Any kind of monster coming from the human womb, if it is only a head and lacks a body (Acardiacus Acormus), or is a body and lacks a head and heart (Acardiacus Acephalus), or is a Foetus Anideus, which is a shapeless mass of flesh covered with skin, should be baptized, provided _it shows signs of life_. Number 19 in the Ritual would be liable to an interpretation which is too narrow if it were not that very monstrous fetuses, which appear to a lay observer to be not human, are as a rule delivered dead. Here it may be worth while to mention that a hybrid between a human being and a lower animal is impossible. As to number 20, the rule for differentiating unity or duality of personality is not the number of heads, but the number of evident consciousnesses, and this differentiation commonly cannot be made at birth. There have been examples of two-headed monsters delivered alive, which were single as to soul because the consciousness evidently was one. CHAPTER IV WHEN DOES HUMAN LIFE END? The moment human life begins in the human fetus is a subject of dispute, but the moment human life ends is a mystery--we have no method of determining exactly just when the soul leaves the body. Daily throughout the world the priest reaches a patient who has just died. Conditional absolution, extreme unction, baptism might have been administered if there were signs of life, but the heart and lungs are still, "the patient is dead," and the priest leaves without doing anything. Yet it is always probable that the patient does not die at once even in a case of decapitation. Bichat, at the beginning of the last century, called the brain, lungs, and heart "the tripod of life," and from time immemorial we have based our judgment of the presence of somatic death on the lack of consciousness, respiration, and circulation in the patient. The heart, however, beats after consciousness and respiration cease (and sometimes respiration continues after the pulse cannot be felt), and this cardiac activity may go on for more than a half hour after all the normal clinical signs of death have appeared--after respiration has quit, when no heart-sounds can be heard by the stethoscope and muscular relaxation indicates death.