnished from the atmosphere. It 

 must be confessed, that on these relations we can at best speculate 

 but loosely; and their suggestion is rather with a view to future 

 investigations, than intended, upon such weak evidence, to chal- 

 lenge belief. 



10. The state of death is an informal state of life: certain 

 properties concurred as causes to constitute the living state; as 

 long as the relations of these causes are uninterrupted, the living 

 state is preserved. But there is a tendency in these causes, with 

 tlie help of externals, to interrupt or change their relations ; their 

 concurrence to form the living state no longer obtains ; and the 

 properties which before formed life are engaged in new alliances, 

 and contribute to produce new phenomena, in connexion with the 

 new existences with which a new relation is opened. We cannot 

 trace minutely the further history of the respective causes which 

 once made the living state. We can only observe generally of 

 them, that the constituents of the living body of one animal in 

 time revert to something like the state of life which has already 

 been broken upon. The remains of an animal are either taken as 

 food by another, and then by a short process contribute to the 

 composition of such other animal;* or else they are consigned to 

 the earth, where they perhaps again contribute to animal life, 

 working here darkly, or remaining at rest, held by the force of 

 existing relations, and in the lapse of ages, perhaps by some acci- 

 dent come again to play a part in the sensible world ; or they pass 

 through a vegetable form, and from this are perhaps again assimi- 

 lated by animals. Whether there are instances of decomposition 

 so complete, that the causes which have once supported animal 

 life are wholly indisposed to enter into this state again, or contri- 

 bute to it in any shape; whether they can form alliances which no 

 possible change in the relations of the world may dissolve ; is a 

 question not easily settled, and the affirmative of which it is 

 scarcely consistent with analogy t suppose. 



li. We observe that the remains of animals are consigned to 

 the earth, perhaps many feet below its surface; here they supply 

 or originate other forms of life. The auimals thus produced live 



* This is the only possible mode of spiritual translation: and, according 

 to it, the identity of the spirit of a dead animal is not preserved ; for as the ani- 

 mal receiving such properties lives by assimilation, so the translated spiritual 

 properties are only causes which concur to maintain a prwiout nature, no more 

 of them being engaged tbau are ucccssary to this cud. 



