7 o DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING 



would be rekindled. But is he to descend from his phi- 

 losophic pinnacle and bring down light and fire simply to 

 gratify the vulgar curiosity of incredulous and ignorant 

 savages who believe nothing that they cannot see and 

 observe and experiment upon, and who are never likely to 

 understand or appreciate the prophetic utterances of philo- 

 sophic authority, however frequently repeated ? 



According to Dr. Bence Jones, death is the " stoppage 

 of the conversion of latent force into active force."* But 

 surely latent force may cease from being converted into 

 active force, irrespective of life or death, while it would not 

 be difficult to adduce instances of the occurrence of such 

 conversion after death had taken place. Neither does it 

 help us to form any more accurate conception as regards 

 the nature of death to learn that this stoppage is " caused 

 either by some arrest of action in the heart, lungs, or brain," 

 seeing that things die which never possessed either of 

 these organs at any period of their existence, while those 

 organisms in which they are found, may live and die before 

 a vestige of any one of them has made its appearance. 

 And when it is affirmed that the stoppage of the latent into 

 active force, is caused by " some direct interference with 

 the chemical actions in the ultimate molecules of the 

 organs," a new puzzle seems to have been invented for us, 

 for, irrespective of the fact that brainless creatures die, 

 no explanation is vouchsafed as to what is to be understood 

 by "direct interference," "chemical actions," and the 

 phrase "ultimate molecules of the organs." In no case can 

 the ultimate molecules of any organ be of the same kind 



* "Lectures on some of the Applications of Chemistry and Me- 

 chanics to Pathology and Therapeutics." 



