4p39sc.md (1476B)
1 The extent to which such causes can injure or be of 2 service to the mind will be explained in the Fifth Part. But I 3 would here remark that I consider that a body undergoes death, 4 when the proportion of motion and rest which obtained mutually 5 among its several parts is changed. For I do not venture to deny 6 that a human body, while keeping the circulation of the blood and 7 other properties, wherein the life of a body is thought to 8 consist, may none the less be changed into another nature totally 9 different from its own. There is no reason, which compels me to 10 maintain that a body does not die, unless it becomes a corpse; 11 nay, experience would seem to point to the opposite conclusion. 12 It sometimes happens, that a man undergoes such changes, that I 13 should hardly call him the same. As I have heard tell of a 14 certain Spanish poet, who had been seized with sickness, and 15 though he recovered therefrom yet remained so oblivious of his 16 past life, that he would not believe the plays and tragedies he 17 had written to be his own: indeed, he might have been taken for 18 a grown–up child, if he had also forgotten his native tongue. If 19 this instance seems incredible, what shall we say of infants? A 20 man of ripe age deems their nature so unlike his own, that he can 21 only be persuaded that he too has been an infant by the analogy 22 of other men. However, I prefer to leave such questions 23 undiscussed, lest I should give ground to the superstitious for 24 raising new issues. 25 26