Life and Death
Outline · 2 ›
1.The nature of life and of death
Confucius, The Sayings of ConfuciusVol. 44
- p. 33–34Confucius refuses to speculate on death or the ghosts: we do not understand life, so cannot know death.read · scan
The Book of PsalmsVol. 44
- p. 319Man is fearfully and wonderfully made in the womb; his days were ordained and written in God's book.read · scan
The Bhagavad-Gita; or, Song CelestialVol. 45
- p. 846–849Lists perceiving the certitude of ill in birth, death, disease as part of wisdom; the body is the field of life, the Soul its knower.read · scan
Ben Jonson, The AlchemistVol. 47
- p. 613–618He hopes the elixir will renew youth and give perpetuity of life.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, ThoughtsVol. 48
- p. 50–51Complete rest is death.read · scan
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Profession of Faith of a Savoyard VicarVol. 34
- p. 252Life and organization cannot arise from a blind concourse of atoms.read · scan
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Tragedy of Faust, Part IVol. 19
- p. 69–71Faust stakes his life on the wager: if he rests, his life may cease.read · scan
Friedrich von Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of ManVol. 32
- p. 248–249Life in the widest sense is the object of the sensuous instinct, expressing all material existence.read · scan
Lord Byron, ManfredVol. 18
- p. 423He dived into the caves of death seeking its cause in its effect.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity CollegeVol. 5
- p. 27–28Benevolence gives life; evil is death or nonentity.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-RelianceVol. 5
- p. 62–63Emerson insists his life is no apology or penance but should be genuine and unique, to be lived for itself.read · scan
- p. 72The underlying insight persists through all circumstances, what is called life and what is called death.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Origin of SpeciesVol. 11
- p. 501All living things share composition, structure, laws of growth and origin in the same germinal vesicle.read · scan
1a.Life as motion, heat and combustion
See also: Animal 1a
The Book of PsalmsVol. 44
- p. 272–275Creatures die and return to dust when God takes their breath; created anew by his Spirit.read · scan
Plato, PhaedoVol. 2
- p. 60–62If the living did not spring from the dead, all things would at last be swallowed up in death.read · scan
- p. 100–101Death is the opposite of the life the soul brings.read · scan
Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Old AgeVol. 9
- p. 57Life slowly and imperceptibly goes out like a lamp, with no sudden breakage.read · scan
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2
- p. 234A man's life is like the exhalation of blood and respiration of air.read · scan
- p. 234Breath is received at birth and given back to the element it came from.read · scan
- p. 280Generation of a child and origin of life and perception from hidden causes.read · scan
- p. 284–285The hidden inner power is life itself.read · scan
Dante Alighieri, PurgatoryVol. 20
- p. 246Statius explains how blood is concocted and becomes the generative seed that vivifies the embryo, moving and feeling like a sea-sponge.read · scan
William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in AnimalsVol. 38
- p. 69–70Heart is called the fountain of vital spirits and source of life to the body.read · scan
- p. 85–86The chick's first pulsing point stands between being and not being, representing the commencement of life.read · scan
- p. 91–92Describes how foetal blood passages close after birth and wither as life changes.read · scan
- p. 101–102The heart is the beginning and foundation of life, source of all action, nourishing and quickening the body.read · scan
- p. 136–137The heart is first to exist and holds blood, life, sensation and motion before brain or liver, fashioning the whole animal.read · scan
Thomas Hobbes, Of Man, Being the First Part of LeviathanVol. 34
- p. 309Life is a motion of limbs; concord is the state's health and civil war its death.read · scan
- p. 345Life itself is motion and cannot be without desire, fear or sense.read · scan
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio MediciVol. 3
- p. 291Life begins in the womb, a distinct world; man passes through three worlds of existence.read · scan
John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4
- p. 155–165Eve recounts her awakening into life and creation; only coming-to-being, with no real treatment of death.read · scan
- p. 165–170Adam says the stars keep darkness from regaining its place and extinguishing life in nature; a minor remark on what sustains living things.read · scan
- p. 246–249Adam describes waking into life, unaware of who he was or whence, fearing return to insensible state.read · scan
Alexander Pope, Solitude; On a Certain Lady at Court; Essay on ManVol. 40
- p. 407–411Passions are the elements of life; living creatures' graded senses; man's limited powers suit his state; a keen sense would mean dying of a rose's aroma.read · scan
