Suppose the case of the ingenious
sinner. Suppose that he could not escape by his clever trick. Then
his soul must inevitably taste the condition of the damned while he is
asleep. But when he is waked at last, and found to be alive, his soul
must come back to him, glowing from the eternal flames. Unpleasant
thought! Keyork Arabian, you had far better not go to sleep at present.
Since all that is fantastic nonsense, on the face of it, I am inclined
to believe that the presence of the soul is in some way a condition
requisite for life, rather than depending upon it. I wish I could buy a
soul. It is quite certain that life is not a mere mechanical or chemical
process. I have gone too far to believe that. Take man at the very
moment of death--have everything ready, do what you will--my artificial
heart is a very perfect instrument, mechanically speaking--and how long
does it take to start the artificial circulation through the carotid
artery? Not a hundredth part so long a time as drowned people often lie
before being brought back, without a pulsation, without a breath. Yet
I never succeeded, though I have made the artificial heart work on a
narcotised rabbit, and the rabbit died instantly when I stopped the
machine, which proves that it was the machine that kept it alive.
Perhaps if one applied it to a man just before death he might live on
indefinitely, grow fat and flourish so long as the glass heart worked.
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