The molecules of which they are constituted fall altogether to the ground. The personal existence of the individual comes to an end. His molecules separate and are dispersed. QUÆRENS. They disintegrate, and the atoms fly apart, like truants from school. LUMEN. Just so. I can recollect this disintegration of the body often took place in their lives. Sometimes it was the result of contrariety, sometimes of fatigue, and in other cases of a want of organic accord between the different parts. They exist in their entirety actual and complete, then suddenly they are reduced into the most simple elementary form. The cerebral molecule, which constitutes each one in reality, feels itself descending in consequence of the fall of its sister molecules of the long branches, and it arrives at the surface of the ground solitary and independent. QUÆRENS. This mode of dissolution would sometimes be a very convenient proceeding here below. To get out of an embarrassing situation, for example a conjugal scene _à la_ Molière, or a bad quarter of an hour such as Rabelais describes, or a mournful situation such as the scaffold for an execution, one would only have to let loose one's constituent atoms, and--bid good-bye to the company.... * * * * * [Sidenote: Animated molecules.] LUMEN. You seem to regard the matter as a joke, but I assure you it is an undoubted reality. It would exist on the Earth as well as on the planet of Orion, if the principle of authority were not so firmly fixed with you. There it is only in an elementary form. Your body is formed of animated molecules. According to one of your most eminent physiologists, your spinal marrow is a series of centres, linked together independently, and yet under control. The essential constituents of your blood, of your flesh, and of your bones, are in a like case. They are provinces self-governed, but subject to a superior authority. The working of this superior authority is a condition of human life--a condition which is less exclusive amongst the inferior animals. Each ring of the worm called lombric is a complete worm, so that a lombric represents a series of similar beings constituting a veritable living cooperative society. Cut into rings, the worm would be so many independent individuals. In the tape-worm, a solitary worm, the head is of more importance than the rest of the body, and possesses the faculty of reproducing the rest of the body after it has been cut off. The leech is another example of united individuals. Cut it into five or six rings, and the operation gives you as many leeches. Thus also, a cutting of a branch of a tree will grow. In like manner a crab's claw or a lizard's tail will be reproduced. In reality the vertebrate animals, such as man, are essentially composite in structure. The spinal marrow, and its highest expansion in the brain, consist of segments placed in juxtaposition, with nervous centres, each of which possesses an elementary soul.