- p. 415The ruling passion is like the lurking principle of death, growing with a man's growth.read · scan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On Poesy or ArtVol. 27
- p. 263Idea of life necessitates strife; stages of life from infancy to age.read · scan
Michael Faraday, The Chemical History of a CandleVol. 30
- p. 161–162Compares the combustion of a candle to the living combustion within us; life of man and taper related literally, not only poetically.read · scan
- p. 163Breath extinguishes a candle because the lungs remove oxygen from air, showing respiration parallels combustion.read · scan
- p. 163–165Respiration produces carbonic acid, shown by lime-water turning milky with exhaled breath.read · scan
- p. 165–166Respiration combines air with carbon in the blood, making carbonic acid and heat as a candle does; food is fuel.read · scan
- p. 166Respiration is shown to be a slow combustion of carbon from sugar food, like a burning candle, sustaining warmth in the body.read · scan
- p. 167Respiration's carbonic acid, harmful to us, sustains plant life, linking animal and vegetable existence.read · scan
- p. 168Respiration acts at once in the lungs, analogous to combustion.read · scan
Thomas Carlyle, CharacteristicsVol. 25
- p. 319Life's healthy functioning is unified and silent, like celestial music that escapes the ear.read · scan
- p. 329Society is literally alive, with sickness, vigour, youth, decrepitude, dissolution and rebirth.read · scan
- p. 332Unconsciousness belongs to pure life, consciousness to a diseased mixture of life and death; death is the beginning of life.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Origin of SpeciesVol. 11
- p. 303–304Cites Spencer's view that life consists in the action and reaction of forces tending toward equilibrium.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29
- p. 207Plants propagated by buds share a common duration of life.read · scan
Henry David Thoreau, WalkingVol. 28
- p. 410The most alive is the wildest; the wild refreshes man and the raw material of life.read · scan
John Ruskin, Sesame and LiliesVol. 28
- p. 127To advance in life is to grow softer, warmer, quicker in heart and spirit, not to gather trappings while the soul dies.read · scan
1b.Death as the failing of the heart and the body
See also: Animal 1d · Experience 9b
Homer, The OdysseyVol. 22
- p. 150Anticleia explains what happens to mortals at death: sinews no longer bind flesh and bone.read · scan
- p. 175Odysseus's deep sleep is called next akin to death.read · scan
Plato, PhaedoVol. 2
- p. 72–73Body's slow decay, as in Egyptian embalming, contrasted with the soul's departure at death.read · scan
Buddhist WritingsVol. 45
- p. 680–681Describes dying: pains, failing senses, consciousness making its last stand in the heart.read · scan
- p. 736–737Distinguishes a corpse from a priest in the trance: both lack activity, but the entranced retains vitality, heat and senses.read · scan
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2
- p. 204Body a stream subject to putrefaction; soul a dream and vapour.read · scan
Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16
- p. 191The barber discovers the humpback still lives, extracts the fishbone, and revives him.read · scan
- p. 236He lies as one dead, then his spirit and soul revive and his strength returns with food and water.read · scan
- p. 317–319The damsel looks alive but Talib says she is dead.read · scan
Dante Alighieri, PurgatoryVol. 20
- p. 275–277Waking from sleep is likened to disciples waking at the Transfiguration, and note on deeper sleeps of death.read · scan
Traditional BalladsVol. 40
- p. 70–72She feigns death with a sleeping draught so she can be buried in Scotland.read · scan
Sir Thomas Malory, The Holy GrailVol. 35
- p. 200–202He lies seeming dead until the old man says he is full of life.read · scan
Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31
- p. 70–72Struck breathless, he lies like a dead man and hears bystanders lament the loss of their best defender.read · scan
- p. 164Cellini, in violent fever, is sure he will die; physicians despair of his life.read · scan
- p. 165–166Cellini swoons, is left for dead, and a friend writes to Florence reporting his death; the physician doubts any medicine can revive him.read · scan
- p. 167Cellini revives just as his shroud is being prepared; friends behold the resuscitated man, and he makes his will.read · scan
- p. 376–377Stricken with fever, he believes the illness will kill him within hours.read · scan
- p. 378Fevered, he keeps crying he is dying and will not live to see tomorrow.read · scan
William Harrison, A Description of Elizabethan EnglandVol. 35
- p. 346Holds that nothing corrupts without producing another living creature, even our own flesh into lice.read · scan
William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of MacbethVol. 46
- p. 340Sleep called the death of each day's life and balm of hurt minds, now murdered.read · scan
William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in AnimalsVol. 38
- p. 77As the heart flags and dies its motions slow, making them easier to observe.read · scan
