320 LIFE AND DEATH. 



little more freedom in the interplay of their parts. 

 Their nervous apparatus fortunately does not attain 

 this imaginary perfection ; their unity is not so 

 rigorous. The idea of individuality, of individual 

 existence, is therefore not absolute but relative. 

 There are all degrees of it according to the develop- 

 ment of the nervous system. What the man in the 

 street and the doctor himself understand by death is 

 the situation created by the stopping of the general 

 vi^heels, the brain, the heart, and the lungs. If the 

 breath leaves no trace on the glass held to the mouth, 

 if the beating of the heart is no longer perceptible by 

 the hand which touches or the ear which listens, if the 

 movement and the reaction of sensitiveness have 

 ceased to be manifest, these signs make us conclude 

 that it is death. But this conclusion, as we have said 

 before, is a prognostic rather than a judgment of fact. 

 It expresses the belief that the subject will certainly 

 die, and not that it is from this moment dead. To 

 the physiologist the subject is only on the way to die. 

 The process has started. The only real death is 

 when the universal death of all the elements has been 

 consummated. 



