If I throw it on the ground, or if I break the main-spring, all is over.

I will have killed the little animal.

But suppose that, without damaging anything, I find means to withdraw or dry up the fine oil which now enables the parts to slip upon one another: will the little animal be dead?
No! It will be asleep.

And the proof is that I can lay my watch in a drawer, keep it there twenty-five years, and if, after a quarter of a century, I put a drop of oil on it, the parts will begin to move again.

All that time would have passed without waking up the little sleeping animal.