organic unity with a real objective existence. The ancients were thinking of spiritual elements, of principles, of entities. To the Romans, who may be said to have held that there are three souls, death was produced by their separation from the body. The first, the breath, the spiritus, mounting towards celestial regions (astra petit); the second, the shade, regaining on the surface of the earth and wandering around the tombs; the third, the manes, descending to the lower regions. The belief of the Hindoos was slightly different. The body returned to the earth, the breath to the winds, the fire of the glance to the sun, and the ethereal soul to the world of the pure. Such were the ideas of mortal dispersion formed by ancient humanity.
Modern science takes a more objective point of view. It asks by what facts, by what observable events death is indicated. Generally speaking, we may say that these facts interrupt an interior state of things which was life and to which they put an end. Thus death is defined by life. It is the cessation of the events and of the phenomena which characterize life. We must, therefore, know what life is to understand the meaning of death. How wise was Confucius when he said to his disciple, Li-Kou:—"If we do not know life, how can we know death?" According to biology there are two kinds of death because there are two kinds of life; elementary life and death correspond just as general life and death do, and this is where scientific opinion diverges from commonly received opinion.
What cares the man who reasons as most human beings do, about this life of the anatomical elements of his body, the existence and the silent activity of
