XIII. HELL Man, we say, is a union of spirit and matter. The soul animates the body. But there comes a time when the body is no longer capable of responding to the soul’s animating power. The soul is as powerful as ever, but the body has deteriorated — whether by the sudden destruction of some essential part or by the gradual wearing down of age. When that moment comes, the body ceases to be vivified by the soul, and falls away into corruption. The soul, being a spirit, does not cease. It ceases to animate the body, but its other powers — of knowledge and will — are still in action. The soul lives on, awaiting the moment when, by God’s act, the body is to be reunited to it and man thereby reconstituted in his complete humanity for all eternity. Death is not at the end of life. Yet there is a finality about death. It closes the first period of man’s life, and this period, though not in itself permanent, is decisive of all that is to come. It is not the end of life. But it is the end of the road. After it man has arrived, and there is no further journeying for him. This life upon earth is a period of preparation. At the end of it, man has become something: the something he has become he will eternally remain. 132