Hence, though A’s individual will-power must be held to cease when the tools it works with are destroyed or out of gear, yet, so long as any survivors were so possessed by it while it was still efficient, or, again, become so impressed by its operation on them through work that he has left, as to act in obedience to his will-power rather than their own, A has a certain amount of bona fide life still remaining.  His vicarious life is not affected by the dissolution of his body; and in many cases the sum total of a man’s vicarious action and of its outcome exceeds to an almost infinite extent the sum total of those actions and works that were effected through the mechanism of his own physical organs.  In these cases his vicarious life is more truly his life than any that he lived in his own person.

“True,” continued the Doctor, “while living in his own person, a man knows, or thinks he knows, what he is doing, whereas we have no reason to suppose such knowledge on the part of one whose body is already dust; but the consciousness of the doer has less to do with the livingness of the deed than people generally admit.  We know nothing of the power that sets our heart beating, nor yet of the beating itself so long as it is normal.  We know nothing of our breathing or of our digestion, of the all-important work we achieved as embryos, nor of our growth from infancy to manhood.  No one will say that these were not actions of a living agent, but the more normal, the healthier, and thus the more truly living, the agent is, the less he will know or have known of his own action.  The part of our bodily life that enters into our consciousness is very small as compared with that of which we have no consciousness.  What completer proof can we have that livingness consists in deed rather than in consciousness of deed?

“The foregoing remarks are not intended to apply so much to vicarious action in virtue, we will say, of a settlement, or testamentary disposition that cannot be set aside.  Such action is apt to be too unintelligent, too far from variation and quick change to rank as true vicarious action; indeed it is not rarely found to effect the very opposite of what the person who made the settlement or will desired.  They are meant to apply to that more intelligent and versatile action engendered by affectionate remembrance.  Nevertheless, even the compulsory vicarious action taken in consequence of a will, and indeed the very name “will” itself, shews that though we cannot take either flesh or money with us, we can leave our will-power behind us in very efficient operation.