U
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
.2.2 5~
THE HUMAN BODY.
THE HUMAN BODY
CONNEXION WITH MAN,
ILLUSTRATED BY THE PRINCIPAL ORGANS.
JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON,
" HE cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead
came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes : and his face was bound
about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go."
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1851.
>
LONDON: WALTON & MITCHELL, PRINTERS, WARUOUR STREET.
fc-
CONTENTS.
Page
Dedication vii
Preface ix
The Human Brain 1
The Human Lungs 74
Assimilation and its Organs 136
The Human Heart 183
The Human Skin 286
The Human Form 336
Health 404
Appendix 485
To Henry James, 22sq., of New York.
MY DEAR JAMES,
THIS .book is indebted to you for its
appearance ; for without you, it would neither
have been conceived, nor executed. I dedicate
it to you as a feeble tribute of friendship and
gratitude that would gladly seek a better mode
of expressing themselves. It may remind you
of happy hours that we have spent together,
and seem to continue some of the tones of our
long correspondence. Valeat quantum ! It could
not lay its head upon the shelf without a last
thought of affection directed to its foster parent.
That prosperity may live with you and yours,
and your great Commonwealth, is the prayer of,
My dear James,
Your faithful friend,
JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON.
St. John's Wood, London,
May 25, 1851.
PREFACE.
AT the end of a work, an author writes the preface or
beginning, unable to neglect the law which urges that
extremes shall meet. Prefaces need no apology, and a
reader intending to study a book, does not do himself
justice unless he peruses them. A preface gives the
author's last conception of his aim, the most compre-
hensive eye with which he sees it. And unless the reader
looks through this eye, he cannot enter into the author's
mind. The study of a book is the temporary putting on
of the faculties and insights of another ; and the sooner
the assumption takes place, the sooner the reader begins
to read aright.
To assist this we have a few remarks to make that may
prepare in some measure for the following pages.
We labor under difficulty in procuring the right audi-
ence for the present discourse. The subject of which it
treats has been so much narrowed to a class, that on the
one hand that class, the medical profession, claims it as an
exclusive knowledge ; and on the other hand, the public
mind is in abeyance with regard to it, and looks upon it as
b
PREFACE.
a property for ever alienated from its possession. We
therefore run the risk of finding no readers, unless we can
persuade the public that the knowledge of the human body
belongs to every man, woman and child, and has no more
necessary connexion with physic, than with art, industry,
philosophy, divinity, or any of the other occupations that
we do in the body, and by the body. To write a treatise
on the subject through which this persuasion shall run with
vigorous consequences, has been a leading motive with us
in the present work.
Persons for the most part have no idea that the sciences
belong to the great world in the first place, and that the
classes who are actively cultivating them, are but little
bands of pioneers that are contending with difficulties at
the out-posts, and slowly winning a new magnitude of
knowledge, which as soon as it is settled, belongs afresh to
the large country of popular common sense. On the con-
trary, they allow each party of settlers to hoist the flag of
a petty kingdom of their own, without insisting, as ought
to be done, that the adventurers shall at once become the
colonies of the mother state. Thus it is that professors of
all kinds have kidnapped the sciences, and the people fear
to take so much as a walk under the walls of these bris-
tling strongholds. But scientific feudalism is evidently
about to pass away.
This desirable result will be accomplished by the growth
of large towns, that is to say, popular doctrines, of the
sciences, which will belong to the broad industry and in-
sights of mankind, and will not contest, but swallow up,
PREFACE. XI
the castles of the present chiefs, and reverse the feodal
direction of duties and fines. Already we have seen the
process going on in the history of civilization, and we are
about to witness the same thing in the progress of science
and of thought.
It may take place somewhat as follows. The masters
of science will pursue their own way, warm in their little
senates, and cheered by their subjacent schools ; satisfied
with perfectionating the chairs into which they have been
inducted. They will gather useful facts, and more and
more comprehensive formulas, and appealing to rarer and
rarer qualities in their scholars, be most out of sight when
they are most at home, until at length, by extremity of
cleverness, they will become invisible to all but adepts.
Lords of the last ether of things, they will only exist as
influences, and not as appreciable substances. In the
meantime the people, happily unconscious, will listen to
flesh and blood, which seems to talk to them about them-
selves. Abstractions will have sailed away to the flying
island of the professors, who will exert a strong attraction
upon the whole wealth of the world's inanitions. A clear
stage and sward of common sense will then be at the
popular disposal, and the problem of universal education
may be conceived upon new grounds. The safeguard of
the people will be this, that when the learned have done
their best, it is no matter to them; their hearts will be
unseduced, and their brows unterrified, by the lordliest and
most captivating formulas. One or two plain Johnsonian
stampings on the ground, will be sufficient to convince
b 2
Xll PREFACE.
them that their ignorance and carelessness on these scores
is most invulnerable and sublime.
But here comes a knot claiming Deus intersit. Nor can
the difficulties of man be without a response from the
mercy-seat: new thoughts and new persons will come
speeding to make new things possible. Already we see
that the whole of the sciences may reappear on the popular
side. The waning moon of the schools gives place to the
full-orbed Dian of a more generous light. All the common
truths that have been neglected since the foundation of
philosophy ; the stones that the builders have rejected ;
that great orthodoxy that has bided its time while ages of
conceit were cuffing against its serene face, will rise out of
land and sea, and out of the graves of the hearts of many
generations, and come in hosts such as no man can number
to the people in their hour of need. The doctrine of final
causes, which is God in the sciences, and which atheism
hates, will ramble over the pleasant fields, and teach them
to childhood as a book j and out of its mouth will come
lessons of order and fitness, which will make the world as
familiar as a father's and a mother's house.
We find it to be a law, when a branch of knowledge has
been cultivated for ages, and still remains inaccessible to
the world at large, that its principles are not high or broad
enough, and that something radically deeper is demanded.
If it does not interest universal man, that is sufficient to
prove the point. This law is illustrated by many things,
and particularly by the history of the arts.
Once upon a time all books were perpetuated by copying
PREFACE. Xlll
with the hand ; whoever would possess a volume, must
undergo the toil of transcribing it, or pay the price of that
toil to another. This was the narrowness of the circle of
the learned. The perfection of the copyist's art was soon
attained, but the utmost rapidity and cheapness in this
mode of multiplying books, could not render them to the
mass of the public. How was the seeming impossibility to
be surmounted? By some meaner process, which should
deteriorate the appearance of books to a degree commen-
surate with the humble fortunes of the poor ; so that if the
rich man's Bible cost him 30, a copy of but one sixtieth
the excellence should be produced for one sixtieth the
sum ? Far from it indeed ! The means of making the
poor man a proprietor of books, lay in a glorious new art
that clothed all literature in a bodily frame of surpassing
beauty and usefulness, and placed it in the hands of the
common people in a form that before the invention of print-
ing the greatest kings would have envied ; and which even
Virgil or Cicero would not have disdained as the material
pedestal of their immortality. This art, simpler and more
universal than writing, was not lower but immeasurably
higher than its predecessor, whose services were for the
noble and the learned.
Another illustration : The means of locomotion or mate-
rial progress, what is their history ? Up to a recent date
the coaches and high-roads furnished nearly the only mode
of land travelling. Journeys by them were restricted to
a small portion of the community. The more the coaches
were perfected, and the better horsed, the more expensive
XIV PREFACE.
and select they became. How shall we popularize travel-
ling? By a viler expedient, of canals, carts, and the
like ? This too existed, but it was used merely for neces-
sity, and did not attract, or tend to make all men into
travellers. To effect the latter result, an invention grander
and cheaper than had then traversed space was required.
To move the rich needed only a four-horse coach running
in an agony of ten miles an hour ; but to move the poor
required cars before which those of the triumphing Csesars
must pale their ineffectual competition. Thus though the
problem was the enfranchisement of the meaner classes
from the fetters of pedestrianism, yet the only solution of
it lay in the increased convenience of all ranks from the
noble to the peasant, and not in the degradation but the
elevation of the locomotive art.
And so it must be, as we apprehend, with human know-
ledge ; the arts of education that will summon the people
to learn, are toto ccelo different from, and greater than,
those which have been sufficient for the schools. A petty
magnet is sufficient to take up a few hundreds of isolated
persons ; but when the nations are to be attracted, there is
nothing less than the earth that will draw their feet.
Here we touch the gist of the matter ; for it is in fact
powers of attraction in knowledge that are demanded for
the new education. There are three heads to this, which
form one. In the first place, attractive knowledge gains
the learner and keeps him. In the second place, it enlarges
his genius, and out of that, his memory; whereas dry
knowledge cultivates his memory at the expense of his
PREFACE. XV
mind. In the third place, (or in the first again,) such
knowledge is coherent with itself, and tends to be all
known whenever a part of it is known, giving the learner
a constant sensation that he is developing it for himself,
which lets him into the legitimate delight of mental power.
But only that is attractive which is allied to our busi-
ness and bosoms, and seems to have a life that understands
our life, and vice versa. On the other hand, repulsion is
the effect of death and unkindness. Hence, to limit our-
selves now to the human body, no popular science of it can
exist, but one that fills it with at least as much life as its
pupils feel throbbing in their bodies. Knowledge draws
them never until they are forced to cry out : " Ah ! I see
myself more than myself in that wonderful glass 1" If to
their curiosity about themselves any dead body near them
mutters " germ-cells,"* they feel dusty, degraded, and
abhorrent. They must be rendered better, bigger and
worthier for every look they give, or their eyes will be
averted from their books.
Knowledge, however, is progressive, or its cars are of
different sizes. It will only be by slow degrees that we
can accommodate the world with seats in the trains of
science. New inventions will be requisite for each new
* The intellectual correspondence of the doctrine of cell-germs and
convertibility of forces, is found in the doctrine of subjectivity, which
implies in the first place that you are shut into yourself ; and in the
second, that whatever comes to you, puts on your state, and is nothing
but your own walls vibrating. This is the philosophical, as the other
view is the physical, jail. The way out of it is by walking through
the walls, which look granite, but are impudent mist.
XVI PREFACE.
population that is to be drawn. In the meantime it is
good to see this, and to place as an end the education of
the universal people, because that education will require
the largest and noblest principles of common sense. To
educate a Mechanic's Institute demands far greater princi-
ples and more prolific love, than to do the like for a Royal
Society : you have to bring things down and to incarnate
them, to connect them with material and substantial uses,
and to give them both souls and bodies, for the former ;
whereas in teaching them to the learned, you escape into
laws and formulas, and shirk the problem of realizing the
subject to the audience, by insisting that it is the fault of
the audience where it does not comprehend. This is ac-
cording to a vice common in schools, of neglecting the
dullards, and petting the clever pupils. On the other hand,
public education is for the publicans and sinners of the
brain, the stupid and the quick alike, both of whom are
constructed for the largeness of a common understanding.
But if to inform the Mechanics' Institutions be already
so much vaster a task than to propagate learning to the
learned (who are the people that can take it easiest), what
a much ampler knowledge still is required for the educa-
tions of clowns and sempstresses, and those great classes
of society who have almost no organs but hearts and hands.
Knowledge must be like music and nursery songs before
these clodhoppers can dance to it.
We have attempted, but most imperfectly, to begin a
discoursing on the human body which goes somewhat in
the direction of this great outlying population ; being con-
PREFACE. XV11
vinced that to win them to the truths of the creation is a
mission enjoined upon the future time. In doing this, we
have felt that there was no condescension implied, but the
strain of all our faculties into the most universal sphere.
And although, by the law of things, there is more to be
done than when we commenced to do, yet shall we be
satisfied if we have struck a single cord of that instrument
whose earliest notes portend to us the grand Hallelujah
choruses and symphonies that are to be.
The matter of universal education may well claim the
serious regard of all classes of society. It is indeed a
panacea, though not as it is at present conceived. To
teach superior artisans and savans a few sciences, and by
all means to stimulate the love of property, may keep
things together by giving a large army of " specials " an
interest in what is called order ; but the great mass is not
touched by such motives or informations. The facts prove
that it cannot learn these lessons, or care for these objects ;
because, like the old coaches, they are not big enough to
carry it on its voyage through time. There is nothing
for it but a new method and kind of knowledge ; an Or-
pheus who can thrill into dance not the present nimble
figurantes, who can dance to any tune, but stocks, stones,
birds, beasts, and fishes, who had no fantasy in them
before. That method must take the best common sense
of all these people, and shew them that just that, when
carried to its highest stages, is the very truth of all the
arts and sciences. As soon as this can be done, all stories
will move one degree higher ; the kitchens will be parlors,
b 2
XV111 PREFACE.
and a new drawing room will flower out of every house
for the great reception days. The order which will then
conserve all things, will not be solely that of the police-
man, but it will be like the order of creation, or like that
of the notes in a good harmony, where each keeps the
rest to their posts.
