DISTINCTION BETWEEN DEATH AND TORPIDITY.

161 natural constitution, or from the neglect to cultivate certain particular capacities, when the rest have been unduly developed by this means, in consequence of which great irregularity prevails in the action of the entire mind. Indeed, it is but seldom that the whole of the intellectual capacities are duly adjusted and balanced.1 This defect, arising entirely from mental causes, which alone contributes to what is essentially mental disease, is, however, totally distinct in all its features from insanity, which is produced wholly and solely by physical derangement, occasioning a disturbance in the due operation between the soul and the body.

Insanity, as I have already observed, may originate either in the affection of the mind, or in that of the body, as any strong effect upon either is forthwith communicated to the other. The body is, however, always that which is diseased. The mind cannot itself be subject to this ailment. Hence, the common causes of insanity originate for the most part in the body, such as derangement of the digestive organs, fever, injury to the brain, drunkenness ; although occasionally also in mental causes and excitement, which act upon and influence the material frame. This is also further proved by the restless condition of persons during insanity, and their alternate violence and depression, which are produced by bodily disease and irritation, and by the alternate overflow and efflux of the animal spirits. The very countenance too becomes changed, and the peculiar form of the head is often an evidence of idiocy or of insanity.

Savages, who are remarkably free from bodily disease, are also peculiarly exempt from insanity, although among them the passions are strong and often excited, and the imagination is very vigorous.

2

Inasmuch as the influences of various kinds between the mind and the body are reciprocal, insanity may in many cases be ameliorated by moral treatment, as tranquillizing the mind. contributes also to calm the body.

5. Stoppage of Intercourse during Insensibility.

In those cases where the operation of that material organ belonging to our physical frame, termed the brain, upon which the spiritual part of our nature, termed the soul, is supposed peculiarly to act, is for a time more or less either unduly

1 Vide post, b. iii. c. i. ss. 5, 10; c. vi. ss. 3, 7, 9, 10.

2 Dr. Richardson, to whose valuable Treatise on "The Theory of a Nervous Ether" reference has already been several times made, and who has very obligingly corrected the proof-sheets of such parts of this work as relate to topics peculiarly within his province, remarks in a note that the statement contained in this passage, which was made mainly on the authority of Buffon, is very questionable.

M

excited, or restrained, or entirely suspended, the intercourse between the two beings is correspondingly interfered with. Such is the case during what is termed insensibility, which is ordinarily produced by some direct affection of, or injury to the organ in question, calculated to arrest or impede its action in relation to the soul, whether by external force, or by disease of the material frame, which extends to this organ.

Those instances of mental inanition, or rather of the suspension of the connexion and operation between the soul and the body, which may be classed under the general name of insensibility, differ from both idiocy and insanity, in that while in both these diseases all the ordinary corporeal functions and exercises proceed as usual; in cases of insensibility, external and voluntary corporeal action ceases altogether. While the actions of man in the former conditions resemble those of a child, or an unreasonable creature; his actions in the latter case are suspended entirely, and he appears like one asleep or dead. As moderate, natural, and accustomed exhaustion produces sleep, which is but a natural function; so exhaustion, which is immoderate and beyond our accustomed use, and unnatural, produces fainting, and other species of insensibility, which if not in themselves unnatural, are at least owing to a violent constraint upon nature. The exhaustion in this case being so much greater than that occasioning sleep, is productive of greater and more complete insensibility, by which the renovation itself may, nevertheless, possibly be the greater. Insensibility from torpidity is, however, produced, not by exhaustion, but by some operation on the material frame, quite independent of the exercise of that frame, as by the influence of cold in the case of animals which become torpid during the winter.

There is this essential distinction between death and torpidity, and indeed all the other conditions of insensibility, that while in the latter case organization remains perfect, the vital fluids and gases continue to circulate, and sensation and animation, although temporarily suspended, are not extinct, or even abridged; in the former case each of these functions and operations entirely cease. In some cases of insensibility, as during apoplexy, the senses, which during sleep are closed, continue to act, although the individual appears unconscious, and to be unaffected by their operations. Whether, in cases of what are termed suspended animation, the soul is actually separated from the body, and returns to it on the restoration of consciousness, or whether it constantly remains conjoined to the body so long as life continues to exist, it is impossible to determine certainly. Nevertheless, it does not seem to be absolute. matter of necessity that the soul should always reside within the precincts of the body. Although not generally absent from it during sleep, yet in cases of insanity and insensibility, it

INSANITY, INEBRIETY, AND INSENSIBILITY IN ANIMALS. 163

may be permitted to wander forth, and to return after a certain period. Or it may be that it is at such times hovering over, and only occasionally alights to direct the actions of the frame from which it soars.

