Page:Life, Death, and Immortality.pdf/10

 yet it lives. Stage by stage the simple is succeeded by the complex; cells unite to form tissues, first of similar cells; then differences arise in the cells from differences of external conditions; pressure, contact, action of heat and light, all help to modify the various cells, and differentiated tissues are gradually formed. These differentiated tissues perform different works, and the activities of the body increase—the life increases. Yet another complexity arises; these differentiating tissues become co-ordinated in their growth; integration proceeds step by step with differentiation; until, in the most highly evolved organism, we have the greatest complex of activities working in perfect harmony, and the totality of these forms the life of the human being. He shares "life" with the Amæba, but what definition can adequately include the twain?

If life be thus analysed, what is to be said of death? Death is re-arrangement; it is the disassociation of the compounds whose resultant was life; the breaking up of the complex organic products, and their gradual resolution into the simpler inorganic forms; until the living body, with its compounds of wonderful variety and intricacy, is resolved through stage after stage of ever-increasing simplicity into those ultimate fates of all living things, carbon dioxide, water, and ammonia; and then these recommence the upward building once more.

Nor are the changes we call death simultaneous over the whole body; the body does not die at once; it dies gradually, tissue after tissue. The muscles die when their semi-fluid substance begins to coagulate, and the rigor mortis sets in; the glandular tissues die later, and they work (and are therefore living), as every nurse knows, for some little time after "death"; hair and nails grow in similar fashion; the brain is sometimes dead ere the body is regarded as a corpse. It is the death of the heart and lungs only that is recognised as "death"; when the pulse ceases, and when the mirror held to the lips is not dulled by a breath, then the bystanders say: "He is gone". And in this there is some truth, since with the ceasing of the circulation and with the non-supply of oxygen to the tissues chemical changes must set in in them all, which tend to disintegration. And though some few tissues may for a brief while continue to live, yet their life must needs be very limited; the nervous system cannot work without the