We have selected the human body to make a trial of
the above method, on account of its central importance and
significance, and because it is already the theatre of our
common sense : nevertheless, any other object of science
might have been chosen, and with the same results. For
wherever we go, we find that common sense comes first ;
and when the subject is completed, again comes last.
First glances are always charged with it, in a more or less
latent form : the business of investigation is simply to
eliminate it as pure as possible from its accidents.
In no science does the present state of knowledge ap-
pear so manifestly as in physiology : in none is the hand-
writing on the wall so plain. Great is the feast of profes-
sors here ; but Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, is brighter
than their chandeliers. Chemistry and cell-germs are the
walls on which the lightning writes. Well may we call
them walls ; for it is impossible to conceive anything
more limitaneous : prison stares us in the face while we are
in that company. Who of woman born can go further than
to distil himself into gas, or to pound himself into cells ?
Annihilation, which God forbids, must be the next stage
of smallness. These respective doctrines are the last solid
points which are possible, and by nature itself there is no
PREFACE. XIX
passage beyond them. After these, the scientific men
themselves must evanesce ; for already their watchword to
each other is, " Hail, Bubble Brother ! Hail, Nucleated
Cell!"
Before it came to this chaos, there was everything to
shew that physiology, studied with the present objects,
had completed its rule. Its great outlines had long been
traced, and its general problems had ceased to occupy
attention. It had become more and more complicated and
microscopic, and leaving the human frame, it was gradually
slipping down into the brute creation. Meanwhile the
leading questions that a child would ask respecting struc-
ture or function, were forgotten, or postponed indefinitely.
The connexion of the science with our living sympathies,
which was never strong, had ceased altogether. The
function of its hierophants, to enlighten the ignorant, had
become impracticable, for want of vitality and attractive-
ness in their knowledge. These were signs that its king-
dom was moved from the midst of it, and was about to be
given to another. Be it observed, however, that we do
not blame the existing sciences for what they are not ; our
task lies only in recording that they have had their three
sufficient warnings. Their state is like that of us all
birth, growth, and decline ; and like us in due time they
are to be supplanted by their sons, when the world's busi-
ness requires further workmen. For the sciences become
immortal in their generations ; solid in the general subor-
dination of the past to the present ; and living, in the per-
petual aspiration and appeal from the present to the future.
XX PREFACE.
I know that even the chemistry is all right in its own
way ; and I cannot help admiring the thoroughness of the
Liebigs, who after having analyzed the rest of things, put
men and women into the retorts, and with pen and ink
ready, write down so much dirty water and foetid oil, and
so many ounces of scientific dust, as the future state which
comes over. This is positive fact, if not for the physiolo-
gists, at least for the candle makers. I ask nothing more
than that it shall be in its place.
And who can quarrel with the microscopists ? When
Leeuwenhoek, in the seventeenth century, determined that
everything that was too little to be seen, was his em-
pire, he really laid his hands upon the whole of things,
in a certain small sense. And whenever our great duties
and rights are tolerably well fulfilled, little things will be
intellectually and morally magnified into a new importance.
Ultimate structure will then coincide with primary struc-
ture. But until then, the microscope is before its time in
physiology, and must wait upon lower callings. While
the reasons of minute forms are so totally unseen, it is
their prettiness chiefly, their scenic charm and glow, which
is of use to human eyes. I have often wondered why, in
the difficulties of the artists who make patterns, they have
not resorted to Mr. Queckett and the Microscopical Society,
for the exquisite traces which they can shew. Solomon
was not arrayed like the lilies of the field. The Manches-
ter manufacturers would do well to dress out the ladies of
this generation in the spoils of the colors and forms of these
brilliant creatures. There would be something new as well
PREFACE. XX
as charming in rhinoceros -kidney mousseline-de-laines ; in
shawls according to the inner splendors of the burnished
beetle's wing in veils worked to represent the many-
eyedness of the blue -bottle; or in a mantilla on the back
of a professor's wife glorious with mimic cell-germs. Here
would be a mission for the microscope, and a final cause
for the corporation which represents it, which would then
take rank as a sub-committee of Drapers' Hall. It would
be good to be small, when it enabled you to dive into little
cracks and holes whence real beauty could be fetched.
And by gaining this practical object, of ornamenting out-
sides, the Lilliputian people would cease to infest phy-
siology, and leave Gulliver's inside alone.
Such, we believe in our hearts, would be the art cor-
responding to the present state of this science. For we
notice that every little discovery is so straitly held and
claimed by the finder, and the label of " My Truth " is so
decisively pinned to each fresh zig-zag of cell work as
though the man had not only seen that special quirk, but
made it that we cannot help thinking that Show is the
fire which is heaving under this uneasy stratum of the
Small Seers. Our proposition, which we hope to see
adopted long before the next " World's Exhibition " in
London, exactly jumps with this passion for display, but
by carrying it over to our ladies renders it both beautiful
and harmless. Let " my " family wear the blazon of " my
truth " as they walk before me to church.
There is one part of our work which we think it right
XX11 PREFACE.
to mention, but for which we do not apologize. Through-
out the following pages, we have taken for granted the
Divinity of Christ and the truth of Christianity, and with
this tacit assumption we have labored to connect the whole
of our general views. There is no escape from some step
of this kind : the atheist takes for granted his atheism,
and works in its darkness ; he sees no God because he
looks from none, and for none : and in every sect, that
most comprehensive aspect of nature which is its depen-
dence upon Deity, colors and shapes the whole of the
sciences which that sect elicits. We would undertake in
many instances to assign to particular Christian deno-
minations, the scientific views which have been contributed
by each, and to pin their insights into matter, space, time
and history to their prayer-books and hymn-books. In
short, science is always impregnated with either religious,
or irreligious life. By virtue of this it is, that the coldest
treatises end in some kind of sermons, and the nodus of
every theory of the world is a corresponding god.
In presence of this necessity, it occurred to us long ago,
to assume openly our own creed as the supreme key of
knowledge to which we could arrive, and to peril our faith
so far as our readers are concerned upon the success of the
experiment. And here we seemed to be truly scientific
according to the common rule. For after some facts are
found, the method of science consists in assuming a hypo-
thesis to account for them ; and if that hypothesis serves
the purpose, it passes over to a theory, and in time is
received as the truth of the case. And though the hypo-
PREFACE. XX111
thesis might seem unlikely, and be liable to many ugly
reasonings against it, yet if it answered to the facts, it
was justified, and all ratiocinations to the contrary died.
By pursuing this method, we have convinced ourselves,
that our Lord is written down in the pages of nature her-
self as the truth of her whole creation.
This is the method of tolerance. For while we work
from this point of view, it is our own fault if we meddle
with others who are trying to settle the same problem from
different grounds. There is a prize to be won by the
religions of the earth ; they are so many accounts of God :
the order and laws of creation and spirit are the check
which adopts, or rejects, these accounts at some certain
point. The book is closed, and who shall open the seals
and read it ?
The same is the method of scientific persistence and unity
of aim. For no one lifetime can be expected to measure
the adjustments of the problem. To all argumentation
we can scientifically reply, that we have not yet concluded
our experiments. In so great a cause, ages of ages are
allowable times for operation. Religions are a vast social
matter ; no man has a right to declare the trial done, until
the success of creation-reading warrants him. Thus we
gain indefinite time against the sceptics, allowing them
also their own time for doubting. If God permits them
leisure, why should we feel bound to hurry them ? But
then they must be equally patient with us.
The same also is the justification of causes and missions.
For these are to action what theories and hypotheses are
XXIV PREFACE.
to science. And every man is not only justified, -but
bound, to plead his religion ; and if it contains that force, to
send it forth over the world. He is trying his scientific
problem on the practical side.
The same again is a criticism upon criticism. For in a
working science, we do not desire to know what a priori
probabilities or improbabilities may attach to our hypo-
thesis, excepting in so far as they determine our choice of
it at first ; after this we have simply to apply it, and to
test it in all convenient ways. There is only one objection
which not only slays but buries principles ; which is, that
they break down in fair practice, and are disowned by the
nature of things : other objections are impertinences, which
may, or may not, be true. For this reason, the modern
criticisms upon Scripture have nothing to do with the
question : whether miracles are likely or unlikely, possible
or impossible ; whether God would have dictated a Book
which contradicts itself; whether the attribution of human
passions to Deity is consistent ; whether Christ as God
could have died upon the cross ; whether the Gospels were
written in the first century or the third ; whether Christen-
dom be not a wide mistake of which Chapmandom is the
correction : all these are matters which we postpone,
from our extreme inability to do two things at once. If
it be found that Christianity is the theory of the world ;
that the Divine Man is Lord of the sciences ; that the
biblical Revelation is the truth of truths, which opens a
Shekinah of light to the later races more than to the first ;
that the Gospel alone can rule the nations with a rod of
PKEFACE. XXV
iron j then the finding of this from age to age will suffi-
ciently conserve the text against the stings of the Straus-
sian school. The more so, because if their principle of
criticism first, and faith afterwards, were admitted, the
result must be atheistic confusion. For if, on account of
what contradicts our notions of convenience in Scripture,
the Bible be untrue, then for the same reason, nature,
being full of contradictory essences, tigers and lambs,
men and vermin, is no work of God ; but a single flea is
enough to trip over the nature-textuary into the abysses of
denial. The armour of these greatest truths is, however,
not so ill-jointed as to let in such lances. It demands that
the critic shall try his criticism by not only accounting for,
but ruling the world. If he cannot do these two things,
his rack of texts proves as good as nothing.
This method also is a defence against books. For were
we not entitled, as children of science, to take for granted
our Revelation, and to make our lives, and if need be, our
eternity, into its trial, we should be bound on a quest over
the whole universe, to listen to what everybody said. The
sandals of this terrible flight would soon reverse us, and
take the place of our heads. By nature however we make
up our minds very soon, malgre the possibility of meeting
some one who shall one day upset us : there is a quick
hour when every man burns his Alexandrian Library as
heartily as the Kalif Omar. And thus we limit ourselves
to a particular walk, and like cobblers, " stick to our last."
The atheists do this just as much as other people; the
vacancy of the air of their studies, suffices them for the
XXVI PREFACE.
induction that " God is nowhere." Why should not the
Christian professionally accept this necessity of not roam-
ing through all books, but work from the Best to his
vocation ?
We were forced upon this track of thought, by noticing
that the Rationalists had got to nothing as punctually as
if nothing had been their aim ; and that their inductions
were of no consequence, supposing them to be true ; which
however concluded against their truth. We found also
that they were like the fellow who claimed Virgil's " Sic
vos non vcibis " to himself, but could not complete the line
which the great poet had left half finished. In the whole
company of them, and in all their promise of offspring,
there was not a spark of revelation ; though to hear them
talk one might have imagined, that they knew the way of
making myths, and that writing bibles was their forte.
For these and a thousand other reasons, we left them on
one side, and took another tack.
Here also we quitted those two little parties who
think that they are the only two, namely, the contenders
for the principle of authority on the one side, and for that
of reasoning on the other ; and taking some gold and silver
from both, we determined to choose the party of science,
as that to which the Lord of science was about to commit
the kingdoms of the earth. And as eyes are the great
faculties of sciences, we determined thenceforth to pray for
eyes above all other powers of that kind ; that we might
not have to appeal to either of those effete parties, autho-
rity, or criticism, but might terminate some of our per-
PREFACE. XXV11
plexities by sight. The more we have proceeded, the
more convinced we are, that this ground of science is the
coming earth of a new and more glorious time, and that
He whose feet burned like fine brass in a furnace, will pour
His love through it, and give to it to conquer and to heal.
At the same time we have no faith in the present state of
the sciences, excepting as the ministers of some industrial
arts. For educational purposes they are almost worthless,
because they terminate the first plain questions with un-
satisfactory replies. For spiritual purposes they are equally
negative. And hence we regard them, with all their
seemingly large retinue of facts and colleges, as only pro-
visional occupants of the mind. Indeed they are in so
rapid a flux, that it is hard to say what they are from one
year to another.
But when science becomes Christian, we may have some
natural theology upon the face of the earth. And here
again our views depart from those of many good men. If
Christ be the God of the Christian, then natural Christ-
ology is the only theology of this kind which is possible in
a Christian state. In Mahommedan countries, natural
theology, or the culmination of the science of nature in
Deism, or what is the same thing, Theism, must be per-
mitted as an inevitable growth ; but this is plainly not the
case where Christ is worshipped. We feel it necessary to
insist upon this, because even those who accept Christ's
Godhead, strangely pass Him by when they are attempting
to trace up all nature to their God. The consequence is,
that it is only the truths of mere development and creation
XXV111 PREFACE.
that occur in the sciences, and not those of love and re-
demption j whence moral and spiritual life is banished from
the book of nature. The church must look to this ; and
bishops and clergy whose place it is to give prizes for
natural theology, must consider whether as at present
taught, it is not an active branch of Deism. We venture
to express a hope, that in the distribution of laurels to the
successful candidates for the great Glasgow prize, this
Christian exigency will be remembered ; and the award-be
made not to those treatises that so easily trace the paral-
lelism between certain views of science and the God of
fancy, but between the integral sciences themselves and
the God of Revelation.