In the instances of those persons who were raised from the dead by our Saviour, such as Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus, and the son of the widow of Nain, we cannot doubt but that their souls had actually departed from them, and must have been for some hours at least in the place appointed for separate spirits. But if this was so, on their reunion with the body, must they not have brought with them, which they would undoubtedly have communicated to their wondering associates, a full knowledge of that state? Had they done so, we should surely have heard of it; or had any injunctions been placed against their making such revelations, these would have been recorded, or alluded to. We can therefore only account for their not doing so, by their being placed in a condition exactly corresponding with that which we often experience after sleep, when we fail to recollect any portion of what then passed through our minds, mainly I believe because, as I have already remarked,' no ideas associated with those which then entered it are entertained while we are awake. And if those who have just returned to the living from the regions of the dead, retain in their memories no traces of what they saw, and which must have so astonished and affected them; can we wonder that we have no recollection of what we witnessed before our birth, in a previous state of being, or that the ideas of what passed through our minds during sleep, should also fade?

some cases, more

Animals appear subject to idiocy in especially from disease of, or injury to the brain. To insanity of certain kinds they are also subject, although this is manifested in them very differently to what it is in man. To one kind of insanity indeed (if so it may be strictly and scientifically termed), that of hydrophobia, which originates in disorder of some of the vital fluids, probably in that of the blood, they are peculiarly liable. To insensibility also they are subject in the same way with man, and from similar or corresponding causes. From habits of inebriety, to their own honour, and to the disgrace of man, who has that reason to guide him in which they are wanting, animals are happily exempt; although liable to its influences in a manner corresponding with what man is subject to, where they have been induced, or compelled, to imbibe stimulants capable of occasioning these baneful results.

3 Vide ante, a. 2, p. 150.

IX. DISSOLUTION OF UNION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY."

HAVING investigated the mode in which the spiritual part of our constitution termed the soul, is united to that material part of us termed the body, the results and influences consequent on that union, and the disturbances occasioned by various causes which arise to interfere with the regular operation of both the soul and the body, and to interrupt the intercourse between the two beings so intimately united, and so extensively influencing the operations and conduct of each other; we next arrive at the inquiry, by what means a dissolution of this union between the soul and the body is effected, and what are the consequences to both beings, immediate and ultimate, of such dissolution of union taking place.

As any interruption or disturbance in the harmonious operation between spirit and matter, the soul and the body, when united or fused into one being, proves detrimental and obstructive, more or less in proportion to such disturbance, to the due and regular operation of the system; so, whenever the union in question is entirely and absolutely dissolved, the complex being constituted by this union at once ceases to exist, and death forthwith ensues. The spirit becomes thenceforth an independent being, separate from the body, and exercises its operations freed from the restraint and influence of the material frame. Vitality, which is a principle distinct from the soul, although it appears to exist only in those frames to which a soul or spiritual instinctive being of some order is annexed,' ceases to remain in the body after the soul is disunited from it, although the departure of the soul, or of vitality, may not be in all cases absolutely and precisely contemporaneous.

Disease may be said to be the result of the disturbance of the harmonious arrangement and operation of the system, whether as regards its substance, its organization, its gases, or its fluids; and whether the texture, temperament, activity, or quality of either of them is affected. Any derangement of one part

6

Certain portions of this section were incorporated in a paper " On Comparative Longevity in Men and Animals," read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meeting at Edinburgh in 1871; and which was subsequently read before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and printed in the Journal of that Society, vol. ii. p. 69.

5 Vide ante, s. ii. a. 5, p. 45.

• Galen detines disease to be that state of the body in which its functions are in any way interrupted; and asserts that it depends upon some disproportion in the constituent elements, or some unnatural condition of the organs.

According to Hunter, disease can only be the consequence of some unnatural impression which interferes with the natural action of the body. -Principles of Disease, Works, vol. i. p. 299.

ESSENTIAL NATURE OF DEATH.

165

of the system is forthwith communicated to, and more or less deranges, the other parts, and also the whole. When the derangement in question is sufficient to produce any considerable effect, the condition so resulting is termed a disease, and is classed and denominated according to its characteristic quality; and must be treated in order either to counteract, to eradicate, or to terminate it, according to the nature and tendency of such disease, and the frame with which we have to deal. In certain cases, indeed, the most satisfactory mode of proceeding is to counteract the injurious effect of the disturbance or derangement occasioning the disease, by the resort to some regimen which will produce an exactly opposite result, as cooling medicine in the case of fever, purgative medicine in the case of constipation. In other cases, the only mode of preventing the evil effect of the disease, is to eradicate the disorder, or rather the efficient agent of it, from the frame, as by removal of stone from the bladder, or of cancer from the flesh. But in most cases, both classes of remedy will probably be applied together, and in conjunction with and in co-aid of each other.

Disease occasions death in those cases, and as soon as the disturbance occasioned by the disease is so extensive as to terminate the due operation of the system, either by destroying or impeding its organization, preventing the flow of its gases or fluids, or changing the texture or temperament to an extent incompatible with the existence of vitality.'

8

The grand feature and characteristic of death is, however, the separation that it effects. It at once separates the soul from the body, and the man from the world; and by the corruption which it causes, all the different elementary particles of the body are separated one from the other. Death is, moreover, as it were, the commencement of a journey into a new country, and the entrance on a new sphere of existence, where all that we experience is fresh, and strange, and excites our wonder. To a philosopher, death opens a wider sphere of information than his utmost ingenuity can conjecture; and to such a person it is

7 Hunter suggests that the diseased actions are established on nearly the same principle that the actions of health are.-Principles of Disease, Works, vol. i. p. 300.

8

According to Buffon, as the production of living beings is occasioned by the combination of living organic particles, so death or dissolution is nothing more than a separation of the same particles.--Nat. Hist.: Reproduction.

The theory of Leibnitz is that in death, although the machine in part perishes, the animal itself remains indestructible.

Mr. Tagore informs me that the Hindoo notion of death is that "it is the separation of the soul from the body; and that after death the five elements slowly separate; the atoms of earth join the earth, the watery mix with water, &c. Death is therefore cited in Sanscrit Panchatua, or separation and passage of the five elements."