DEATH', a total and permanent cessa tion of all the vital functions, when the organs have not only ceased to net, but have lost the susceptibility of renewed action. "Men," says Lord Bacon, " fear death, as children fear the dark ; and as that natural fear in children is increased by frightful tales, so is the other. Groans, convulsions, weeping friends, and the like, show death terrible; yet there is no pas sion so weals but conquers the fear of it, and therefore death is not such a terrible enemy ; revenge triumphs over death love slights it ; dread of shame prefers it ; grief flies to it ; and fear anticipates it." The alarms most prevalent among man kind seem to arise from two considera tions, viz., the supposed corporeal suffer ing attending it ; and the state that is to succeed it. With respect to the supposed corporeal suffering, it may be observed, that death is a mere passive extinction of the vital fire, unattended with any exer tion of the animal functions, and there fore wholly free from pain. The agonies
and sufferings incident to sickness or wounds, are the agonies and sufferings of life, not of death ; they are the struggles of the body to live, not to die ; efforts of the machine to overcome the obstacles by which its functions are impeded. But when the moment of dissolution arrives, all sense of suffering is subdued by an in stantaneous stoppage of life, or by a lan guid insensible fainting.—In law, there is a natural death and a civil death; nat ural, where actual death takes place ; where a person is not actually dead, but adjudged so by law ; as by banish ment, abjuration of the realm, &c.