If the judges upon the important occasion referred to,
adopt the standard which we suggest, the end of natural
theology will be altered, and the effects upon science may
be of the most considerable kind. At present, natural
theology has undertaken the impossible task of " finding
out God," Who can only be found in so far as He has been
pleased to reveal Himself. The Deity thus elicited, or as
Fichte rightly says, " constructed," is a scientific abstrac-
tion answering to the concrete figure of the Vulcan of the
Greeks, that is to say, a universal Smith. The course
of the natural theologians is as follows : they see in the
human body and the world the principles and applications
of the arts in a surpassing degree : the skull displays the
virtues of the arch, and the hand embodies wondrous
pulleys and levers ; whence they infer that God is ac-
quainted with mechanics. And from all the other parts of
PREFACE. XXIX
man, the clay patronizes the Potter in the same way, and
the Deity which arises out of the whole is at best an infi-
nite handicraftsman. This is anthropomorphism, or the
distillation of God out of our own limits and thoughts, our
own space and time. The Paleys, Broughams, and the
authors of the Bridgwater Treatises, seem to have been
satisfied with this vulgarity of heathenism.
We hold, on the other hand, that a scientific natural
theology is different, and that it accepts the living Lord of
Revelation, and consists in tracing the correspondency of
His revealed attributes in the sciences ; being in effect the
synthesis of the knowledge of the real God with the
sciences of real nature. In this case it leads the waters of
life into science, and is the most indispensable of all the
single studies of the natural world. As for the evidences
which it affords of God's existence, these do not consist in
demonstrations of artistry and carpentry, but in symbols of
spirit and love pervading creation, and reconstructing the
natural mind of man upon spiritual models. The proof
that nature is full of Deity, lies in its power, when rightly
seen, to soften the heart and moisten the eyes of the unbe-
lieving world, and without a controversy to send the scoffer
to his knees. In that affecting moment, genius and devo-
tion are twin-born. But no demonstration of Vulcan, even
though approved by bishops and clergy, has any effect of
this kind.
Many of the thoughts in the present work may seem
new : yet the larger portion of them is not our own. We
XXX PREFACE.
believe implicitly that " the stone which the builders re-
jected " will be "the head of the corner." It has become
therefore a scientific canon with us, to look out for this
stone in all quarters. Hence we have been led to many
discredited sources of information ; and if borrowing good
things be plagiarism, we are guilty of it to the utmost of
our powers. Wherever it can be shewn that we are not
original, so much the better : we desire for ourselves and
others to enter the circle of the great dependence of things,
secure that there is no independence of heart or mind upon
any other terms.
And now our task is done. The style of it differs some-
what from the common, because our creed differs ; and we
disbelieve for the most part in what is called the severity,
strictness and dryness of science. We hold that nature
is the drapery of spirit, and that analogy is the cement of
things, and the high-road of influences. We are therefore
afraid of nothing, however fanciful, on this ground : nature
is more fanciful than any of her children. Besides which,
we have found practically that metaphor is a sword of
the spirit, and that whenever a great truth is fixed, it is
by some happy metaphor that it is willing to inhabit for a
time: and again, that whenever a long controversy is
ended, it is by one of the parties getting hand on a meta-
phor whose blade burns with the runes of truth. For
these reasons we dare speak in parables.
Yet is it fearful to disagree so widely with our friends
and fellows. We love them, but crave space to breathe
PREFACE. XXXI
where they are not. Difference makes the world larger ;
and without a quarrel with the old modes, we have emi-
grated to another country, where we hope for peace;
particularly as we trust not again to come forth with the
pen.
THE HUMAN BODY.
CHAPTER I.
THE HUMAN BRAIN.
OUR first conception of the human body is that of a living
subject ; life is the dim personality which animates it, as
well as the atmosphere in which it moves and breathes.
Upon this lowest floor of our existence there rises an edi-
fice of many stories ; upon simple life, which is the vege-
table in the animal, there is founded a life of life, which is
mind. The mind is many-chambered and many-storied.
Life dwells in the body, but the mind or superior life
inhabits the head, or according to anatomy, the brain. The
brain then is presumably the body of the mind, and what-
ever is wisdom or faculty in the mind, is furniture or ma-
chinery answering to faculty, in the brain. And as the
mind is the man, the brain is his representative, or the
man in another degree.
This is the solid voice of the head, or the most general
truth of consciousness, which lies in the head, and speaks
from the head. Arid our plan is, to accept as oracles these
gifts of our instinctive sense : to regard them as the ele-
ments of knowledge : and not to question until we have
accepted them. It is then the consciousness or instinctive
natural history of the organs, from which we commence :
B
2 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
not what man says of the. brain, but what the brain says
of itself in man. Thus we shall first endeavor to gain the
impressions which the organ under discussion makes upon
the mind, or begin from natural experience. We shall
then briefly consider its anatomy, or pass to scientific ex-
perience. Next we shall attempt to give life to the part
by considering it in motion and emotion. Lastly we shall
pursue the analogical method, where it is not too difficult ;
and assuming that every principle runs quite through the
world, we shall endeavor to shew that each organ has
kindred in every sphere ; and thus out of the consanguinity
of things we shall try to deduce the fact of a native coher-
ence in the world, whose links are a real logic, and which
when transplanted into knowledge will spontaneously con-
stitute the association and unity of the sciences.
But this will be better understood in the sequel. We
now proceed to the facts of the present case, to visit the
mind which we have found, in its proper mansion, the
brain.
At the outset we would guard the general reader against
an error which requires to be removed. It is commonly
supposed, because anatomy has been cultivated by a class,
that it is difficult to learn. On the contrary, any one with
a common understanding, and of course industry and atten-
tion, may possess himself of the leading parts of anatomy.
Ladies may learn them as well and as harmlessly as the
other sex. Plates moreover are satisfactory means of ac-
quiring a view of the human frame which is enough for
public education; for although insufficient for the sur-
geon, the knowledge derived from plates will enable the
public to enter upon the study of organization, both with
cleaner hands and clearer heads than if they busied them-
selves with the ever-varying detail of dissections. It has
indeed been usual with practical anatomists to decry ana-
DESCRIPTION. 3
tomical plates ; and yet they are a degree better and truer
than the dead body; for they contain the mind of the
artist, and are superior to any single subject, being not
mere copies, but carefully collected from many subjects ;
and as they are generalizations, they are adapted to be ve-
hicles of general knowledge.* They may be regarded as
translations of the body, available for those who cannot
read the original. And indeed those who can only see and
not touch anatomy, as they have all power of destruction
removed, are favorably situated for constructive truths,
for the theories of bodily motion, proportion and gravita-
tion ; just as the astronomers are indebted to the distance
of their view, and the superficiality of their objects. Good
science then, we repeat, will not refuse to attend upon
anatomical plates, though not the science of the surgeon.
The brain is an oval mass, filling and fitting the in-
terior of the skull, and consisting of two substances, a
grey, ash-colored or cineritious portion, and a white, fibrous
or medullary portion. These substances occupy different
positions in different parts of the brain. The grey portion
constitutes the circumference of the large and front division,
which is called the cerebrum ; it also enters into the inte-
rior of the same in various parts, and forms both the
centre and circumference of the cerebellum, and the centre
of the spinal marrow. The white portion makes up the
greater share of the brain. Besides these divisions of sub-
stance the brain also presents divisions of form. It is
parted into two great masses, viz., the cerebrum and cere-
bellum, and at its base there are two other portions, named
the annular protuberance and medulla oblongata. These
* Many of the current anatomical plates have descended through
books for centuries, improving on the way, and may be traced from
the masters of the Italian and Dutch schools of anatomy to the pre-
sent manuals : a plain sign of their truth and serviceableness.
B 2
THE HUMAN BRAIN.
are the four primary divisions on the surface of the organ.
The spinal marrow, which runs down through the vertebrae
or back bones, is the continuation of the medulla oblongata.
The above parts collectively are the bed and trunk of what
is called the nervous system. From all those already
mentioned there arise certain white cords, the nerves, which
come out through holes in the skull, and through notches
between the back bones, and run to all parts of the body,
gradually splitting into filaments, which at length become
invisible by reason of their fineness. There are generally
reckoned to be eleven pairs of nerves arising from the
brain, and thirty-one pairs from the spinal marrow. Be-
sides this great nervous plant which continues the life of
the head and its appendages, there is also another proper
to the body, as it were a creeping or parasitical system,
which weaves its meshes among the branches of the former :
this is the system of the sympathetic nerves. It is not
obviously referable to a centre, like the system just de-
scribed, but it has many small centres, scattered throughout
the body, but especially near the important organs, the
heart, the stomach, &c. These centres are called gan-
glions, and are said to consist principally of grey matter.
Innumerable fine nerves radiate from them to the viscera,
and to the great blood-vessels ; and also fibres pass to com-
municate with the capital nervous system.
From the general tenor of these two systems it appears
that the cerebral is the engine and representative of the
mind, and of the body as constituted in the hierarchy of
the mind, while the sympathetic system is the nervous
engine and representative of the body considered inde-
pendently, as possessing a life or mind in itself so far as
this system can arouse it. Consciousness does not here
come in question. Many of our impressions are uncon-
scious, nay perhaps all through the longer part of their
DESCRIPTION. O
course, though travelling along the cerebral lines. And
again, the bodily organs, as the liver or the kidneys,
require to exercise processes of selection, and acts of com-
position and elimination, to which nothing less than a stu-
pendous bodily judgment is adequate. Mental judgment
would not be fine enough for the work; and it is only
mental judgment and faculty which are conscious.
The brain and its parts, including the spinal marrow,
are clothed with three membranes or skins. That next
the brain is the pia mater, which not only encloses the
brain, but dips down into its folds, and probably ramifies
more and more finely through its minute divisions, acting
as a framework to the nervous substance : it is full of deli-
cate vessels which supply the brain with blood. The next
membrane is the arachnoid, which is said to form a shut
bag like a double nightcap, in the inside of which a lubri-
cating fluid is given out, the whole constituting a kind of
" water bed "* on which the brain may undulate. The
next membrane is the dura mater, lining the moveable
arachnoid on the side towards the brain, and lining the
bony skull on the other side, and being separable into two
layers to suit these two situations or offices. It is the
strongest of the membranes of the brain, and gives off
membranous pipes which receive and envelop the nerves
at their exit from the skull and spine : it also sends down
tight sheets or processes between the two halves of the
cerebrum, and between the cerebrum and cerebellum,
whereby it supports the larger divisions of this soft and
tender organism : and between its layers it contains the
* Water beds of this kind, i.e., serous membranes, are prepared
for all the viscera ; and bursse or water cushions are frequently ap-
posed in the joints : where these are. met with they are the means and
evidences of some motion performed.
6 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
great channels of venous blood known as the sinuses of
the brain.
We see then that the consciousness is physically nour-
ished from without, as the brain is nourished by the blood
of the pia mater ; that it is physically moveable, or can
assume varieties of shape and state, as the floating brain
can move its person upon its fluids, and specifically upon
the arachnoid bed : we also observe that the consciousness,
like the brain, is limited, the dura mater and the skull
being the emblems of that limitation.
The brain is supplied with blood by the carotid and ver-
tebral arteries. The carotids are the first great vessels
which issue from the stem of the arterial tree, and they
supply the cerebrum with the first blood of the heart. The
vertebrals are the first streams from the subclavians, which
supply the arms with blood. Thus the first blood of the
body and the lirnbs is alienated to the brain. Its veins,
which bring back towards the heart the blood that has
passed through the before-mentioned arteries to the pia
mater and substance of the brain, empty themselves into
certain peculiar channels contained in the layers of the
dura mater, and termed the sinuses of the brain ; which
sinuses communicate with each other at last, and pass out
of the skull by a bend or curve where the carotid enters ;
there constituting the internal jugular vein, which carries
the first considerable stream that is returned to the heart.
The cerebral globe is divided into two halves, and each
of these into lobes ; the lobes again being subdivided into
convolutions, which have furrows between them that dip
down into the brain, and are covered by the pia mater.
