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| Death Entirely Separates the Soul from the Body.
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Chapter LI.—Death
Entirely Separates the Soul from the Body.
But the operation of death is plain and obvious:
it is the separation of body and soul. Some, however, in reference to
the soul’s immortality, on which they have so feeble a hold
through not being taught of God, maintain it with such beggarly
arguments, that they would fain have it supposed that certain souls
cleave to the body even after death. It is indeed in this sense that
Plato, although he despatches at once to heaven such souls as he
pleases,1789
yet in his
Republic1790
exhibits to us the
corpse of an unburied person, which was preserved a long time without
corruption, by reason of the soul remaining, as he says, unseparated
from the body. To the same purport also Democritus remarks on the
growth for a considerable while of the human nails and hair in the
grave. Now, it is quite possible that the nature of the atmosphere
tended to the preservation of the above-mentioned corpse. What if
the air were particularly dry, and the ground of a saline nature? What,
too, if the substance of the body itself were unusually dry and
arid? What, moreover, if the mode of the death had already
eliminated from the corpse all corrupting matter? As for the nails,
since they are the commencement of the nerves, they may well seem to be
prolonged, owing to the nerves themselves being relaxed and extended,
and to be protruded more and more as the flesh fails. The hair,
again, is nourished from the brain, which would cause it endure for a
long time as its secret aliment and defence. Indeed, in the case of
living persons themselves, the whole head of hair is copious or scanty
in proportion to the exuberance of the brain. You have medical men (to
attest the fact). But not a particle of the soul can possibly remain in
the body, which is itself destined to disappear when time shall have
abolished the entire scene on which the body has played its part. And
yet even this partial survival of the soul finds a place in the
opinions of some men; and on this account they will not have the body
consumed at its funeral by fire, because they would spare the small
residue of the soul. There is, however, another way of accounting for
this pious treatment, not as if it meant to favour the relics of the
soul, but as if it would avert a cruel custom in the interest even of
the body; since, being human, it is itself undeserving of an end which
is also inflicted upon murderers. The truth is, the soul is
indivisible, because it is immortal; (and this fact) compels us to
believe that death itself is an indivisible process, accruing
indivisibly to the soul, not indeed because it is immortal, but because
it is indivisible. Death, however, would have to be divided in its
operation, if the soul were divisible into particles, any one of which
has to be reserved for a later stage of death. At this rate, a
part of death will have to stay behind for a portion of the soul. I am
not ignorant that some vestige of this opinion still exists. I have
found it out from one of my own people. I am acquainted with the
case of a woman, the daughter of Christian parents,1791
| 1791 Vernaculam
ecclesiæ. | who in the very flower of her age and beauty
slept peacefully (in Jesus), after a singularly happy though brief
married life. Before they laid her in her grave, and when the
priest began the appointed office, at the very first breath of his
prayer she withdrew her hands from her side, placed them in an attitude
of devotion, and after the holy service was concluded restored them to
their lateral position. Then, again, there is that well-known story
among our own people, that a body voluntarily made way in a certain
cemetery, to afford room for another body to be placed near to it. If,
as is the case, similar stories are told amongst the heathen, (we can
only conclude that) God everywhere manifests signs of His own
power—to His own people for their comfort, to strangers for a
testimony unto them. I would indeed much rather suppose that a portent
of this kind happened from the direct agency of God than from any
relics of the soul: for if there were a residue of these, they
would be certain to move the other limbs; and even if they moved the
hands, this still would not have been for the purpose of a prayer. Nor
would the corpse have been simply content to have made way
for its neighbour: it would,
besides, have benefited its own self also by the change of its
position. But from whatever cause proceeded these phenomena,
which you must put down amongst signs and portents, it is impossible
that they should regulate nature. Death, if it once falls short of
totality in operation, is not death. If any fraction of the soul
remain, it makes a living state. Death will no more mix with life, than
will night with day.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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