1940-05-18 — Page 27

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

By Ernie

May 18, 1940.

Bushmiller

NANCY

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R.A.F. CASUALTY

LIST OF 145

NAZIS BOMB HOSPITAL

LONDON, May 17 (Reuter) The latest R.A.F, ensunity list contains 145 PARIS, May 17. (Reuter)-NOVA-, names, comprising 27 killed," "in-[papers report that German warblanes cluding nine previously reported dropped incendiary bombs on a civil rundled of wounds old and pastorally hospital at Chalms

night wounded or injured; 90 aur-Mama. It is added that part of missing; nino died; four, previously the township of Vitry to Francoin is reported "missing" are “nów reported ablaze, following the dropping of la- toka prisoners of war.

ceridiary bombs.

WE

7E And no difficulty in speaking frankly to children about some very sur- prising facts, euch as broad- casting and the roundness of the earth. We do not find it so easy to tell them about ku- man reproduction and human death.

This meuns that we ourselves have psychologica) resistances which prevent us from thinking clearly about such matters.

**

*

Our ancestors identified Me with breathing. "Spirit" is only a Latin word for breath. We are now ap! to identify it with the heart-beat, and every time that a man or wo- man whose heart has stopped for n few minutes recovers again, some- one writes that the dead have been restored to life. These views are for more materialistic than any which I hold. The heart is only a pump for blood, and the lungs a means of exposing it to air. We can already keep the rest of an animal alive for some hours with An artificial heart and lungs, and it is only a question of time before this is done with a man. One of the main dimculties is to prevent the blood from clotting in the artificiat heart.

The facts about life are much more complicated.. The opposite to a machine, which is built up of re- placeable parts, is an Individual,

which cannot be taken to bits and' put together again. Now man is -a-compromise between-the-two-

We can do a certain amount of replacement with spare parts as when we transfuse a quart of one minn's blood into

another. But man_is_only.ta.some extent a mus chine, so we cannot do very much replacement of this kind. And when

We

but a man is dead shy we mean that his individuality has ceased rather than that his ma- chinery has stopped working, even though the two events generally go together.

Let me explain. When you are dead, I can take some of your white blood corpuscles and grow them in a suitable fluid, certainly for weeks, perhaps for many years. If I knew enough I could do the same with many of your other tis- sues. This is already possible with the cells of embryo chicks rals,

or For some hours after you are dend there is still life in your body. But it is not your life, merely the life of your cells. If I had mur- dered you it would be no delence to point to a culture of your cells, and say that you were still alive. There would be life there, but not your life.

One can kill a rabbit by a blow on the neck and take out its heart. If the heart is kept warm and sup- plled with the right solution and. plenty of oxygen it will go on beat- ing for hours. The heart is aliye, though the rabbit is dead. The same is true of human hearts, which have occasionally been taken out and kept alive for some time after their owners' death,

*

What is this Individuality which comes to an end at death? Is it something outside the lives of the parts, and added to them, or is it just the unity by co-operation of these sub-lives? There is good renson to adopt the second view,

A tune does not consist, of notes. and a melody. If the notes are played-in-the-proper order, the melody is there. It has no exis- tence

separable from a parts. Twenty-two players may or may not co-operate to play cricket match, but you certainly cannot have the match without the players.

One' cannot renson so directly about a man because a man con- sists of a very large number of cella, about ten thousand million million, and no one of them is os essential to the life of the whole man as the bowlor to the cricket match.

Just as, England could carry on without any one man, or any thou-

and mon so could you without. any particular cell or thousand cells. But kill a few million key men, say all qualified locomotive, lorry and car drivers, and England

by

J. B. S.

HALDANE

would collapse into starvation and anarchy.

Against the theory that an in- divisible something, the soul, leaves the body at the moment of death, Is the experience of brain surgery. An American surgeon has studied. the effect on several people, includ- ing his own sister of removing largo parts of the front of the brain after injury or the growth of a tumour.

future life for the individual, though they do not offer a very cheerful prospect to those persons who are most interested in their own in- dividualities. Other religions pro- mise the ultimate extinction of in- dividuality as the greatest possible blessing.

