Question Five
Whether the soul informs the body when a human being is dead
It is asked whether, when a human being is dying, the soul ceases successively to inform part after part of the body, or whether perhaps it ceases to inform all the parts simultaneously in the same instant.
To this the answer is affirmative: namely, when a human being is dying, the soul ceases successively to inform part after part. The reason is that the soul does not cease to inform the matter subject to it unless the disposition of that matter which it requires for its operations has been corrupted by nature beyond restoration. But corruption of a disposition of this kind is found to occur first in the parts more remote from the heart, in which is the source of vital power. Therefore the proposition follows.
This conclusion is supported first by the fact that in a dying person the feet are found cold first, having been deprived of heat and spirits, then the hands, and so thereafter successively as far as the heart. It is supported, second, by that common saying of the philosophers that, among the members of the body, the heart lives first and dies last, Book II of On Generation, chapter 4.
If it is objected that the last deanimation of the human body ought proportionately to occur in the same manner as its first animation; but in the body’s first animation the soul informs all the parts of the body simultaneously - for from the first instant of the animation of the embryo, the body begins, in every part in which it is accustomed to possess sensation, to perform vegetative functions and to sense, although imperfectly - therefore, similarly, in the final deanimation of the human body the soul must cease in some one instant to inform all the parts of the body simultaneously.
To this it is answered that the first animation and the final deanimation of the body are not alike. For the first animation of the body’s parts is natural, and the disposition of matter so that it may be informed by the soul is intended by nature. But the separation and deanimation of the body’s parts is not intended by nature per se, just as the induction of the indisposition upon which the soul’s separation follows does not occur according to the order and judgment of nature. Therefore, and so forth.
Nevertheless, because of the things just said, it must be carefully understood that the progress of a human being’s corruption, upon which the separation of the soul follows, proceeds in the contrary direction from the human being’s progress toward life. For the progress toward life begins in a human being with the exercise of the operations of the vegetative soul in the embryo, secondly those of the sensitive soul, and thirdly those of the intellective or rational soul, as the natural philosophers say. But the progress of corruption is contrary: first what the edition calls “common use” ceases, secondly the act of sensation, and thirdly the work of vegetation. These things are from Henry of Hesse, On Genesis.
Addition
The position of the philosophers also supports this: matter is the cause of corruption. From this it follows that what is incorruptible is immaterial and simple, Book III of the Metaphysics, commentary 15.