One of the keepers told them that there were other rooms to see [at the Sir John Soane Museum] – that there were very interesting things in the basement. They made their way down – it grew much darker and they heard a great deal of thunder – and entered a part of the house which presented itself to Laura as a series of dim, irregular vaults – passages and little narrow avenues – encumbered with strange vague things, obscured for the time but some of which had a wicked, startling look, so that she wondered how the keepers could stay there. ‘It's very fearful – it looks like a cave of idols!’ she said to her companion; and then she added – ‘Just look there – is that a person or a thing?’

What one calls life – the thing or object of biology or biography – does not stand face to face with something that would be its opposable ob-ject: death, the thanatological or thanatographical. This is the first complication.