To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.
This neat paradox sounds like a clean principle: to understand life, study death. The aphoristic tone gives his method a cool, rational sheen that can hide its moral weight. He reduces graves and bodies to instruments, which makes the work feel logical while blurring human dignity. Shelley wants us to notice how tidy language can tidy away discomfort. Philosophical reflection here doubles as self-permission—if the statement is true, then the boundaries around the dead must bend. The danger is not in the thought alone, but in how it licenses behavior. The line captures the moment when clinical reasoning becomes a doorway to choices he can’t take back.