THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. 317 
chemical elements of our bodies, turn to mud and dust 
again. From this mud and this dust issue unceasingly 
new life and energetic activity ; but a clay fit for the com- 
monest uses may also be got from it, and, in the words of 
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the dust of Alexander or Cesar may 
plug the vent of a beer-cask, or “stop a hole to keep the 
wind away.” These “base uses,’ of which the Prince of 
Denmark speaks to Horatio, mark the extreme limits of 
the transformation of matter. In any case, the beings of 
lowest order that toil and engender in the bosom of putre- 
faction are really absorbing and storing away life, since 
without their aid the corpse could not serve as nutriment to 
plants, which in their turn are the necessary reservoir 
whence animality draws its sap and strength. It is in 
this sense that Buffon’s doctrine of organic molecules is a 
true one. 
Death is the necessary end of all organic existence. 
We may hope more or less to set at a distance its inevita- 
ble hour, but it would be madness to dream of its indefi- 
nite postponement in any species whatsoever. No doubt 
there is no contradiction in conceiving of a perfect equilib- 
rium between assimilation and disassimilation, such that 
the system would be maintained in immortal health. In 
any case, no one has yet even gained a glimpse of the 
modes of realizing such an equilibrium, and death con- 
tinues, till further orders, a fixed law of Fate. Still, 
though immortality for a complete organism seems chi- 
merical, perhaps it is not the sense with the immortality of 
a separate organ in the sense we now explain. We have 
already alluded to the experiments of Paul Bert on animal- 
grafting. He has proved that, on the head of a rat, cer- 
tain organs of the same animal—as the tail, for instance— 
may be grafted. And this physiologist asks himself the 
question, whether it would not be possible, when a rat pro- 
vided with such an appendage draws near the close of his 