By means of these foldings, the surface of the cerebrum
is much increased, and space is economized ; this folding
of surfaces into solids being one of the principles of the
DESCRIPTION. 7
S
body, whereby distances are brought together, and asso-
ciation or organization is promoted. In proportion to the
number of these twists or convolutions is the power of the
brain. The mind's revolvings are here represented in
moving spirals, and the subtle insinuation of thought,
whose path lies through all things, issues with power from
the form of the cerebral screws. They print their shape
and make themselves room on the hard inside of the skull,
and are the most irresistible agents in the human world.
At a considerable depth the two hemispheres unite to-
gether, and below their union, if the cerebrum be opened,
w r e come to certain cavities termed the ventricles of the
brain. Of these there are four, all communicating with
each other ; and a fifth is enumerated, but of small size,
and disconnected from the rest. The four cavities form a
continuous chamber, and always contain more or less fluid.
Thus the brain, far from being prepared for rest, is con-
stituted internally upon the moveable pivot of this fluid
cushion of the ventricles.
The cerebellum lies behind and underneath the cere-
brum, of which it is said to be one-eighth the size, and it
is divided into lobes and lobules. It consists of grey and
white substance, not disposed in convolutions but in thin
plates. There is said to be no direct communication be-
tween the cerebral hemispheres and the cerebellum. The
latter is evidently not a revolving, thinking or spiral organ,
but a battery of determination and power : thoughtful con-
sciousness does not connect itself with the back of the head,
or with the cerebellum. Its form too, double fisted, does
not answer to the cerebral functions. Its visceral or hidden
situation also brings it into analogy with the other viscera,
in which there is no freedom of thought, but fixed accep-
tation and permanent action.
The nervous system, though apparently homogeneous,
8 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
is constructed of distinct pieces, which are extraordinarily
united, and extraordinarily capable of separation in their
functions. The first piece is the proper spinal marrow,
with all the nerves of the limbs, trunk and head which
issue from it. This lowest pillar of the cerebral system is
in a manner complete in itself, and receives impressions,
and executes actions, on its own account. It consists of a
running axis of grey matter of a peculiar form, and in
front gives off the nerves that convey bodily motions, at
the back receives those which carry bodily sensations.
The circle of its operations is therefore as follows. When
an impression appeals to it from the body through its
quasi-sentient nerves, this mounts to the grey centre to
which the nerve carrying the impression belongs : an in-
stant organic determination then occurs in the centre, a
decision takes place, and a motion is sent down through
the corresponding motor nerve to the parts which the latter
supplies. For example, a pinch applied to the leg lodges
its complaint at the grey centre, which at once by its
nerves sets the muscles and the limb in that motion which
enables the part to escape the distress. This is now
termed, reflex action, which means that an impression
is communicated to a nervous centre by a set of quasi-
sentient nerves, and a motion reflected from that centre by
a set of motor nerves. It does not necessarily involve
consciousness. A paralytic man, with no feeling in his
legs, if the soles of his feet be tickled will move them
away from the irritation, just as though he perceived it.
In short, the spinal brain is unconscious, or let us rather
say, we are unconscious of its feelings. We term its nerves
therefore, not sentient, but quasi- sentient.
We come now to a second and distinct piece of nervous
system, of whose operations we may still be unconscious,
viz., the medulla oblongata, whose nerves are connected
THE SPINAL BRAIN.
with the organs of respiration and the ingestion of food
with the functions of breathing and of eating, which al-
though they may be permeated by sensation and controlled
by the will, may also occur independently of either ; as
during sleep, when breathing still proceeds, and in various
cases when the movements of eating and deglutition are
performed without cognizance. All that is necessary for
continuing the actions of the parts of the body supplied
from these centres, is, that a quasi- sensation be communi-
cated to them, which the centres act upon through the
motor apparatus of nerves. The conception of so mere a
machine in man, is perhaps difficult to realize ; the spinal
brain, however, with its dependencies, represents an auto-
maton man as the basement of the nervous system. It is
the organization of routine or insect progress. By it we
walk, work and eat when we are not thinking of those
operations ; and thus the inherent properties of this routine
system save us from much expenditure of attention, and
allow the brain and the senses to be emancipated as neces-
sity requires from the lowest wants. Had we to perform
our animal functions by direct volitions, we should have
no time for anything better : if each breath were a distinct
voluntary act, breathing alone would fill our lives : nor in
this case would walking or any other external function be
possible, for the will does but one thing at once. As it is,
however, a number of bodily acts are momentaneously and
harmonically performed, each through the separate vigi-
lance of its own agent in the recesses of the spinal brains.
We have alluded already to the act of walking, which
affords a good example of automatic function. When we
are walking without attending to our steps, the foot com-
ing down to the ground, conveys the quasi- sensation of its
contact to the spinal centres 5 these are roused to a corre-
sponding motion j in other words, they command the
B3
10 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
muscles of the other leg to put it into a forward movement.
No sooner is this executed, than at the end of the move-
ment, another manifest quasi-sensation is aiforded by the
fresh contact with the earth, which contact reaching the
centres, engenders a second motion : and so forth, through-
out the walk. This is a simple circle, in which quasi-
sensation excites motion at the centre, and motion pro-
duces quasi-sensation at its extremes. Thus the foot on
the ground represents sensation, and that in progress, mo-
tion, and the two contemplated together represent the links
in a chain of nervous fate.
The next piece of the nervous system consists of the
nerves of the special senses, and of certain central parts
at the base of the brain, to which those nerves run. The
latter are the sensual* brain, from which fibres emanate
that ultimately become the olfactory, optic, auditory nerves,
&c., which run respectively to the nose, the eye, the ear,
the mouth and the skin. The central endowment of this
nervous piece is sensation. In itself it provides a simple
circle from sensations to motions. Impressions which are
perceived by the senses mount to the sensual centres, which
dictate suitable actions. The instincts of some animals low
down in the scale, are to be referred to this class of mo-
bilized sensations.
Instances of purely sensual actions are comparatively
rare in man, so rapid is the transit of feeling into desire,
which is not a faculty of mere sense, but the gift of a mind
in direct communication with the senses. The instinctive
* We prefer the term sensual to sensory, which seems coming into
use. The word sensory, if applied so low down, would exclude from
sensation all above it, and the cerebral operations would fall into
abstract forms : whereas by allocating the term sensual to the nervous
centres of the external senses, we leave the term sensory for the inner
senses, to which it has been appropriated from old times.
THE SENSUAL BRAIN. 11
laying out of the body for pleasures, and its spontaneous
avoidance of pains, are however cases of this order. More-
over we feel that a strong vein of these actions runs
through many of our habits, and executes them for us,
contemporaneously with our desires. Habitual vices, in
proportion as they become fixed, seem to roll upon this
fatal wheel, by which low pleasure runs incontinently into
motion. The bottle is hung round the neck of the drunk-
ard by a simple sensual circle of the kind, as well as by a
longer thong of which perverse desire is the neck-piece.
By a similar yoke, of seeing and leering, is the voluptuary
led by his objects. In short, whatever we do, good or bad,
without being able to control it, appears to contain a sen-
sual kernel. Sensuality, however, is a passive faculty,
and we shall have to distinguish presently an active part
belonging to it, and playing upon it, and which for the
present we term animality. This then is the third of the
nervous stones which construct us, sensation, which set
a-moving is sensuality. It leads us to dance pleasantly
but involuntarily to the music of the senses. Its seat is in
the base of the brain.
The fourth and remaining piece of the nervous system
comprises the cerebral hemispheres, which reasoning by
the method of exclusion we regard as the seat of the mind,
or the properly human faculties ; and not only of these,
but of all those powers which belong to consciousness, and
are over and above the senses. These hemispheres are
predominant in place and size in man, as well as in the
higher animals.
We have now chronicled three divisions of the nervous
system,* which may be grouped into two, an animal and
* The nervous system, or its functions, are sometimes dissected for
us by diseases, as well as by narcotic agents, which benumb one part
and leave the others free. For instance, during the administration of
12 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
an automatic ; the lowest of these is a nerve machine, the
higher in its twofold aspect is a nerve animal, with senses.
We know nothing that expresses so physiologically the
case between the automatic and the other part of this sys-
tem as the ratio of the living creatures to the wheels in
Ezekiel. " And when the living creatures went, the
wheels went by them ; and when the living creatures were
lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whi-
thersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was
chloroform, first thought and will, and the fixity of sense which de-
pends upon attention, become confused and waver: and shortly after-
wards active consciousness is abolished. The cerebrum is detached
from the train, and life goes on at slackened pace without its traction.
The sense of pain however still continues. By degrees this too is lost :
the second and feebler engine of sensation, the sensual brain, is also
detached, and nothing but breathing is prefixed to the cars. This
now becomes slower and more slow, and if the experiment be con-
tinued, ceases. Life is then generally irrecallable. In natural and
artificial trance the process of disconnection may proceed two steps
further ; and the nervous function may be detached to a certain dis-
tance from the organism, and yet be capable of reassuming its place.
In the case of narcotism the separation takes place from above
downwards : the mind is first taken away, then the senses, and lastly
the breath : but sometimes the reverse process occurs, as at the hour
of death, and first impressibility, and second sensibility are lost ;
whilst the mind retains its clearness, or even enjoys additional powers
of circumvision and forethought. These states are opposite, although
the beholder may mistake them for each other.
And not only disease, but the ordinary state, shews the separateness
of the nervous pieces. Through the greater portion of life, thought
and will are dormant, or the tops of the hemispheres are not in ac-
tion, though the man is conscious. Many times also imagination and
desire are completely at rest, although feeling is left ; the eye immits
rivers of objects without stirring any motions but its own as it rolls
magnetically after the pictures. And then again we experience nume-
rous twitches and convulsive movements for which we cannot account,
or in other words, which are originated in the circle below the sensual
brain.
THE CEREBRUM OR ANIMAL BRAIN. 13
their spirit to go ; and the wheels were lifted up over
against them : for the spirit of the living creature was in
the wheels. When those went, these went ; and when
those stood, these stood ; and when those were lifted up
from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them :
for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels."*
On arriving in our upward course at the cerebral hemi-
spheres, we have come to a group of functions which re-
present the powers of the mind : consequently here we
have no longer a simple centre to consider, but an organ
with various essences. For the mind is evidently twofold ;
at the first analysis it is a rational spring on the one hand,
and an animal spring on the other. It may be devoted to
the truth of things, and proceed from thought to judgment,
and from judgment to will, and so give the dictates of rea-
sonable actions. Or it may be spent upon gratifications,
and run from imagination to choice, and from choice to
desire, and thus stimulate animal actions. In short, there
are two minds in man ; the one which he possesses in com-
mon with animals ; the other which is properly human.
But where do we find these two in the cerebral hemi-
spheres ?
To this we reply that the whole cerebrum is the general
sensorium ; that is to say, the residence of the animal
mind, or the mind of the senses. For the fibres coming
up from beneath diverge to the entire cerebrum, and ter-
minate in its cortex. This brain then, as related to the
incitements of sensation, comprises the various powers
which sensation stimulates, and into which it passes ; that
is to say, it includes memory, imagination, desire, and
again the corresponding series of animal determinations
which give birth to their proper actions. To this general
* Chap, i., verses 1921.
14 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
sensory and motory head we also refer many faculties
which go under the name of instinct ; its great tides of
change are emotions, joy and sorrow, and the like ; and its
general states we term moods. The passions are the lords
of this worldly brain, by which man sympathizes with all
nature in its own way, being governed by the moon and
the weather, the circumstances of his society and his age,
and whatever influences come from without. The absence
of moral freedom characterizes its actions, when these pro-
ceed from itself alone. Its faculties are vague and general,
and move altogether in their mass. It gives the pervading
temperament and tone to the animal body, and being the
highest expression of animal life, and bulky and forcible
with our whole nature, its actions animate the frame with
prodigious vigour and universality, as we see in the case of
the various passions and emotions. Contrivance, cunning,
and a number of conjointly human and animal qualities
belong to this general sensory, and put on the appearance
of wisdom or reason, not only in animals but in men : so
that whether such or such actions argue reason is an equal
problem in both creatures.
