If I have rather enlarged on this topic it is only that I might destroy a prejudice so repugnant to the happiness of man. To this prejudice many have fallen victims; and I have myself known several, of the female sex in particular, who, from the very dread of death, have died in reality. Such terrible alarms seem, indeed, to be particular to those whom Nature or education have endowed with superior sensibility, as the gross of mankind look forward to death, if not with indifference at least without terror. In viewing things as they are consists the spirit of true philosophy. With this philosophy our internal sensations would always correspond, were they not perverted by the illusions of imagination, and by the unfortunate habit of fabricating phantoms of excessive pains and of pleasure. Nothing appears terrible nor charming but what is at distance. To obtain a certain knowledge of either we must have the resolution, or the wisdom, to take a close and particular view of them, and all their extraordinary circumstances will disappear. If there be any thing necessary to confirm what has been said concerning the gradual cessation of life, we might find it in the uncertainty of the signs of death. By consulting the writers on this subject, and particularly Winslow and Bruhier, we shall be convinced, that between life and death the shade is often so undistinguishable that all the powers of medical art are insufficient to determine upon it. According to them, "the colour of the face, the warmth of the body, the suppleness of the joints, are but equivocal signs of life; and that the paleness of the complexion, the coldness of the body, the stiffness of the extremities, the cessation of all motion, and the total insensibility of the parts, are signs to the full as equivocal of death." It is also the same with regard to the cessation of the pulse, and of respiration, which are sometimes so effectually kept under, that it is impossible to obtain the smallest perception of either. By carrying a mirror, or candle, to the mouth of a person supposed to be dead, people expect to find whether he breathes or not; but in this experiment there is little certainty; the mirror is often sullied after death has taken place, and remains unclouded while the person is still alive. Neither do burning nor scarifying, noises in the ears, nor pungent spirits applied to the nostrils, give indubitable proofs of the discontinuance of life; many are the instances of persons who have undergone all such trials without shewing any signs of life, and yet, to the astonishment of the spectators, recovered afterwards, without the smallest assistance.