- p. 82Describes the dying heart ceasing motion by stages, life lingering longest in the right auricle.read · scan
- p. 83Some animals more tenacious of life keep moving after death, even in pieces.read · scan
- p. 84A warmed finger revives a dead pigeon's heart; the auricles are first to live and last to die.read · scan
- p. 85Asks whether life begins with the heartbeat; death retraces generation, last-created failing first.read · scan
- p. 109Distinguishes two kinds of death: extinction from deficiency and suffocation from excess of blood.read · scan
- p. 122Argues death is corruption through lack of heat, and the heart is the fountain and principle of life.read · scan
- p. 123Blood must return to the heart for heat and spirits, else it congeals as in the dead; chilled limbs are revived.read · scan
- p. 123–124The heart is the source of life; when it is corrupted the whole animal fabric decays.read · scan
Thomas Hobbes, Of Man, Being the First Part of LeviathanVol. 34
- p. 369–370Human desire for power ceases only in death; felicity is continual progress of desire, and a man whose desires end can no more live.read · scan
Jonathan Swift, On the Death of Esther Johnson [Stella]Vol. 27
- p. 122–124She had been dying for months, kept alive by physicians and friends.read · scan
Sir Walter Scott, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 742–744Mary's wasting decay and near-death from pining show love's power over the body.read · scan
Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)Vol. 21
- p. 59–60The sudden change from fury to the stillness of death strikes him.read · scan
- p. 567–568The child's lifeless body looks like a living creature asleep.read · scan
- p. 582–583The friar's body is exhausted and near its end, upheld only by mental energy.read · scan
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Household TalesVol. 17
- p. 138–139Enchanted sleep suspends all life in the castle; suitors die miserably in the hedge.read · scan
George Gordon, Lord Byron, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 805Slow, gentle dying of the youngest brother, contrasted with violent deaths the narrator has seen.read · scan
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The CenciVol. 18
- p. 316–318Giacomo's guttering lamp becomes an image of fading life and the dying father's soul before Heaven's judgment seat.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29
- p. 35–36Organ retains vitality after the animal is dead; bodies dissolve rapidly once life ceases and ordinary laws of change act.read · scan
- p. 38Larvae feign death; the rings stay luminous for hours after the insect dies.read · scan
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1036–1037Sleep is likened to false death; the mother's slow dying and the father's death haunt the speaker.read · scan
Edgar Allan Poe, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1234–1236Convalescent speaker after the fever called 'Living' rests so still he seems dead.read · scan
1c.Death as separation of soul from body
Plato, PhaedoVol. 2
- p. 52–53Death is defined as the separation of soul from body; the world thinks philosophers desire death.read · scan
- p. 54Wisdom is attained after death; in life we approach it by least concern for the body.read · scan
- p. 54–56Death is the release of the soul from the body; it would be ridiculous to study death yet repine at it.read · scan
Buddhist WritingsVol. 45
- p. 684Death is merely the dissolution of the Groups; belief that a living entity dies and transmigrates is error.read · scan
The Bhagavad-Gita; or, Song CelestialVol. 45
- p. 789–791Krishna teaches that the wise mourn neither living nor dead; the spirit is deathless, bodies perish, and life cannot slay or be slain.read · scan
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2
- p. 237Death is cessation of sense impressions, of the strings moving appetites, of thoughts and of service to flesh.read · scan
- p. 247Death is either dispersion, resolution into atoms, annihilation, extinction or change.read · scan
- p. 256–257What has died does not fall out of the universe but changes and dissolves into its elements; the end matters no less than the beginning.read · scan
- p. 284Depart from men kindly and without resistance, as the soul easily separates from the body in a quiet death; it accords with nature.read · scan
John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4
- p. 204Spirits live vitally in every part and can die only by annihilation, unlike mortal man.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, Minor WorksVol. 48
- p. 366Death separates the soul from all it loved; sickness anticipates that final detachment.read · scan
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 555Addresses life as a companion he must part from; wonders what it is and where it goes at death.read · scan
George Long, The Philosophy of AntoninusVol. 2
- p. 342–343Death is cessation of sense impressions, appetites and thoughts, a mystery of nature like generation.read · scan
1d.Life without air and the life of ferments
See also: Experience 9c · Hypothesis 5d · Science 4a · Cause 9b
