We always look on this divisibility of the life-principle in some creatures with a peculiar repugnance; and, like all phenomena that seem to contradict the regular course of nature, it gives a {76} shock to the mind. We do not experience this feeling with regard to plant life, and to the life of some of the lower animal organisms, because we are more familiar with the sight in these cases. The trouble to the mind is in the case of the higher life of sentient and intelligent beings that have passions like our own. We see it even in some vertebrates, especially in serpents, which are most tenacious of life. Thus, there is a recorded case of a pit viper, the head of which was severed from the body by the person who found it. When the head was approached the jaws opened and closed with a vicious snap, and when the headless trunk was touched it instantly recoiled and struck at the touching object. [Sidenote: Tenacity of life] Such cases are apt to produce in some minds a sense as of something unfamiliar and uncanny behind nature that mocks us. But even those who are entirely free from any such animistic feeling are strangely disturbed at the spectacle, not only because it is opposed to the order of nature (as the mind apprehends it), but also because it contradicts the old fixed eternal idea we all have, that life is compounded of two things--the material body and the immaterial spirit, which leavens and, in a sense, re-creates and shines in and through the clay it is mixed with; and that you cannot destroy the body without also destroying or driving out that mysterious, subtle principle. Life was thus anciently likened to a seal, which is two things in one--the wax and the impression on it. You cannot break the seal without also destroying the impression, any more than you can {77} break a pitcher without spilling the liquor in it. In such cases as those of the beetle and the serpent, it would perhaps be better to liken life to a red, glowing ember, which may be broken into pieces, and each piece still burn and glow with its own portion of the original heat.