On the other hand the human mind, as distinct from its
own animal mind, appears to reside in the cortical circum-
ferences alone, and to play upon none but the very centres
of nervous power, and not upon these in the gross, but
with skill and discrimination. Thus it does not consist in
new materials, or fresh parts, but in a fresh use of parts, and
a new architecture of materials. The supreme superficiality
of the cortex of the brain, its partition into convolutions, the
separate moveableness of these, their brain-embracing
wholeness, shew that a freedom is possible, and a uni-
versality conceded, to these parts, which neither the fibres
per se, nor the other groups of cineritious substance, can
enjoy. These conditions agree with the requirements of
THE MIND OR RATIONAL BRAIN. 15
thought and will, both of which are central and concen-
trative ; are seated at the top of the mind ; work by sepa-
ration and decision, seizing upon main points and govern-
ing provinces therefrom ; and both of which finally can
claim any portion of the domains of our animal nature,
and control it, until its animal essence is reduced to har-
mony with reason's will. These cortical substances, in
their distinct use, are the factories of mental skill. It is
their perfection to accept neither temperaments, nor wea-
thers, nor the criminal influences of the stars, nor the
imaginations, sensations, or apparent relations of things, as
their allotted sphere j but they shape and cultivate things
and ideas afresh ; they recast influences on their own
principles, of truth or falsity : their reception of outward
nature is the philosophy of the man ; their works are the
creative arts of his mind ; and their judgment is his moral
soul. All this, we remark, demands no second brain
apart from the general sensorium, but the command of this
in its highest parts, where it is free to obey, and the
reconstitution of those parts by the usage and skill of the
rational power. In this respect the brain may be likened
to the hand, which is a coarse, general and animal tool
in the savage, and for some operations, such as grubbing
in the earth, disqualified by its division into fingers ; whilst
in the civilized man it is extemporized by his mind and
education into a running power of convolutions from which
tools proceed and arts radiate, until nature is subdued and
home is built : the separate use of the fingers being the
sign and cause of this new essence in the hand.
It is therefore in the mind and not in the brain, and in
the rational mind and not in the animal mind, and not in
mere ends but in moral ends, nor in mere determinations
but in moral determinations, that man is different from
animals. Or to keep within our present subject, man is
16 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
human or hyper- animal because he has a mind extra,
which uses, or can use, the top of his brains.
The separateness of the animal from the rational brain
is functionally more distinct than the separateness between
the other parts of the nervous system. Do we not all
perform vivisection upon ourselves every day in cutting
reason off, and thinking and acting from animal motives ?
in keeping the mind under, while vague imagination,
desire and pleasure over-ride it ? in merging it in a sea of
natural emotions and commotions, which allow reason no
beginning, and will, none of its distinctness ? But as for
the structural separateness, the rational brain is no other
than the mind itself as a distinct organization, whose ex-
istence is demonstrated by its play upon the cortical organs.
This mind terminates the brain, and begins a new subject
with new expressions ; we cannot see it unless in its own
way of intellectual sight ; nor can we now pursue it, be-
cause its attributes hold no commerce with anatomical
terms.
The nerves or brain form a representative system, which
does not itself come in contact with objects on the one
hand, or with actions on the other, but deals in the one
case with the images of things, in the other with the com-
mands of actions. It results from this, that whatever will
produce the central impression, sensation, imagination, or
intellectual vision, will cause the appearance of the object,
whether it be present or not. Thus if the brain can radiate
down to the spinal cord a vibration like that which the
cord receives from any object as an impression from with-
out, the same motions will be engendered as flow from the
apposition of a real circumstance or object. So again if
the brain can shake the optical centres as light shakes
them, or can extemporize the part of light within them,
the man will have the sensation of light as though it were
ITS CIRCUMSTANCES AND EXCITANTS. 17
present from the sun or a candle. And so too if the soul
or spirit, or any other spirit or influence, can make the
imaginations or the thought-movements in the cerebral
substance, these will seem as much our own thoughts as
though no such influence had been exerted. But in both
cases, be it remembered, there is an object out of the fa-
culty excited ; though in the one case the object is out of
the organism externally, in the other case out of it in-
ternally.
Each of the centres then, namely, the automatic, the
animal, and the rational, are susceptible of a twofold ex-
citement ; first, from a circumambient world, or from be-
neath, through their own proper circle : secondly, from the
organism, or organisms, above them, and thus indirectly
from a higher circumambient sphere. Each also has its
memory ; which in the spine is habit ; in the animal brain
is proper memory ; in the distinct cortex is principles,
which hold things together in the bonds of ratio or reason,
as memory combines them in the bonds of a common sen-
sation. Habit then is the spine of the nerve-man ; me-
mory is his world of sense, or his senses ; and reason is
his proper head.
Let us now pause for a moment to ask cursorily the use
of the brain to the mind, as illustrated by the foregoing
observations. Now what is the use of the spinal cord to
the senses and the brain ? for this will give us a similitude
of the answer to the previous question. Its use is, to carry
the general cerebral principles into an automatic or me-
chanical sphere, and there to set them up in unconscious
operations. Thus the spinal cord makes motions which
look as though they proceeded from emotions, when yet
there is nothing felt. This dramatic mechanics is the mar-
row of the nervous system, and consequently of the body.
As a principle it reigns throughout it. The whole system
18 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
is a quasi thing ; a mental theatre or drama. The spinal
cord moves as though it felt ; the medulla oblongata breathes
and eats, as if it were instinct with appetites : the senses
feel, as if they were conscious : and the brain understands,
as though it were a spirit. The cheek too blushes, as
though it were ashamed ; and so forth. But all is quasi,
and depends upon a reality somewhere which is in none of
the actors ; and which reality, proximately, lies in a spiri-
tual organism, or in the human mind. Take this away,
and the mimicry is soon at an end.
Thus far then the use of the brain to the mind is, to
enable the latter to personate itself in a dead world, which
it could not do without a brain and body, really dead, and
yet seemingly or dramatically alive.
It is not long since it was believed that the actions of
the spinal marrow were evidences of consciousness, and
that feeling was implied in its habitual regular movements.
And it is still thought by many that sense or feeling is ne-
cessarily connected with consciousness : and by almost all,
that consciousness is where it seems, namely, in the head,
and not in the mind. But strike away the lower fallacy,
that muscular or convulsive action has any necessary con-
nection with feeling, and the other fallacies also totter.
For if without feeling or motive we can be impressed and
act through . the spinal cord, we can, without an inherent
mind, understand and will in the cerebral hemispheres.
Or in other words, as dead a structure in the brain may be
in apposition with the mind, for mental purposes, as that
which is added to the brain in the spine for impressional
and motor ends. The corollary is, that life is not in the
body at all, in the brain any more than in the nails ; but
that the body is essentially dramatic ; can feel as it were,
think as it were, and will as it were : which indeed is the
reason why the soul, desirous of doing all these things in
ITS PERSONATION OF MIND AND LIFE. 19
a world which likewise is dramatic, adheres to a frame
which is so perfect a medium of representations or mun-
dane actions.
But let us also consider for a moment the relation of the
mind to the brain, by an inverse analogy, namely, the re-
lation of the brain to the spinal marrow. What then is
the latter ? The difference of place between the two, and
the difference of calibre, are too obvious to mention. The
one is the head of which the other is the foot ; the one is
the luminous globe of which the other is the ray.* Now
the brain performs or instigates on new grounds, with new
efficacy, and in a thousand thousand new forms, the general
automatic actions of the spinal marrow ; for it extracts the
secret and meaning from sensible impressions, and produces
actions correspondent with the circumstances which that
meaning shews to exist. All the actions of man are prox-
imately brain-work ; so also are all his perceptions : whereas
a few automatic movements and convulsions are the whole
of the actions that can be assigned to the spinal marrow.
We have here a glimpse of the transcendent nature of the
next higher term of the series ; and if by the rule of three
we may say, as the spinal cord is to the brain, so is the
brain to the mind, we shall admit that perfections, ampli-
tude, and newness of function will occur in the latter
which it baffles words to describe.
The same truth is presented by comparison of the parts
of the brain within itself. Thus from the great cortical
surface of the cerebral globes the white fibres radiate down-
wards and inwards, the calibre of the radiant mass becom-
ing smaller as it travels. Presently the rays are arrested
* Here we may remark that we agree with the ancients, that the
spinal cord is a continuation of the brain ; although it is also, as the
moderns say, an axis of independent centres ; but its dependence is a
longer truth than its independence.
20 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
by a new bed of cortical substance, that in its turn sends
down radiating fibres, which similarly converge and de-
crease. The same process, of encountering the cortical
part, starting afresh, and always diminishing, is repeated,
until both the cerebellum and the cerebrum terminate in
the small medulla oblongata, and in the narrow spinal cord.
Thus powers are stopped off and arrested as the brain
descends ; or reasoning backwards, as Gall has done, they
are added on as the medulla oblongata ascends. What
must be the addition that takes place in the mind ? what
the new breadth in its cortical spheres ? what the acres of
the sheaves and bundles of its intellectual light? and
what, on the other hand, the gulf of loss and degradation
that lies between it and even the highest portions of the
brain ?
Thus far we have attempted a slight sketch of what may
be said with some certainty of the functions of the nervous
system. We have found that it consists firstly of an auto-
matic apparatus, the spinal brain, by which contacts are
apprehended, and motions executed, without the interven-
tion of our consciousness : secondly, of an animal brain,
which is to all intents and purposes an animal, or imagines,
desires, lusts, contrives, plans and acts from animal mo-
tives, though very imperfectly, from defect of instinct,
which is the limiting perfection of the beasts : and thirdly,
of a rational and voluntary function, playing in its revolv-
ing cortex, and evidencing the presence of an invisible
mind, whose action reveals the human brain. Thus we
have found that the brain per se is not human, but perpe-
tually humanized ; and that in its openness to that which
is next above it, and its docility to the spirit, lies its
grand endowment. In thus proceeding from below up-
wards, we have been separating parts whose perfection lies
in their harmonious union. We must now make amends
UNITY AND DISUNITY OF THE NEKVOUS SYSTEM. 21
by declaring, hat the influence of reason, permeating the
animal brain, gives it powers supereminent over instinct ;
and as man domesticates the animals, or chooses those
which suit his purpose, and abolishes the rest, so does
reason govern the moods of the brain, feeds upon its tran-
quil emotions and compresses those which are fierce, gov-
erns its imaginations, and in a word civilizes the savage
countries of the original head. All this is no work of
passion, or simple pleasure or pain, but of artist-like strug-
gle and contest, whereby reason, or the true ratio between
the mind and the brain, begins to be established, and the
little spots already cultivated are extended until the rest is
won. In this high state of the brain the human faculties
permeate the cerebrum, and the animal faculties, prodi-
giously cultivated beyond the wild state, are everywhere
parallel with the rational powers. And so too the me-
chanical faculties, all the manufactures of thought, or the
mere motions of the body : these are surrounded by a con-
sciousness which knows what they will be, before they
appear ; they are developed into mechanism after mechan-
ism, all the inventions of reason and will in the mechan-
ical sphere. This is a condition of the nervous system
which is seldom witnessed, but we place it as a counterpart
to the state of disunion considered before : the ordinary
state is a kind of composition between the two, and can
easily be constructed out of these extremes.
I do not know that we can escape generalities in treat-
ing of the functions of the brain. Certainly at present,
when we go inwards, whether into the head or the mind,
a few powers present themselves, very little colored, and
with none but a general outline. The grey and white
shadows of metaphysics seem to answer to the cineritious
and medullary groups of the nervous system. But there
is no doubt that the truths of this class are valuable, as
22 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
the pure science of the body ; and that they are the out-
lines of a multitude of more interesting sciences.
There is indeed a branch which it has been thought
throws a broader light on the nature of the brain : we
allude to phrenology. This office of phrenology we regard
however as a misapprehension. As we understand phre-
nology, it is a science of independent observation, which
is completed in tracing the correspondence between the
surface of the living head and the character of the indi-
vidual. It was as such that its edifice arose stone by stone
in the hands of the illustrious Gall. He noticed that por-
tions of the surface of the head stood out in those who
were prominent in certain faculties, and putting the bodily
and mental prominences together (for which may he be
honored !), he arrived by repeated instances at the signs of
the character as they are written upon the head. He
completed the dark half of the globe of physiognomy, and
letting his active observation shine upon it, he found the
rest of the head representative of the whole character, as
the face is expressive of the mind. Expression, we may
remark, is living representation, and representation is dead
expression. The representation of the man by his head
had always been vaguely felt, and the best sculptors and
poets had imaged their gods and heroes with phrenological
truth. But Gall made their high intuitions so current that
all could buy them. Now this department of physiognomy
surely might be carried to the perfection peculiar to itself
without the head being opened. Nay, it would be best
learned without breaking the surface ; for the beauty of
expression and representation lies in their bringing what
they signify to the surface, and depositing it there. But
for this purpose the surface must be whole. There is no
interval between life and its hieroglyphics, but the one is
within the other, as a wheel within a wheel. The thing
PHRENOLOGY. 23
signified by the organ of form is form, and not a piece of
cerebrum : love is meant by the protuberance of amative-
ness, and not the cerebellum : and so forth. It is super-
ficiality, and not depth, that is excellence here. The deep
ones had dug for ages in the brain, and found nothing but
abstract truth : Gall came out of the cerebral well, and
looking upon the surface found that it was a landscape, in-
habited by human natures in a thousand tents, all dwelling
according to passions, faculties and powers. So much was
gained by the first man who came to the surface, where
nature speaks by representations ; but it is lost again at
the point where cerebral anatomy begins. Gall himself
was an instance of this, for he was one of the greatest and
most successful of the anatomists of the brain. But when
the skull is off, his phrenology deserts him, the human in-
terest ceases, and his descriptions of the fibres and the grey
matter are as purely physical as if they were of the ropes
and pulleys of a ship.
