Nothing can be more evident than that life, in some cases, has a near resemblance to death, and therefore that we ought to be extremely cautious of renouncing, and committing too hastily to the grave, the bodies of our fellow-creatures. Neither ten, twenty, nor twenty-four hours are sufficient to distinguish real from apparent death; and there are instances of persons who have been alive in the grave at the end of the second, and even the third day. Why suffer to be interred with precipitation those persons whose lives we ardently wished to prolong? Why, though all men are equally interested in the abolition of it, does the practice still subsist? On the authority of the most able physicians, it incontestably appears, "that the body, though living, is sometimes so far deprived of all vital function, as to have every external appearance of death; that, if in the space of three days, or seventy two hours, no sign of life appears, and on the contrary the body exhales a cadaverous smell, there is an infallible proof of actual death; and that then, though on no account till then, the interment can with safety take place."
Hereafter we shall have occasion to speak of the usages of different nations with respect to obsequies, interments, and embalments. The greatest part, even of the most savage people, pay more attention than we to their deceased friends. What with us is nothing more than a ceremony, they consider as an essential duty. Far superior is the respect which they pay to their dead: they clothe them, they speak to them, they recite their exploits, they extol their virtues; while we, who pique ourselves on our sensibility, with hardly an appearance of humanity, forsake and fly from them, we neither desire to see, nor have courage nor inclination to speak to them, and even avoid every place which may recall their idea to our minds. Than savages themselves, then, do we, in this respect, discover either more indifference or more weakness.
Having thus given a history of life, and of death, as they relate to the individual, let us now consider them both, as they affect the whole species. Man dies at every age; and though in general the duration of his life is longer than that of most animals, yet it is more uncertain and more variable.