William Harvey, On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in AnimalsVol. 38
- p. 129–130Cold-blooded creatures with infrequent pulsation seem sometimes to live, sometimes to die, animal or vegetable.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29
- p. 24–25Describes minute living confervae and the process by which their pulpy matter forms granular spheres.read · scan
- p. 25Microscopic animalcula swarm the sea, burst and perish within minutes; the ocean abounds with living creatures.read · scan
- p. 104–105Creatures lie dormant in a lethargic state and are reanimated by water.read · scan
Louis Pasteur, The Physiological Theory of FermentationVol. 38
- p. 275The exceptional mode of life of ferments is contrasted with other living beings.read · scan
- p. 276–278Yeast's life is exceptional: it lives without air and decomposes far more than it assimilates.read · scan
- p. 283Yeast is a living plant that absorbs oxygen and emits carbonic acid like ordinary fungi; fermentation tied to the life of cells.read · scan
- p. 283Vigour of yeast cells declines with distance from their formation.read · scan
- p. 284Yeast cells mature like organisms from infancy to old age, continuing to live and gain weight after growth ceases.read · scan
- p. 285Young vigorous yeast can multiply without air thanks to oxygen stored earlier; older cells grow abnormally or lie inert yet revivable.read · scan
- p. 285–286Air sustains yeast vitality as breathing sustains living cells; deprived old yeast develops abnormal cells and slow fermentation.read · scan
- p. 289–290With abundant oxygen yeast lives like ordinary fungi and ceases to act as a ferment.read · scan
- p. 291Pasteur argues yeast's vital activity rises with free oxygen while its fermentative power falls, linking fermentation to the life of cells.read · scan
- p. 295–296Fermentation presented as direct consequence of nutrition, respiration and life of the yeast cell.read · scan
- p. 296–297Ferments, like moulds and all living cells, can live aerobian or anaerobian lives according to conditions.read · scan
- p. 297Contrasts anaerobian life of alcoholic ferments with aerial life of moulds, and why each escaped notice.read · scan
- p. 299–300Yeast grows with or without air, its fermentative character depending on oxygen supply, like an ordinary plant.read · scan
- p. 302Fermentative character may belong to any organized cell able to live briefly without atmospheric oxygen.read · scan
- p. 303–305Defines fermentation as life without air or free oxygen, a chemical process sustained by living cells.read · scan
- p. 306–307Fruit cells shift from aerobic life to anaerobic life in carbonic acid gas and then act as ferments.read · scan
- p. 309–310Fermentation is compared to the nutrition of living beings, subject to the variations of life.read · scan
- p. 311Fermentation is essentially related to vital activity, requiring organization and multiplication of globules or continued life.read · scan
- p. 311–313States the essential point: ferments are beings able to live without free oxygen, so fermentation is life without air.read · scan
- p. 313Yeast is continually modified with age; small oxygen revives cells to germinate and multiply when later deprived of air.read · scan
- p. 314Yeast and vibrios live without oxygen, an exception to the supposed rigid law of respiration for living beings.read · scan
- p. 316–317Marvels that organization, life and motion arise from air-borne germs and continue without free oxygen.read · scan
- p. 318Fermentation of the tartrate is a consequence of life; boiled flask without life never ferments.read · scan
- p. 319Organisms multiply and fermentation proceeds with the tartrate consumed.read · scan
- p. 321–322The animal matter found is identified as the living ferment causing the decomposition.read · scan
- p. 322–323Vibrios cease moving and die after exhausting their food, entangled in clusters.read · scan
- p. 323–324Gives another example of life without air in lactate of lime fermentation.read · scan
- p. 324–325Vibrios develop and ferment in liquid deprived of air.read · scan
- p. 328–329Describes the lively movement, pairing and separation of vibrios as living organisms multiplying.read · scan
- p. 331Asks whether the motionless vibrios are dead or can revive, comparing them to yeast that revives in fresh medium.read · scan
- p. 332–333Vibrio deposits retain power to revive and cause fermentation; oxygen renders the vibrios motionless, so life does not need it.read · scan
- p. 333–334Atmospheric oxygen deadens vibrios, which languish near the air and recover where air is absent.read · scan
- p. 335Aerobic bacteria die where oxygen is exhausted, while vibrios thrive without air, prompting the idea of life without air.read · scan
- p. 336–337Vibrios issue from germs in dust, argued as evidence against spontaneous generation of vibrios or bacteria.read · scan
- p. 338Vibrios live without free oxygen but perish when suddenly exposed to it.read · scan
- p. 342Bacteria gather round air bubbles to prolong their lives, showing an instinct for life.read · scan
