88 
ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
course is obstructed, the circulation grows slower, and with it the 
animal heat is diminished. 
The extremities of the nerves, lacking the moisture necessary to 
the proper execution of their functions, are no longer affected by 
objects as heretofore. The ear becomes hard of hearing, the eye is 
dimmed, the tongue has lost its taste ; flowers have long since lost 
their scent and beauty ; fruits no longer retain their flavour. The 
whole of nature seems dull and colourless. The flame of life 
burns more and more feebly, and its close is marked by phenomena 
similar to those with which it begun. 
The circulation first manifested itself, and ceases last. 
The right auricle is the part first seen to pulsate in the embryo, 
and in death is the last to retain its motion. 
The phenomena of nutrition, to which the foetal existence is al- 
most entirely limited, continue even when the organs destined to 
establish a relation with the beings that surround us have long been 
sunk into a slumber from which they are never to be roused. 
The following is the order in which the intellectual faculties cease 
and are decomposed. 
Reason, the exclusive attribute of man, first forsakes him. She 
begins by losing the faculty of associating judgment, and then of 
comparing, of bringing together, and of connecting a number of ideas, 
so as to judge of their relations. The patient is then said to be 
delirious. This delirium has generally for its subject the ideas that 
are most familiar to the patient, and his prevailing passion is easily 
recognised. The miser talks in the most indiscreet manner of his 
hidden treasures ; the unbeliever dies haunted by religious appre- 
hensions ; and sweet recollections of a distant land, of the home of 
his childhood, occur to the dying traveller : then it is that ye return 
with all your powerful energy and delight. 
After reasoning and judgment, the faculty of associating ideas 
is next completely destroyed — the memory then fails — the patient 
no longer recognises his nearest and most intimate friends. At last 
he ceases to feel ; but his senses vanish in succession, and in a de- 
terminate order. The taste and smell ceases to give any sign of 
existence ; the eye becomes obscured by a dark and gloomy cloud ; 
the ear becomes impervious to sound ; and the body, at last, gently 
yields its spirit to the God that gave it. 
And here the history of life ought to terminate : if, however, it 
be considered that the changes which bodies experience after death 
throw a considerable light on its means, its ends, and its nature, 
there will be an obvious necessity for shortly inquiring into the dif- 
ferent phenomena which accompany the decomposition of animal 
substances. As soon as life forsakes our organs, they become sub- 
