THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DEATH. See 
of that evidence furnished by the stopping of the heart. 
When the heart has definitely ceased to beat, then resur- 
rection is no longer possible, and the life which deserts it 
is preparing to enter upon a new cycle. 
Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy, speaks of “ that undis- 
covered country from whose bourn no traveler returns,” 
and mournfully asks what must be the dreams of the man 
to whom death has opened the portals of those gloomy 
regions. Wecan give no clearer answer in the name of 
physiology than Shakespeare’s prince gives. Physiology 
is dumb as to the destiny of the soul after death; of that 
it teaches, and it can teach us, nothing. It is plain, and 
it would be childish to deny it, that any psychical or sen- 
tient manifestation and any concrete representation of the 
personality are impossible after death. The dissolution 
of the organism annihilates surely, and of necessity, the 
functions of sensation, motion, and will, which are insepa- 
rable from a certain combination of material conditions. 
We can feel, move, and will, only so far as we have organs 
for reception, transmission, and execution. These assur- 
ances of science are above discussion, and should be ac- 
cepted without reserve. Do they tell us any thing of the 
destiny of the psychical principles themselves? Again we 
say, No, and for the very simple reason that science does 
not attain to those principles ; but metaphysics, which does 
attain to them, authorizes us, nay, further, compels us, to 
believe that they are immortal. They are immortal, as 
the principles of motion, the principles of perception, all 
the active unities of the world, are immortal. What is the 
general characteristic of those unities? It is that of being 
simple, which means being indestructible, which means 
being in harmonious mutual connection, after such a man- 
ner that each one of them perceives the infinite order of 
the other. If this connection did not exist, there would 
be no world, What is the characteristic of the psychical 
