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70. What becomes of the matter and the vital principle of organic beings after their death?
"The inert matter is decomposed, and serves to form other bodies; the vital principle returns to the general mass of the universal fluid."
On the death of an organic being, the elements of which its body was composed undergo new combinations that form new beings. These, in their turn, draw the principle of life and activity from the universal source they absorb and assimilate it, and restore it again to that source when they cease to exist.The organs of organic beings are, so to say, impregnated with the vital fluid. This fluid gives to every part of an organized being the activity which brings its parts into union after certain lesions, and reestablishes functions that have been temporarily suspended. But when the elements essential to the play of the organism have been destroyed, or too deeply injured, the vital fluid is powerless to transmit to them the movement which constitutes life, and the being dies.
The organs of a body necessarily react, more or less powerfully upon one another their reciprocity of action results from their harmony among themselves. When from any cause this harmony is destroyed, their functions cease just as a piece of machinery comes to a standstill when the essential portions of its mechanism get out of order, or as a clock stops when its works are worn out by use, accidentally broken, so that the spring is no longer able to keep it going.
We have an image of life and death still more exact in the electric battery. The battery, like all natural bodies, contains electricity in a latent state; but the electrical phenomena are only manifested when the fluid is set in motion by a special cause. When this movement is superinduced, the battery may be said to become alive; but when the cause of the electrical activity ceases, the phenomena cease to occur, and the battery relapses into a state of inertia. Organic bodies may thus be said to be a sort of electric battery, in which the movement of the fluid produces the phenomena of life, and in which the cessation of that movement produces death.
The quantity of vital fluid present in organic beings is not the same in all; it varies in the various species of living beings, and is not constantly the same, either in the same individual or in the individuals of the same species. There are some which may be said to be saturated with it, and others in which it exists in very small proportions. Hence certain species are endowed with a more active and more tenacious life, resulting from the superabundance of the vital fluid present in their organism.
The amount of vital fluid contained in a given organism may be exhausted, and may thus become insufficient for the maintenance of life, unless it be renewed by the absorption and assimilation of the substances in which that fluid resides.
The vital fluid may be transmitted by one individual to another individual. An organization in which it exists more abundantly may impart it to another in which it is deficient; and may thus, in certain cases, rekindle the vital flame when on the point of being extinguished.