Question Six
Whether, when the heart is dead, the soul informs the body
It is doubted whether it can happen that, when the heart is already dead, the soul might still inform some other part or another member of the body.
To this it is answered as follows. Since the fixed complexion of the other members of the body does not depend upon the heart, there seems to be no incompatibility in there still being, after the complexion of the heart has been corrupted, a fixed complexion in some other part of the body sufficient for the union of the soul with that part.
For just as it often happens that an eye is irrecoverably blind and yet the soul still informs the whole of its matter, so it also seems that the soul can inform some part of the body, even if that part were so unfortunate that the soul could not exercise vegetative operations in it. For a more perfect complexion seems to be required for exercising a vital operation than for the mere union of the soul itself with the body.
It is therefore compatible with the cessation of the operations of the vegetative and sensitive soul throughout the whole body that the soul should still adhere informatively to the body, and thus that the human being should not yet be dead through the dissolution of the informative union with the body.
Those, however, who say that as soon as an irreformable disposition of the body or one of its parts - whether of the heart or of another principal member without whose operation life cannot continue, as in the case of the operations of the vegetative soul - has been corrupted, the soul ceases just as quickly to inform the whole body, however the other members may be disposed: persons of this kind attend to the regular process of a human being toward death, or they attend only to that which for the most part is accustomed to happen in dying persons. For ordinarily in them the heart appears to die last.
From this conclusion or opinion the following corollary follows: a person who is held to be dead according to common estimation is not always dead simply because the deanimation of the body does not always follow upon the cessation of sensation and of the heart’s motion. Rather, it can happen that after that cessation the informative union of the soul with the body sometimes remains for a long time. Thus it can happen that a living human being is sometimes buried in the burial of the dead, as has been customary during times of plague.
It can also sometimes happen from some accidental cause that in a healthy human being breath, every motion, and sensation cease for a long time - for a day or thereabouts - so that the person appears entirely dead. Indeed, someone can be so disposed in natural matters that, at some lamentation or perhaps contemplation, with the spirits drawn inward, he lies very like a dead person, as Saint Augustine relates in The City of God concerning a certain priest.
Therefore, unless a cause is present, one must not hasten or act precipitately in burying the dead, lest it happen that the living are buried. These things are from Henry of Hesse in the place cited above.
Addition
Averroes tells in this connection the story of a ram which walked after its head had been cut off, Book VII of the Physics, commentary 4. Although Galen denies this, Alexander nevertheless agrees in the final chapter of his Paraphrase on the Soul, where he maintains that after the heart has been removed from an animal, it can move and live, as can a tortoise and a chameleon; and, by an equal argument, after the head has been removed. He also says that the arguments concerning the principal seat of the soul - whether it consists in the heart or in the head - are common to both positions.