DEATH. 15 



surface, is liable to this incessant change, the nutrition 

 must be not superficial only, but interstitial also. 



When growth and development cease, there is no real 

 halting at what is called maturity. It is impossible to 

 say when development ends and decline begins ; especially 

 because the two processes often go on in different organs 

 at the same time. Soon, however, all structures alike 

 begin to be less perfectly renewed ; and decline, becoming 

 more and more apparent, is followed by death. 



Death may be defined simply as that condition of a once- 

 living structure in which no vital transformation of force 

 can be any more effected. It is a state in which waste and 

 decay are not compensated for by repair. 



The organic matter of which a dead body is composed 

 follows, unchecked, its natural tendency to return to an 

 inorganic condition. The same would have happened, of 

 course, had life continued. For living structures decay, 

 as dead ones do, although the fashion of the decay is in 

 the two cases different. But now in death, nothing takes 

 the place of that which is lost, and the material body, as 

 an individual, disappears. 



It may be said that, after all, it is but an alteration of 

 language, to say that life is a correlative expression of 

 physical force ; that we know as little as ever of the means 

 by which the transformation of, say, heat into mechanical 

 motion, is effected by a muscle, and still less, if possible, of 

 the transformation by which it is made to happen in 

 obedience to the will ; that the old notion of inherent vital 

 force is almost or quite as rational as the new one, seeing 

 that we know so little of either. But still it is a step in 

 advance to be able to discern not a mere dependence only 

 of life upon other forces, but a distinct correlation the one 

 with the other, and thus, in some degree, at least, to 

 remove life from that isolated position which it has so long 

 assumed. 