I have some sympathy with this view. If I live for another Alty years I expect that most of my ac-. quaintances will be heartily tired' of me, and I shall very probably be rather ured of myself, II wo are to believe Freud, we all carry within us a secret longing for -denth, which-at-most-times-we-re-- press below the surface of our consciousness.

It is not a hatred of life, but a positive desire. And as we growTM older we may do well to allow it some measure of freedom. For it is the one desire which will quite certainly be satisfied.

On the other hand, my mind In- This causes no appreciable loss of sensation, memory, or muscular_cludes ceriain constituents (this is power, but there is a very real loss clumsy metaphor, but we can of Initiative. One patient could only speak of spiritual things in will no more metaphors) which look after her household on ordm- ary occasions, but could not order perish with the dissolution of my a large dinner; another could keep Individuality than will

will the storns simple job, but could not set of which my body is composed. about looking for a new one, "He To however slight an extent, I have will never make a revolutionary," Justice, courage, mathematles and says our author. If the totalitarian

human kindness, and after my State proves a success, perhaps this

death they will still be manifested operation will be performed on In others for whom I shall make everyone except dictators.

room. If these others are better than me I have no cause for com- plaint.

As the brain is destroyed the personality gradually fades out, until a baby born with no upper parts to its brain shows less sins of consciousness than a fish, let alone A rabbit or dog, though it may live for a year. If there is a de- tachable soul. Il con certainly be detached bit by bit, and all that is specially human in it may

be Iost long before death.

To many it seems more reason- able to regard the soul as a function of the co-operating brain-cells, just ns concert performance of a symphony, which, like the soul, has a unity of its own, is a function of the co-operating members of an orchestra.

There are many. ways of dying. Usually some organ plays its part so badly that the others are one by one put out of action.

In pneumonia, the inflamed lungs let through so little oxygen that the rest of the body is suffocaled. In heart disease the heart may stop suddenly, or pump so inefficiently ns to suffocate the other organs. In many diseases the part of the brain which sends down nervoUS | Impulses to the breathing muscles' is poisoned, and breathing censes.

...But-sclones-knows-netlileg of a definite moment of denth in most enses. After the last breath a few more minutes of life could generally be vouchsafed by artificial respira- tion. After the Inst heart-beat n could open the abdominnt surgeon wall, and by putting his hand up the 'chest and rhythmically squeezing the heart, kept the blood circulating for a short time, Death is usually a gradual process well described by the word "dissolution." After death of the body as a whole meny Individual cells iive on for hours or days, till they die

into

Death, then, as I see it, is the end of a particular pattern of ma- terial and mental happenings which are bound up with one another.

If the pattern was good and beautiful there is a cause for gor- row. But If, as sometimes happens, the end of the melody of life is its noblest and most beautiful moment, we may feel that "nothing is here for tears."

We need only pity the dying if they are Intolerable pain, or it their individualitics mean so much to them that the prospect of their. own end is an agony.

For death not the end of life. It is only the end of my life or your life,

Switzerland

All Ready

But Tension Thought To Be Relieved LONDON, May 17 (Reuter);} -After the Federal Council had examined the International situation at a long meeting this afternoon, a high Swiss officer doclared: "No further military measures need be taken as the army is completely prepared, and at its war stations. Nothing remains to be dono except await events patiently.” --

Gro

Authoritative circles here pleased to nola signa of a more peaco- ful orientation on the part of Italy. Political observers feel that an in- terested Power has recently been.try- ing to test the Swiss herves. "It is And is that all. For d men of thought that Switzerland might be -woman whose interests lle income, endangered if the western front

people and things outside them- selves. It is very obviously not all Some religions promise an eternal

Anally becomes static.

Signs of Italy's interest in Swiss neutrality are sill not lacking..

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