It must however be supposed that the brain has a defi-
nite ratio to the head, but what that ratio may be, is an
undecided question. It is difficult to prove that the risings
and fallings of the skull correspond exactly with those of
the brain. This is of no consequence to phrenology as a
science of observation. And it does not follow that the
representation of faculties is equivalent to physical corre-
spondence or similar undulation of surface. The nose
represents the sense of smell, although the olfactory nerve
does not lie under it in the form of a nerve nose. And de-
structiveness may lie in its bony den without exactly fit-
ting the bone. On the contrary w T e might suppose that
where activity was involved, there would be room for
exercise ; and that the inner table of the skull would re-
present something more than the limits of the greatest
exertions of the faculty, the arms-length, spring and
hatchet-play, for instance, of the destroying organ.
24 THE HUMAN BEAIN.
Moreover, looking at the instance of the face, it does
not appear certain that the ratio is between the surface and
the parts immediately beneath it. Concealment and pro-
jection are elements of representation. The eyes are put
forth far away from those cerebral origins which they sig-
nify, and with which they communicate. The parts that
functionally underlie the eyes are not the structures nearest
to them inwards. The superficial-making process is often
slanting, as is seen in the ducts of many organs, which
carry the produce by which they represent the organ to a
spot remote from the surface above it.
We are inclined however to believe that there is a fitness
between the parts of the phrenological head and the brain
underneath them. And we suspect also that the ratio is
one of quantity. For when we consider the whole frame
as representative, the front half of the body stands for ex-
pression, or that which represents the mind actively, and
in the face intelligibly; while the back half stands for
representation or reaction. The front impresses spiritually,
the back materially ; or in other words, the front acts, and
the back reacts. Now the reaction consists in the gross
pushing of the frame, while the action is skilfully sup-
ported upon this, and busy in the front. This pushing for
a rest necessarily is quantitative, and moulds to its shape
what it comes against, if the latter can take an impression.
The skill of action on the other hand similarly moulds, but
at a distance from itself, and upon the models of quality or
design, which issue from its creative fingers. Now it
seems as if the brain, considered as made of organs, and
as determined to without, leans the backs of those organs
against the skull, their fronts being turned to the origins
of the nerves of the face and body ; and thus gives upon
the skull the back or passive side of the character, and a
portion of the front or active side in the face.
But still the push of the organs against the skull, and
PHRENOLOGY. 25
their protrusion or apparent bulk, would not shew that the
protrusion upon the head was primarily due to the subja-
cent organ. In a soft and yielding mass like the brain, the
strong and energetic parts would, it seems, hold their
places, displace the others, and cause the weakest to go to
the wall. Thus a stout eminence on the head might sig-
nify firmness, though the organ of firmness were far away,
making room for himself in all directions, and ousting the
feeblest parts of the brain into the poorest places, aside
from the rest. In fact, power is always felt physically
at a distance from itself, where reaction and resistance
begin. Thus feeble races are pushed up into the moun-
tains before their conquerors, where their condition indeed
signifies power, but it is unfortunately the power of their
enemies, and their own weakness. We might then expect
that in the reactive skull the greatest prominences should
have under them the most passive portions of the brain.
And if this be the case, the phrenology of the brain would
be the inverse of that of the head, and each depression or
elevation on the skull would not be the result of a simple
pressure, but of the varying balance of two or more facul-
ties or organs, pressing each other up or down as the case
may be. It does not seem impossible that such a phreno-
logy of the brain should be constituted ; which if it were,
it would signify the strength and weakness of the charac-
ter, both written on the surface. Undoubtedly many of
the exaggerations of character proceed from the imperfect
resistance offered by some of the faculties, and shew their
strength in the direction of our greatest weaknesses. Thus
their forcible nature argues the compliance and not the
active strength of the mind which immediately executes
them. If this hold good of the skull also, then it contains
no organs, but merely passive evidences of the faculties,
and we are brought again to the point, that phrenology is
c
26 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
more properly to be called cranioscopy, and to he regarded
as tlie mute complement of physiognomy.
Moreover the correspondence between insides and out-
sides cannot be calculated upon with nicety. Circumstances
not only environ essentials, but alter their shapes and
seemings. The skull, as a circumstance surrounding the
brain, may represent it badly, as a poor gift of language
may choke the utterance of a rich heart. It by no means
follows that there is harmonious co-development of the
parts, but on the other hand, the instances of this perfection
are rare. Brains may be born into inconvenient cases,
just as good human minds, veritable immortal children, are
born into idiot brains. Difference of form. also, and con-
sequent difference of distribution of the constituent parts,
may be expected between different races. If the climate
and the wants of life are various, the shape of the life
and its parts will be various also : the faculties will con-
sent to the circumstances, and grow in their training.
Ideality will not fight with hope for any precise chair of
bone, when the relations alter, and another piece is natu-
rally offered. A faculty squeezed in by circumstances will
rise up somewhere else, or cause the protrusion of some
other part. It seems clear, then, that the brain will con-
sent to be packed differently : that if its external world or
climate, viz., the skull and membranes, are of a new type,
its resources will not be overset, but developed in a new
direction. But this does not disprove phrenology, though
it may perhaps cause us to hope that there are phrenologies
besides the European, and that this little science also is of
a spherical richness.
Perhaps we have been too much accustomed to regard
the exterior head as a mere wrappage of the brain, whereas,
like other externals, it is independent like the brain itself,
and has its own centres of structure and function. We
PHRENOLOGY. 27
have likened it to a country or climate that the brain in-
habits, and pursuing the analogy we may say, that the
inhabitant did not make his country, nor can he modify it,
excepting in so far as he is modified by it. True, he is
destined to mould it to his wants; but then the wants them-
selves draw their forms from the climate. Hence we see
that in the greatest shell or skull which is built up around
every man, namely, his vault of sky, and what it contains,
a typical difference exists which cannot be reduced for dif-
ferent vaults to a single rule : the skull of heaven has many
shapes, and societies or brains fill them differently : destruc-
tiveness in one wages itself upon lions and tigers, or is
committed to the arms and hands ; in another, it goes forth
with the powers of the mouth or the sword of the spirit.
Phrenology, following this order, must rather start from
a type, and gradually depart from that, than attempt to
make the type universal in the relations of shape and place.
In short, we must admit a comparative phrenology in the
human race itself.
Phrenology, however, is one of a group of sciences dif-
ferent from anatomy, and its truths are of larger stature
than those which we are considering. It belongs to the
doctrine, not of the human body, but of man, and is one
of the lesser departments of anthropology. It furnishes
also a contribution to that which is the science of sciences,
namely, the significance of forms. Considered as a branch
of observation it has not been assailed successfully, because
no one has paid so much attention to its facts as the phre-
nological student. We take his word for its truth, at least
provisionally, since the oppugners have formed no contrary
induction, which in destroying phrenology, might supplant
it by a better practical system. And if we are not mis-
taken, the world will give it a long trial, were it only that
it deals with the substances of character, and seems to
c 2
28 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
create a solid play-ground away from the abstractions of
the old metaphysics. Color and life, substance and shape,
are dear to mankind, as homes against the wind of cold
speculation. We cannot give them up for patches of sky
a thousand miles from the earth, or for anything, in short,
but still more substantial houses.
An important set of problems concerning the brain and
nervous system remains to be noticed : namely, the doc-
trine on the one hand, and the denial on the other, of a
nervous spirit or fluid. On this subject interest has ceased,
in consequence partly of the uselessness of the controversy.
Each party has wielded a sword to which the other was
invulnerable : a sign that Providence did not intend the
dispute to be settled upon the terms of either. Nor per-
haps can we ourselves command a decisive victory for our
opinions, which are affirmative of the existence of a nerv-
ous spirit. Nevertheless we think that our side has been
increasing in strength of late ; and that the contest must
be renewed.
In the first place we remark, that no part of our frames
is so little given up to sight and sense as the live brain
and nervous system. No part is so much alarmed, or pre-
sumably so much altered, by exposure. Nay, there is no
part in which there is less to see than in this supreme or-
ganization. Detail and structure and the broad lines of
design begin to be inappreciable, as a preparation for the
indwelling and shadowing forth of something w r hich is
absolutely invisible to the senses. Per contra there is no
part in which there is so much left to fancy, to imagination,
and to the inner eye of reason. Tempered thoughts seem
to be the only steel that can open the viscera of thought.
The method a priori appears to be as much prescribed by
THE NERVE SPIRIT. 29
nature for investigating organs that work a priori, or from
life downwards, as, they say, it is proscribed from those
where the senses give immediate information. The truths
that we can see, we do not discern by reason : but con-
versely reason must discern those which the eye cannot
see. If all truth is a posteriori, then the physiologist can
see the living brain in vision. But as he has lost this
faculty, reason in the meantime must have place.
Now neither of the parties in the above controversy has
ever seen, still less dissected, the living brain, meaning
thereby the brain in the exercise of its functions, thinking
and reasoning in its peaceful head. On both hands, then,
imagination has been active in all that has been said. The
question therefore is, as in several other cases, Which
party has the best set of imaginations ? measuring the
excellence on either side by the fruits that it produces in
its department. Which set of conceptions the affirmative
or the negative comes nearest to life, and to those attri-
butes which will fit the highest organ of man's body, and
one which receives the influences of his mind? For
reasons of analogy, necessity and experience, we adhere to
those imaginations and thoughts that postulate a nervous
spirit.
Be it observed, however, that we do not dogmatize re-
specting the physical properties of this which we term a
fluid. In reasoning by analogy, we are forced to take
with us the garb of the known sphere, and to talk of a
fluid, because the body furnishes the word. We desire,
however, to hold the term loosely, and no longer than
until a better analogy, or the real name, arises.
It is well known that influences mount from the body
to the head in sensation, and descend from the head to the
body in voluntary motion ; and anatomy demonstrates that
the course of these influences is, in sensation, from the
30 THE HUMAN BKAIN.
skin and sensories through the nerves to the brain ; and in
action or motion, from the brain through the nerves to the
muscles, bones, skin : in short, to the body as set in mo-
tion. Furthermore investigation shews, that the course of
the same is, from the nervous fibres and fibrils, through
the medullary fibres of the brain, to the cortical or gray
substances at its surface and in other parts. What do we
deduce from this known transit of influence ? Or what is
the meaning of the ambiguous term, influence ?
Two views have been current. On the one side it is
maintained that the fibres are solid, and that the influence
is a vibration which traverses the fibres in both directions.
On the other hand, the influence is regarded as a real in-
fluxion, and the fibres are regarded as conduits, permeated
by a fluid. There is a third hypothesis, of a gelatinous
or other fluid in the nerves, which propagates forces by
waves or undulations, but does not itself move forward :
but this is only a subdivision of the doctrine of vibration.
And there is a fourth view that we can /N know anything
about the matter. But we do not yet know what can be
known. In thus classifying opinions we by no means in-
tend to convey that they are held sharply by any one at
present : on this subject the state of most enquiring minds
is mixed ; indeed the apathy felt of late respecting the
controversy is too profound to admit of distinctness of
parties.
I. If the fibres were solid, and traversed, not by a fluid,
but by a vibration or undulation, such vibration would be
dissipated into the surrounding parts, especially in the
brain, where the fibres lie close together. The softness
and non- elasticity of all parts of the nervous system seem
unadapted to mere vibration being communicated, for
vibration depends upon tension, and the only condition of
tension in such a system lies in a moveable fluid distending
THE NERVE SPIRIT. 31
the fibres, And when a nerve is tied, the sensation or
motion which it supplied becomes arrested at once, which
would not be the case if these depended upon vibration.
Certainly nothing can be conceived less adapted than the
brain and nerves, to the ordinate propagation of electricity
or any other imponderable, unless limited to a fluid vehicle.
The hypothetical currents of vibration, however, must be
ordinate and distinct beyond measure, for on the one hand
they are the lines of thought and will, sensation and action ;
and on the other, the fibrillation of the brain is exquisitely
minute and separate even to the naked eye. We gather
from these reasons, that if the nervous current be in any
analogy with electricity, galvanism, or other imponderable,
it must itself still be regarded as an incarnate imponder-
able ; as might be anticipated from its domestication in
the human body. But an incarnate imponderable, pre-
serving its velocity on the one hand, and being embodied
on the other, is only conceivable as an animal fluid or a
fluid animal, whose speed and other attributes are life-like,
thought-like, will-like, and sense-like.
