7. And, finally, as the organic life is the first born, so it is the last to die; while the animal life, as it is the latest born, and the last to attain its full development, so it is the earliest to decline and the first to perish. In the process of natural death, the extinction of the animal is always anterior to that of the organic life. Real death is a later, and sometimes a much later event than apparent death. An animal appears to be dead when, together with the abolition of sensation and the loss of voluntary motion, respiration, circulation, and the rest of the organic functions can no longer be distinguished; but these functions go on some time after they have ceased to afford external indications of their action. In man, and the warmblooded animals in general, suspension or submersion extinguishes the animal life, at the latest, within the space of four minutes from the time that the atmospheric air is completely excluded from the lung; but did the organic functions also cease at the same period, it would be impossible to restore an animal to life after apparent death from drowning and the like. But however complete and protracted the abolition of the animal functions, re-animation is always possible as long as the organic organs are capable of being restored to their usual vigour. The cessation of the animal life is but the first stage of death, from which recovery is possible; death is complete only when the organic together with the animal functions have wholly ceased, and are incapable of being re-established. In man, the process of death is seldom altogether natural. It is generally rendered premature by the operation of circumstances which destroy life otherwise than by that progressive and slow decay which is the inevitable result of the action of organized structure. Death, when natural, is the last event of an extended series, of which the first that is appreciable is a change in the animal life and in the noblest portion of that life. The higher faculties fail in the reverse order of their development; the retrogression is the inverse of the progression, and the noblest creature, in returning to the state of non-existence, retraces step by step each successive stage by which it reached the summit of life. In the advancing series, the animal is superadded to the organic life; sensation, the lowest faculty of the animal life, precedes ratiocination, the highest. The senses called into play at the moment of birth soon acquire the utmost perfection of which they are capable; but the intellectual faculties, later developed, are still later perfected, and the highest the latest.