Chapter 86.—If They Have
Ever Lived, They Must of Course Have Died, and Therefore Shall Have
a Share in the Resurrection of the Dead.
And therefore the following
question may be very carefully inquired into and discussed by
learned men, though I do not know whether it is in man’s power to
resolve it: At what time the infant begins to live in the womb:
whether life exists in a latent form before it manifests itself in
the motions of the living being. To deny that the young who are cut
out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were left there dead
the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too
audacious. Now, from the time that a man begins to live, from that
time it is possible for him to die. And if he die, wheresoever
death may overtake him, I cannot discover on what principle he can
be denied an interest in the resurrection of the dead.