CAUSE OF DEATH. 327 



generations. An earnest that evil cannot triumph, or build through 

 the world, because there is this almighty arm nursing babes in the 

 wrestle. For the like cause every day is born afresh, and the load 

 of life is lightened in sleep, which lets out an ever new man through 

 the merciful gates of the morning. Thus though the divine image 

 be defaced, yet as its features may be won again, we still recognize 

 in man the remoteness of his archetype; just as we call reason, 

 reason, despite of unreason ; and leave to love its ideal meaning, 

 though that substance, as such, is seldom patent upon earth. 



We conclude here by reverting one stage back, to speak of the 

 meaning and cause of death ; because this background will perchance 

 throw forth into relief the image and emblems of life. For as life 

 comes by correspondence, so death comes by non-correspondence 

 between the soul and the body; just as deadness in these sciences 

 comes from non-perception of correspondence. Thus when the 

 heart has no longer any heartiness towards the man, and no more 

 likeness to the soul's heart, which is love (pp. 194 — 213, 247 — 

 251), when the blood grows callous to the formation of relations, 

 and feels no warmth and joy in begetting, educating, marrying or 

 advancing the children of the body, then the soul ceases to care for 

 it, and begins by slow degrees to leave it; in other words, disease 

 and disability prey upon it; organic vice besets it; and the inner 

 man ceases to keep company with it; for it is a hard heart, already 

 dead to suggestion and obedience. So when the lungs begin no 

 more to play for thought, or to draw animation and faculty forth, 

 the soul and they have to separate, as persons estranged from each 

 other ; for breath exists that soul may breathe, and when this is no 

 longer possible, mortal breath stops. And when the brain no 

 longer elects light and virtue from matter, and communes no more 

 by vibratory states with the genii of the cosmos, then the soul quits 

 this effete spiritualist, now a materialist ; and the brain dies from 

 the separation, just as it dies spiritually from the denial of the soul. 

 So also, when the muscles have lost their imaginations of power, the 

 will of the soul quits them as broken tools. Then the body falls to 

 pieces by its own degrees of decay. After this it belongs to no 

 soul, but to the world, whose first artisans with it are the chemistries 

 of nature, and the anatomical worms. 