II. The analogies of the grosser parts point to the tubular
structure of the nerves. In the body, where there is an
organ as a bed, and trunks, branches and twigs proceed
from it, the derivations are hollow, and carry a fluid.
This is the case with the heart, the lungs, the stomach,
the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas, &c. On this ground
we understand their functions ; in their produce we re-
cognize their use in the economy. Again what reason
can we give for the quantity of blood which is applied
to the brain, and which is more in proportion than is
sent to other organs, if it be only required for its nutri-
tion, and not for supplying a large quantity of fluid.
How also can we account for the physical debility conse-
quent upon certain effects, unless by a waste and spending
32 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
of a fluid ? And recurring to analogy, does it not seem
to be in the order of things, that the living principle
should act through the fluid upon the solid, when we find
that the more living parts of the body, as the brain and
nerves, are the softest ; and the less living, as the tendons,
ligaments, and bones, are the harder and the hardest :
also that in the earliest stages of formation all things are
fluid, and at the very beginning, a fluid, and that hard-
ness grows up by degrees, and plasticity ceases ; old age
consisting physically in stiffness, unyieldingness and ossi-
fication. Further, that the change of pervious canals
into solid ligaments, fibres or threads, which takes place
often in the body, is always a change from vitality to-
wards the contrary ; shewing that the solid form is a degra-
dation of the previous fluid, and not vice versd. It seems
then a prepared belief, that the nearest thing to life is the
most life-like, the most moveable, the most quick, in short,
the most fluid ; in a word, that a nervous fluid is itself the
first organ in the body, and the physical handle of the
spirit.
III. To come to experience, what are we to think of the
pulpy, semi-liquid texture of the brain itself, and of the
immense proportion in which fluid enters into its composi-
tion ? That there is a cerebral fluid is past doubt, for the
brain consists of almost nothing else. And if three-fourths
of the mind's organ are fluid, certainly that portion is
subject to mental arrangement, like the rest. When the
mind is gone, the arrangement is gone, and hence the
dead brain gives no response respecting the nature of the
fluid. Nor indeed would the sight of the living brain
reveal the mystery, unless the observer had some thoughts
commensurate with the organization which prevails in
these provinces of the soul. A fibre of truth, tubular
from heaven downwards, and a fluid mind travelling in it,
THE NERVE SPIRIT. 33
in short open faculties, would be the only conditions
of discernment, even if the skull were a window through
which the brain could be seen. But at least we can con-
clude, that the so-called serum of the dissecting-room is
only the corpse of the cerebral spirit. It is true the dead
body retains its shape when life has gone, and is therefore
instructive still, but the animal fluids undergo alterations
even in form, when they fall out of their native shapes,
the vessels, as witnessed in the coagulation of the blood.
And for this reason these liquid corpses teach absolutely
nothing of the properties of the living fluids.
To illustrate these remarks, we will put an analogous
case of a larger order. Suppose that London were visible
from one of the stars, and were known to be a city of the
living, but its inhabitants were not within the power of
vision. And suppose further that the stellar people were
of those who believe nothing but what they can see. It
is clear that the outworks and great channels of London
life falling under their ken, would be mistaken for the
living things. And as life always brings motion to mind,
the vibrations and shakings of the houses and walls of
our metropolis would be postulated as the life which was
alleged. But suppose further, that on some coronation
day vast crowds of the inhabitants assembled, and formed
a dark mass before the eyes of the gazing star ; this would
of course be taken to be of the same substance and rank
with the houses, and the identification of life with bricks
and mortar would still stand. In this case the truth, or
the living multitudes, though seen, would lend itself to
the fallacy ; the only escape from which would be by
analogy, proclaiming that solid houses everywhere are
dead, though inhabited by fluid or freely moveable living
beings ; by imagination or hypothesis, guessing that towns
and streets are for men, and not vice versa ; and by reason
c3
34 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
or theory, affirming mankind, and accounting for the ap-
pearances of the city upon the wants of its substantial
though separately invisible inhabitants.
But IV. the existence of an animal spirit has great
historical probability attached to it. For the course of
knowledge has consisted, not in confirming abstractions,
but in merging them in some adequate reality, such as we
are now claiming for the life and spirit of the brain. The
concrete form of things, or the tracing them home, is the
final victory of knowledge touching mere existence. So
long as life is an indeterminate phrase, applied without
distinction to the whole system, the study of that life has not
commenced, for its presence has not been gained ; but when
its proper currents are found, and the mind traverses them,
then the separate knowledge of their properties can begin,
but not sooner. And moreover the triumphs of this age
are peculiarly due to the introduction of the mind to the
empire of the fluids. The steam engine and its nervous
spirit, steam ; the railway and its locomotive fluid, the
train ; the wire and its electric spirit, shew the practical
benefits of the subordination of the solid to the fluid. And
in human progress, it is the fluid and the modifiable that
give motion and impulse to the otherwise fixed. What are
quickness, conception and imagination, but the fluids of
the mind : regard them at work, and you can bring them
under no other analogy. They stir the old, hard world,
and permeate all things, and like nervous fluids are pre-
sent in a moment where their mission is, with the power
of arranging and quickening virtue that they have received
in the fountains of thought. Indeed I see not that there
is any known sphere of things whose analogies do not cry
aloud for the existence of a fluid brain governing the solid,
and like it, organized, though on a more living plan.
Thus until a nerve- spirit be admitted, How can the
THE NERVE SPIRIT. 35
science of the brain be in fraternity with the other arts
and sciences ?
V. If this fluid is quasi-life, or what is the same
thing, physical life, it may well be conceived that the
nervous tubes will close against it in the moment of dying ;
as the dying arteries contract, and shed away the arterial
blood. Death has no hold upon life, but its chill grasp is
its means of losing it. Hence microscopic observations
upon the nervous fibres never can give the negative to their
tubular form or fluid contents. The problem does not come
within the brains of necrology. Moreover, how if the tubes
were spiral, and not straight, which might be the case in
a system where velocities are such that distance forms no
element in the calculation ? In that case, even supposing
the tubes were hollow, they might never be seen as tubes
by reason of their insinuations and turnings. For in the
realms of mind and thought, the shortest distance between
any two points or ends, is that which leads through all the
means, no matter by what length of course. The zigzag
of the lightning is in the straight line of smiting.
VI. The doctrine of a nervous fluid seems further to arise
out of the construction of the system from successive pieces,
each higher and broader than that preceding it. For this
ladder takes us up to regard the mind itself as supremely
nervous. Now each part has its centre in itself ; but also
is traversed by the part above it, on its way to the surface ;
whither all the pieces, the high and the low, arrive alike
immediately, or are represented. Thus the mind comes
down through everything and its spirit glitters in the face.
And thus all the actions of man automatic, sensual and
animal may be shot and pierced from the quiver of life,
until they are nothing but rational and spiritual actions.
It is to be remarked, however, that the visible solids ter-
minate with the brain. If, then, the mind has fibres re-
36 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
presenting it in the brain, as the brain has fibres represent-
ing it in the spinal cord, the former fibres must lie in the
fluids, for the solids belong to the brain itself. Thus,
while the brain or organism terminates in its own centres,
the cortical substances, or supreme solids, the mind en-
ters into these by a series of corresponding fluid organ-
isms, which represent the living or active portion, as the
solids represent the recipient or passive. This is but
imagination ; yet imagination is the youthful eye of science,
and provided it owns to its name, it is an innocent as well
as a suggestive power. Therefore we proceed to imagine,
that the mind broods above the brain, as the cosmical ether
sits above the planetary air, and further, that the mind or
spiritual reservoir fills all the interstices of the brain, where
however it is determined by suitable fluid envelopes, which
accommodate, temper and envelop it until it is brought into
ratio with the fixed mechanism of the cerebrum. Hence
its solar vibrations are felt in the bodily organism, as light
is felt on the earth through the splendid shiver of a medium
which the air includes between its parts. And hence there
are as many kinds of nervous or cerebral spirit as there are
nerves and brains ; for it is the openness or interval! ing of
the latter that admits and gives quality or fibrillation to
the former. The brain, doubtless, is made with an express
view to this recipiency: the fluids, which when entered by
the soul become nerve spirits, are also predetermined ; and
hence there is the same ratio again between the mind and the
nerve spirit, as between the brain and the spinal cord, in that
the parts of both are alike, but differing in breadth or degree.
But indeed the doctrine of the nerve-spirit forms but
one of several problems, which have experienced the like
treatment. The reality of whatever is above the senses is
questioned by many, and consequently the presence of the
supernal in the sensual is denied ; and if the supernal be
THE NERVE SPIRIT. 37
visible, still it is degraded by some ordinary name, and
the spirit and message which it carries are sensualized and
set aside. The thing is killed by scepticism, and then its
spirit is easily called serum. It is so with Revelation. A
divine mind there may be, but then man, say some, is
solid at the top, and lets God in by a self- vibration : there
is no open fibre between Him and man. We, however,
affirm a nerve spirit of the human race, which is not man's,
but God's in man a genuine influx, a word, a revelation.
It is just as visible as other books, though often it is not
known what it is, because the mind is not known with
which it communicates, nor consequently the peculiar ani-
mation of the book. We see on this mighty scale what is
the use of a nerve spirit, namely, to be immediately pre-
sent with the directing mind throughout the organism ; to
speak in messages unwarped by the finite faculties ; to be
the First and the Last, instead of " sitting above the crea-
tion, and seeing it go." Were it otherwise, the government
of the world would be virtually committed to man's reason,
which would exclude that of God ; for man would have no
chart but his own faculties. And so, were the brain a
solid, and shut at top, the government of the body must
depend upon it and not upon the soul, or only upon the
soul, in so far as the brain chose to coincide with its mes-
sages. Government is incompatible with such an idea.
But on the other shewing, the brain cannot exclude the
next higher series, which permeates it in its own right,
and exercises a providential and healing virtue upon what
is so apt to go wrong of itself. The truth, however, is,
that the doctrine we are combating is not in the sphere of
the nervous or open system at all : it belongs to the mus-
cular department of truth, or that which has both ends
closed, and is a solid body. Its spiritual correspondent is
'earnestness,' spasmodic vigor, upon which so many and
38 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
such famous men rely for the salvations of the time. We
might collect other problems, besides that of the presence
of the divine light in the world or Revelation ; and that of
the presence of the soul in the body, or spiritual existence,
to shew that the doctrine of the animal spirits suffer in the
company of great truths ; but enough has been said to
shew that deism has dependencies everywhere ; and that
besides the vast irreligion of excluding God from the uni-
verse, there is a series of lesser impieties and disloyalties
of a similar kind, which rob the body of the soul, clip the
world close to the limits of air, make man and nature truth-
tight, and reduce all things to petty selves, which can
choose whether they will have a God above them, a world
around them, and a soul within them, or the contrary.
We postulate, then, that everything, according to its
openness to the sphere above it, has a spirit, or a quasi-
spirit ; and when the organ is so constructed for opening
as the brains whose first great faculty is openness, when
it can take in so much, the capacious influx or gift natu-
rally takes the form of a nerve spirit, which is thenceforth
the tutelar genius of the system. Further, that every-
thing, whether a brain or a science, which is so roofed
over that nothing but itself can come into it so thick-
skulled and self-opinionated is dead at the top, however
it may work reflexly or spasmodically according to the
exigencies of the lower life.
So much for the spirit within the brain. There is a
spirit beyond it, of which we do not treat in this place.
Only we remark that the spirit within is the physiological
window to the spirit beyond, and that they who do not look
through it, cannot admit the soul of man as having any
ratio with the sciences of the body. Certainly the soul is
not their object ; but woe to them if it have not its witness
within their field. Even granting what we have said, the
FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVE SPIRIT. 39
nerve spirit will be only on a level with the other fluids,
unless it be interpreted by those higher powers which it
serves. But what its function is can be told analogically,
but not, as yet, otherwise. Thus we may say that it ex-
ercises quasi-mind and influence in every part of the frame :
that it is an atomic intellect everywhere, capable of repre-
senting the state of the body, and a will, capable of setting
the organism in imitative movement according to its deci-
sions and forms. By it alone can we account for the unity
and coherence of the system. For every point of it is a
sense or intelligence that shews the frame a model that
commands instant imitation. And thus it may be likened
to the truths of society, which command obedience by their
bare shewing, according to the health of the social frame.
Let it be borne in mind, however, that the nerve spirit is
different according to the divisions of the nervous system,
and according to the nerves of every organ, and indeed
every particle, because each is open to the wisdom that it
needs. Thus in the nervous system proper it is mind and
will : in the liver again it is the mirror and model of the
hepatic truths and operations. And so of the other organs.
