Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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THE SPIRITS’ BOOK
"Yes; when the machine gets out of order, its action ceases. When the body falls ill, life
withdraws from it."
69. Why is death caused more certainly by a lesion of the heart than by that of any other
organ?
"The heart is a life-making machine. But the heart is not the only organ of which the lesion
causes death; it is only one of the wheels essential to the working of the machine."
70. What becomes of the matter and the vital principle of organic beings after their death?
"The inert matter is decomposed, and serves to form other bodies; the vital principle returns
to the general mass of the universal fluid."
On the death of an organic being, the elements of which its body was composed undergo new
combinations that form new beings. These, in their turn, draw the principle of life and activity from the
universal source they absorb and assimilate it, and restore it again to that source when they cease to exist.
The organs of organic beings are, so to say, impregnated with the vital fluid. This fluid gives to every part
of an organised being the activity which brings its parts into union after certain lesions, and reestablishes
functions that have been temporarily suspended. But when the elements essential to the play of the
organism have been destroyed, or too deeply injured, the vital fluid Is powerless to transmit to them the
movement which constitutes life, and the being dies.
The organs of a body necessarily react. more or less powerfully. upon one another their reciprocity of
action results from their harmony among themselves. When from any cause this harmony is destroyed,
their functions cease just as a piece of machinery comes to a stand-still when the essential portions of its
mechanism get out of order, or as a clock stops when its works are worn out by use, accidentally broken,
so that the spring is no longer able to keep it going.
We have an image of life and death still more exact in the electric battery. The battery, like all natural
bodies, contains electricity in a latent state but the electrical phenomena are only manifested when the
fluid Is set In motion by a special cause. When this movement is superinduced, the battery may be said to
become alive but when the cause of the electrical activity ceases, the phenomena cease to occur, and the
battery relapses into a state of inertia. Organic bodies may thus be said to be a sort of electric battery, in
which the movement of the fluid produces the phenomena of life, and in which the cessation of that
movement produces death.
The quantity of vital fluid present in organic beings is not the same all; it varies In the various species of
living beings, and is not constantly the same, either in the same individual or in the individuals of the
same species. There are some which may be said to be saturated with it, and others in which it exists in
very small proportions. Hence certain species are endowed with a more active and more tenacious life,
resulting from the superabundance of the vital fluid present in their organism.
The amount of vital fluid contained in a given organism may be exhausted, and may thus become
insufficient for the maintenance of life, unless it be renewed by the absorption and assimilation of the
substances in which that fluid resides.
The vital fluid may be transmitted by one individual to another individual. An organisation in which it
exists more abundantly may impart it to another in which it is deficient; and may thus, in certain cases,
rekindle the vital flame when on the point of being extinguished.