Now this won’t do! When one thinks of the deaths of animals—so composed on the whole—the calm, the quietude, the dignity even, and the absence as a rule of very acute or obvious suffering; or when one thinks of the very similar conditions of death among many savage peoples; one cannot but ask, Why this difference? One cannot but say, It really _will not do_ for us ‘the heirs of all the ages’ to go on behaving in this feeble and foolish way—leading lives which utterly unfit us for the inevitable end of life, and stricken with most incompetent panic and dismay when the very thing arrives which we have foreseen and which we have had such ample time to prepare for. Death—from whatever point of view we look at it—seems to be a break-up of the unity of the creature.[38] It is a dislocation and to some degree a rending asunder. But such dislocation and break-up may be of a healthy and normal type, or it may be unhealthy and of the nature of disease. In the first case it may chiefly consist in the getting rid or shedding off of an out-worn husk, which is simply left behind—much in the same way as the chrysalis sheath of a moth or other insect is left behind, or as the husks of a growing bud or bulb are peeled off. Many an old person seems to die in this way—the body being the scene of little or no disturbance or conflict, but simply withering up, while often at the same time the spiritual nature of the man becomes strangely luminous and penetrating. Here there is a certain dislocation, but no painful rending asunder. The centre of life seems merely to retire to a more inward and subtle region, where it perchance nourishes an even brighter flame than before; and the outer body is peeled off as a sort of outworn shell. But in other cases death is undoubtedly very different. Instead of the one centre simply withdrawing inward in the way indicated, while at the same time preserving almost to the last a general unity of the creature, rebellious and insubordinate centres spring up and introduce serious conflict into the organism. These are of course diseases, or centres of disease—either in the body, like tumors, alien growths, nests of microbes, and so forth; or in the mind, like violent passions, greeds, anxieties, fears, rigid habits. And forming thus independent centres they tear and rend the body and mind between them till at last death supervenes—not at all on account of the voluntary withdrawal of the inner person to more ethereal regions, but simply through the destruction of the organism in which that person functions. It is evident (whatever view one may take of that inner person and its perduration into other regions of existence) that the former mode of death is the more normal, natural and desirable of the two, and the one which we should encourage and cultivate; and that the latter is likely to be painful, undignified, and even repulsive.