4 HUMAN DISSECTION. ITS DRAMA AND STRUGGLE 



big problem and at times it has been almost insurmountable. 

 Death constitutes one of the three great enigmas in every normal 

 person's lite along with how he may have originated in a remote 

 age and what he exists for. It is said that man has survived on 

 earth for a million years, plus or minus. As a primordial thinking 

 specimen, with little mental equipment, he entertained ideas 

 about death and the hereafter. The remarkable thing about his 

 first concepts is that they have been perpetuated millennium after 

 millennium and accepted en toto by the masses, with little change 

 or modification. There has been nothing so enduring and crystal- 

 lized in the field of thought as the original analysis of the after- 

 life by the aboriginals. Perhaps ancient, prehistoric man should 

 never be underestimated because he was endowed with a fertile 

 imagination; he was a man with ideas, and of considerable stature 

 when measured in terms of subsequent influence. 



One of the first concepts conceived by the primitive of the 

 distant past, was that of a soul, not only for himself, but for all 

 living creatures and inanimate objects as well. The notion of 

 immortality was born early in his evolution and it has never been 

 neutralized completely through the intellectual ages of man, in 

 which he has dealt with magic, religion and science, in that order. 

 Since the post-mortem state has remained so unfathomable, it is 

 possible that, through wishful thinking alone, the feeling about 

 this spiritual essence may either survive for many centuries or per- 

 manently in human minds. The opinions which have had the 

 longest past usually have the most prolonged future. 



Ghosts, both good and bad, a product of man's imagination, 

 have been with us from the beginning. Although little or no at- 

 tention has been paid to the ones regarded as beneficial, those 

 judged to be vengeful and vindictive have exerted much in- 

 fluence; they have acted as a whiplash to human behavior and 

 thinking. 



The sternest penalties have been meted out, even in the not 

 too distant past, by religious or governmental authorities to any 

 person or persons disfiguring or violating the so-called sanctity 

 of the deceased human body. Death has been the maximal sen- 

 tence imposed, imprisonment often under severe and harsh stand- 

 ards, a lesser, whereas some transgressors have been freed. The 



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