Summary
“If, by tying its main artery, we stop most of the blood going to a limb, then, for as long as the long performs its function, those parts which are called into play must be wasted faster than they are repaired: whence eventual disablement. The relation between due receipt of nutritive matters through its arteries, and due discharge of its duties by the long, is a part of the physical order. If instead of cutting off the supply to a particular limb, we bleed the patient largely, so drafting away the materials needed for repairing not one limb but all limbs, and not limbs only but viscera, there results both a muscular debility and an enfeeblement of the vital functions. Here, again, cause and effect are necessarily related. … Pass now to those actions more commonly thought of as the occasions for rules of conduct.”
Herbert Spencer.“Mortify therefore your members which are upon earth.”
—Paul.“O Star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there
To waft us home the message of despair?”
—Campbell.The definition of Death which science has given us is this: A falling out of correspondence with environment. When, for example, a man loses the sight of his eyes, his correspondence with the environing world is curtailed. His life is limited in an important direction; he is less living than he was before.
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- Natural Law in the Spiritual World , pp. 175 - 200Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1883