THE PROCESS OF DEATH. 313 



and a collective life, the life of the whole {vita 

 commimis). In the same way we must distinguish 

 the elementary death, which is the cessation of the 

 vital phenomena in the isolated cell, from the general 

 death, which is the disappearance of the phenomena 

 which characterised the collectivity, the totality, the 

 federation, the nation, the city, the whole in so far as 

 it is a unit. 



These comparisons enable us to understand how 

 general life depends on the partial lives of each 

 anatomical citizen. If all die, the nation, the federa- 

 tion, the total being clearly ceases to exist. This 

 city has an enormous population — there are thirty 

 trillion cellules in the body of man ; it is peopled 

 with absolutely sedentary citizens, each of which has 

 its fixed place, which it never leaves, and in which it 

 lives and dies. It must possess a system of more or 

 less perfect arrangements to secure the material life 

 of each inhabitant. All have analogous require- 

 ments : they feed very much the same ; they breathe 

 in the same way ; each in fact has its profession, 

 industry, talents, and aptitudes by which it contri- 

 butes to social life, and on which, in its turn, it 

 depends. But the process of alimentation is the 

 same for all. They must have water, nitrogenous 

 materials and analogous ternaries ; the same mineral 

 substances, and the same vital gas, oxygen. It is no 

 less necessary that the wastes and the egesta, very 

 much alike in every respect, should be carried off and 

 borne away in discharges arranged so as to free the 

 whole system from the inconvenience, the unhealthi- 

 ness, and the danger of these residues. 



Secondaty Organization in Organs. — That is why, 

 as we said above, the secondary organizations of the 