- p. 343–344Ferment organisms live and multiply without air, and fermentation is tied to their life.read · scan
- p. 346Pasteur holds that fermentation is correlative with life; ferment cells bud and multiply, carrying their own food supplies.read · scan
- p. 347–348The weight increase is offered as proof of life or of a chemical work of nutrition and assimilation.read · scan
- p. 350The lactic ferment is a living organized being, and alcoholic fermentation depends on the life of the yeast cell.read · scan
- p. 351–352Living ferment organisms are distinguished from lifeless soluble ferments by their fatal reaction to compressed oxygen.read · scan
- p. 352–353Debate whether albuminous matter becomes living cells, via hemi-organism and an unexplained 'organic impulse'.read · scan
- p. 362Proteic matter of ferments, perhaps of plants and animals, is formed by the vital activity of cells acting on mineral salts and carbohydrates.read · scan
- p. 363Some lower organisms might build complex substances and live without sunlight, even if the sun were extinguished.read · scan
1e.The extinction of species and the struggle for life
See also: Evolution 4e · Geology 4c
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34
- p. 169Nature destroys the weakly born while strengthening the sound.read · scan
George Gordon, Lord Byron, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 796Vision of the dying earth: famine, death of all men, and a dog faithful to its master's corpse.read · scan
- p. 796–798The last two survivors die of mutual hideousness; the world becomes a lump of death.read · scan
Sir Charles Lyell, Uniformity in the Series of Past Changes in the Animate and Inanimate WorldVol. 38
- p. 400Forests and sea creatures multiply and decay, leaving little trace unless preserved in a fossil state.read · scan
- p. 412–413Mortality and births of a population serve as analogy for extinction and appearance of species.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Origin of SpeciesVol. 11
- p. 85Consoling view that the war of nature is not incessant, fear is absent, and death is generally prompt.read · scan
- p. 113–114Rarity is precursor to extinction; less favoured forms lose the race for life.read · scan
- p. 124–125Extinction of parent species and collateral lines through competition among closely related forms.read · scan
- p. 137Extinct orders and genera are dead branches; few lineages survive across geological ages.read · scan
- p. 195–196Selection acts by life and death, survival of the fittest and destruction of the less fit.read · scan
- p. 300Hybrid embryos and chicks perish early, of 500 eggs only twelve reared.read · scan
- p. 345Darwin discusses the first appearance of life on earth, evidence of living beings before the Cambrian, and the Eozoon as earliest organisms.read · scan
- p. 345–346Geological hypothesis about oceans and continents in explaining absence of pre-Cambrian fossils; only indirectly about the beginning of life.read · scan
- p. 346–347Summarizes difficulty of missing fossil-bearing strata before the Cambrian; forms of life entombed in the imperfect geological record.read · scan
- p. 353Species and groups disappear at unequal rates; extinction is usually slower than production.read · scan
- p. 355Compares extinction after rarity to death following sickness in an individual.read · scan
- p. 374Extinction of species and whole genera without progeny is a common outcome.read · scan
- p. 448Extinction of connecting forms explains aberrant groups represented by very few species.read · scan
- p. 485More individuals are born than can survive, so a grain in the balance decides who lives and dies.read · scan
- p. 506From the war of nature, famine and death follows the production of the higher animals.read · scan
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the BeagleVol. 29
- p. 43–44Insects struggle to escape death; victims are kept paralysed but alive to feed the larvae.read · scan
- p. 73Organic beings persist in extreme environments such as brine and perpetual snow.read · scan
- p. 86–87Punta Alta is a catacomb of monsters of extinct races.read · scan
- p. 135Extinction of native horse and mastodon marvelled at.read · scan
- p. 180Compares species' extinction to a sick man dying, not by violence.read · scan
- p. 388Young fall prey to buzzards; old tortoises die only by accident, according to inhabitants.read · scan
- p. 437–438Aboriginal numbers decline through spirits, disease, loss of game and infant mortality of wandering life.read · scan
- p. 438–439Inexplicable depopulation of Tahiti and doomed natives despite reduced infanticide and war.read · scan
- p. 450–452Deported natives dwindled from 210 to fifty-four in seven years with few children.read · scan
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23
- p. 241–242Wasting sickness sweeps off the native population, a doomed people; the friend near death.read · scan
Matthew Arnold, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1135–1136Deaths of great poets mark the passing of an age; Europe's expiring life.read · scan
Outline · 2 ›