As the word Life is employed in a double sense to denote the actions or phenomena by which it is developed, and the cause of these phenomena, so the old English word Death is used familiarly to express two or more meanings. The first of these is the transition from the living to the lifeless or inanimate state—the act, that is, of dying; the second, the condition of an organized body which has ceased to live, while organization yet remains, and symmetry still displays itself, and the admirable structure of its parts is not yet destroyed by decomposition, or resolved into the original and primary elements from which it was moulded,
“Before Decay’s effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”
We occasionally speak of “dead matter” in the sense of inorganic; but this is merely a rhetorical or metaphorical phrase. That which has never lived cannot properly be said to be dead.
In the following essay, I shall use the word chiefly in the first of the senses above indicated. It will often be convenient to employ it in the second also; but in doing so, I will be careful so to designate its bearing as to avoid any confusion. The context will always prevent any misunderstanding on this point.
Death may be considered physiologically, pathologically, and psychologically. We are obliged to regard it and speak of it as the uniform correlative, and indeed the necessary consequence, or final result of life; the act of dying as the rounding off, or termination of the act of living. But it ought to be remarked that this conclusion is derived, not from any understanding or comprehension of the relevancy of the asserted connection, nor from any à priori reasoning applicable to the inquiry, but merely à posteriori as the result of universal experience. All that has lived has died; and, therefore, all that lives must die.
The solid rock on which we tread, and with which we rear our palaces and temples, what is it often when microscopically examined, but a congeries of the fossil remains of innumerable animal tribes! The soil from which, by tillage, we derive our vegetable food, is scarcely any thing more than a mere mixture of the decayed and decaying fragments of former organic being; the shells and exuviæ, the skeletons and fibres and exsiccated juices of extinct life.
The earth itself, in its whole habitable surface, is little else than the mighty sepulchre of the past; and
“All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes