Now, when he found no visible defect in the external parts of the body of the roe, and yet at the same time perceived a universal cessation of its motions, he began to imagine that the hurt from which the roe had died was hidden in the inward part of the body.
Now he had observed on the bodies of wild beasts and other animals that all their members were solid, and that there were only three cavities, viz. the skull, the breast, and belly. He imagined, therefore, that the part the nature of which he wanted to find out must be in one of these cavities, and he had a strong persuasion that it was in the middlemost of them.
And having by this way of reasoning assured himself that the disaffected part lay in the breast, he resolved to open the breast of the roe; and, providing himself with sharp flints and splinters of dry cane almost like knives, he made an incision between the ribs, and, cutting through the flesh, came to the _Diaphragm_.
When he found this tough and not easily broken, he assured himself that such a covering must belong to that part for which he was looking out. After great efforts he succeeded in breaking through, and the first part he met was the lungs; and at last he found the heart, which he saw closed with a very strong cover and fastened with strong ligaments and guarded with a membrane.
On finding the same membrane on the inside of the ribs, and the lungs in the same posture as on the other side which he had opened first, he concluded the heart to be the part he looked for. When, however, he found that the being which had dwelt there before, had left its house before it fell to ruin, and forsaken it, the whole body seemed to him an inconsiderable thing.
Then his mind was perplexed with a variety of thoughts as to its substance and subsistence, the reason of its departure, etc. After much deliberation, at last he found that from that part of the heart which had departed proceeded all those actions by which the roe had shown her care of him and her affection,--that the body was only as an instrument or tool, like his cudgel with which he used to fight with the wild beasts. Thus all his regard for the body was over and transferred to that by which the body is governed, and by whose power it moves. So he decides in the end to bury the body.