Dropped from above into their lives, revealed to their blood
and races, it sets them in the fermentation and discussion
of their problems, and on the veritas prevalebit principle,
health cannot fail to obey it. It is the posture-master of
the solids, and the charioteer of the fluids. We see then
how full the body is of eyes how instinct with spirit-like
forces, and by the analogies of mental and social life, how
irresistible are the causes of harmony, design and coope-
ration in the bodily fabric. But were there not such a
spirit, there would be no reason, but an immediate dictate
of God's will, for the stupendous system which the human
machine discloses : that is to say, there would be no wis-
dom in the body, answering to that supreme wisdom which
exists above it.
40 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
And here, to assist our conceptions, let us revert to the
current views of the solid pieces of the nervous system.
These, as we have shewn before, are all of them of spi-
ritual machinery ; in other words, they have the power of
dramatizing mental functions. Even the spinal cord acts
as if it were a sensible animal, guiding the fingers for
example to the seats of pain by its automatic endowments.
How much more must the supreme fluid, whose essence is
motion and plastic virtue, be capable of dramatizing or
representing the powers of the mind and soul, and their
ever- varying relations to the microcosm. A fortiori it will
act like wisdom and like will everywhere, when its mere
channels, wherever they extend, have these quasi-living
properties. It is here to be remarked, that we are in the
strictest keeping with experience ; that we are simply pos-
tulating for the fluid brain the same thing, though in the
fluid degree, which physiology claims already for the solid
brain. But there is this difference, that the solid brain,
or the nerves, are of course limited to the nervous system,
whereas the fluid brain, or the nerve spirit, does not end
with these conduits ; but when it is shed from the fingers'
ends, heart's ends and viscus' ends of the nerves, it can
make use of every other structure as its vehicle, and thus
import the drama of life, in all its degrees, into the flesh
and entrails of the universal body. Agreeably to a com-
mon fact, that where a form ceases, its essence, if of true
virtue, still passes on, and applies itself to utilities that
it could not execute when confined to its bodily sheath.
We may perchance be accused of materialism for de-
manding such a physical wisdom. So an insect possessing
only a spinal cord might accuse of materialism a being
possessing the sensual brain, because the latter exhibited
this as still a nervous system ; and a creature terminated
by the sensual brain might reproach materialism against a
being who carried the nervous firmaments one step higher
FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVE SPIRIT. 41
in the cerebral hemispheres, because those hemispheres
were still nervous system. The insect conception of sense
(if the phrase can be pardoned) is doubtless null ; and
could the creature evolve it, the nullity would appear in
the want of body and structure, in the impression that pure
spirit or abstraction comes on at the top of the spinal co-
lumn. The brain, however, is a spirit pure enough to the
spinal column. And so the mind, organic and in ratio
with the rest though it be, is nevertheless the pure spirit
of the human brain. The materialism lies with those who
make the brain solid, the skull thick, and the mind an
abstraction.
VII. In conclusion, we may be allowed to say, that the
doctrine of a nerve spirit is no new creed, nor ever was un-
orthodox until now. The greatest names in physiology are
its adherents. But neither did these men see the tubes or
the fluid, such as we have conceived it, in the dead sub-
ject : a fact which, as Haller says, " shews the weakness
of the senses, but has no validity against the existence
of a juice or spirit in the nerves." This reason had its
proper effect with the great anatomists of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries : it shewed them the weak-
ness of their senses, and stimulated them the more to use
their understandings. They were the original geniuses
who laid the foundation of a general knowledge of anatomy
that will not pass away, but to which we must recur when
we desire to refresh our minds with the first vivid impres-
sions that the wonders of the body created upon the finest
intellects that ever studied organization. Would it were
in our power to bring before the reader the character-
istics of these brave pioneers of anatomical knowledge.
Would we could reintroduce him to the venerable Eusta-
chius ; to Malpighi, the father of visceral anatomy ; to
Ruysch and Morgagni, the purifiers of the anatomy of
42 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
the schools ; to Leeuwenhoek, who first seized the micro-
scope as an exclusive field, and devoted himself to it for
fifty years with an eagerness which has not been surpassed ;
to Vieussens, Lancisi and Baglivi, eminent alike for sys-
tematic knowledge and philosophical genius ; to Bartholin,
Verheyen, Heister and Winslow, whose methodical text-
books kept their ground in the European schools for more
than a hundred years, and who supplied their successors
with much of both the matter and the form that exists in
the manuals now in use ; to Boerhaave, " the common pre-
ceptor of Europe " in the last century, and the consulting
physician of the world, who gathered up the experience
and deductions of ages in anatomy and physiology, and
gave it a new and compact form in that wonderful little
book, the Institutiones Medicce : also to Boerhaave' s pupil,
Haller, who stands as a mountain between the present and
the past, and reflects from his summit the departed learn-
ing of seventeen centuries. But their monuments are the
living parts of their science. And we must be content
with alleging, that these men, with no exception, believed
in the animal spirits, and the tubular construction of the
nerves ; which as the illustrious Glisson, our countryman,
remarks, was in his time " accredited by nearly all physi-
cians, and by all philosophers."
We now therefore assume that the nerves are tubes,
and that there is a special fluid, cerebral, spinal, sympa-
thetic, i. e., following in its degrees and divisions the solid
pieces of its nervous frame : and the question occurs,
Where is this fluid engendered? We reply, that its matrix
everywhere is the cineritious substance ; that as the vehicle
of what comes down from above, it begins everywhere
with the beginning of the bodily order, which lies in the
cineritious spheres. The latter shew luxuriant provision
for the purpose in the arterial meshes which supply them.
CIRCULATION OF THE NERVE SPIRIT. 43
But to pursue this subject would require a treatise on the
life of the blood. We shall, however, recur to it in the
sequel.
But another question presents itself Is there a circula-
tion of this living fluid ? Do its centres impel it, as the
heart propels the blood ? Is there a cerebral force or a
motion of the nervous system ? Or is the brain, besides
being solid and exclusive, also stationary and paralytic ?
Or on the other hand, if there be any natural force in
brains, what is it ?
First for the facts. Two motions are already admitted
to have place in the head, one corresponding to the beating
of the arteries or heart ; the other, to the breathing of the
lungs. By laying the fingers upon the open fontanelle of a
young infant, the reader will feel the first-named motion.
It is the stroke of the heart communicated to the arteries
of the dura mater. This is no cerebral force, or proper
motion of the brain. As for the second or lung movement,
it occurs as follows. When the lungs expand to draw in
the air, a tendency to vacuum is created in the chest,
which causes the fluids all over the body to rush or to in-
cline thither, to fill the threatened void. In short the lungs,
besides breathing in the air, quaff down the venous blood
from the brain, and suck up that from the body. The con-
sequence is, that in inspiration the skull is more empty of
blood than at other times. Hence when the brain is ex-
posed, it is seen to subside during inspiration. This is
the second movement observed, or the effect upon the brain
of the respiratory pulse. But neither is this a cerebral
force, but a physical subsidence, just as the corresponding
rise is merely physical, and results from the act of expi-
ration, which retarding the return of blood to the chest,
forces up the brain upon this fluid cushion. This, however,
is to be noticed, that when the blood leaves the skull during
44 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
inspiration, it creates a vacant space which has a function,
or which is not vacant in point of use : in short, it leaves
room for the brain to expand. And if its real expansion
be less in volume than its apparent subsidence, then the
brain may be automatically rising at the moment when it
is physically falling, in which case the latter movement
will mask the former. When the lungs expand, then,
there is room for the brain also to expand, and when the
lungs contract, there is a physical reason why the brain
also must contract.
We do not know that experience has gone further hith-
erto than to shew the possibility of the movement of the
brain, in shewing that it has room or liberty to move.
And indeed, if we consider the problem, we shall perhaps
find reason to think that this motion, like the motions of
other bodies from which we cannot separate ourselves, but
with which we ourselves move, must come as a theory
whose main case will lie in explaining all the facts.
Yet further as to the possibility of the movement, one
of the most important truths of physiology lies in the insu-
lation of the different systems that make up the body. In
point of function, indeed, we have seen that the nervous
system itself consists of individual pieces, which can act
either separately or in combination. But in structure the
whole nervous system is isolated from the rest of the body,
though plunged or let down into it as into a well of flesh.
The nerves end in loops or otherwise, but are not solidly
continuous with the other tissues. In short, the nervous body
floats in the fleshly body as the central yelk of the micro-
cosm. We may liken it to a sword of lightning in an elastic
scabbard, which scabbard is perpetually elongating and gath-
ering itself up, but is always full of the subtle and separate
fire. Movement is compatible with this state, nay, is per-
petually stimulated by it where the whole subject is mov-
THE MOTION OF THE BRAIN. 45
ing ; just as the non-continuity of the planets with each
other, and the interstice between these cosmical atoms,
allows and necessitates their courses and revolutions. It
used to be thought that nerve joined and became continu-
ous with muscle and vessel, in which case thorough motion
of the nervous system would not have been possible. We
now find that it only rests upon these lower parts, of course
with an interval, which allows of thorough or loco-motion ;
and we know, therefore, that thanks to the breathing move-
ments, the nerve animal requires to plant its foot afresh
with every inspiration, or it would slip down, and to raise
it up again with each expiration, or the body would shock
it in its ascent.
If the office of the brain lies in the distribution of the
cerebral fluids, then the orderly administration of these
requires a regular motion, or in other words, a rhythmical
action. The heart and the lungs are evidences of this in
the lower compartment. Their action is not an incorporeal
vibration but a measured expansion and contraction. The
blood cannot run to its destinations without the physical
heart, nor the nerve spirit gain its ends without a propul-
sive power in the brain and the other centres. And more
than in the case of the other organs must this motion be-
long to the brain itself, or be automatic, or the supreme
organ would have no function of its own. It cannot, then,
be derived from the heart or the lungs, as we said before,
although no doubt these organs, and all the rest, are mea-
sured by its liberties, and concur to make its play and N
playground secure.
In the body, moreover, we find that stated motion is a
condition and a sign of life. Does he breathe ? or expand
and contract, is synonymous with, Does he live ? Now,
as we shall have occasion to shew in the next chapter, the
universal movement of the body produced by the lungs, is
46 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
the condition of all particular movements, muscular and
visceral. For a body already in constant motion is easily
guided about, deflected and managed for particular motions ;
but a body at rest absorbs a large amount of force before it
can be moved. Thus if the whole body were not a per-
petually-moving, breathing or living thing, there would
lie so much dead weight on the feet of every action, and
life would be clogged by matter. But as it is, the incar-
nate iron is hot for the strokes of the volitions. Nothing
can be more familiar than this, that motion is easy, and
rest uneasy, to those who are already on the move. Now
we may reason by a great syllogism from the man to the
body, from the body to the lungs, and from the lungs to
the brain : nay, and also from the brain to the mind. For
example, if the brain were stationary, no thought could
enter it without lifting it first : there would be no prepared-
ness for thought, which is essential motion. Whereas, by
a constant rhythm taking place in the whole mass, the
mind requires to create no motion, but simply to act as a
modifying, directing, or exemplary power, in order to
produce all or any motions as states or details of the gene-
ral swell. Thus, the rapid admission of thoughts requires
a moving or active brain, just as does the distribution of
the nerve spirit, which is a river of bodily thoughts.
It is indeed admitted that the brain is an active organ,
so far as it undergoes the fleeting states of thought. These
are the modifications of its activity, the ripples of con-
sciousness. But what we are contending for is nothing less
than a tidal cerebral sea. For as the thoughts, emotions
and bodily actions fall upon the lungs, and produce the
varieties of the breathing, because the breathing itself is
there first as an impressible atmosphere, so do the thoughts
and volitions produce the varieties of the animation upon
the basis of an already-moving or animating brain. The
THE MOTION OF THE BRAIN. 47
temporary waves of thought, are but the surface which
comes into our light : there is a deeper heaving besides,
organic as the body, which has its own currents and shores,
and is constant like nature, obeying the progress not of
the moment, but of the lifetime. Its spirits are not tran-
sitory like ours, but night and day they do not sleep until
death overtakes them.
The argument we are discussing is, however, theoretical ;
a condition which is common to the truths of the exact
sciences. The solution of the problem in this light will
depend upon whether the brain or the mind is accepted as
the central truth. If the mind be taken as the fixed point,
the principles of thought will have their just power, and
the brain will be seen to revolve around the mind, and by
its revolutions, or expansions and contractions, by its mov-
ing up to, or away from, the mind, to produce the times
and seasons, the warmth and cold, of human thought and
will ; and as the variety of states will in this case depend
upon the brain, and the brain is a physical organ, the
motion will not be a mental or ideal, but a physical motion.
In other words, if the brain is physical and not mental,
then what seem to us to be mental motions in the brain
are really physical motions ; and in this case an open mind
signifies an open brain, an active mind a moving brain ;
and human language, or the voice of common sense, con-
tributes abundantly to the illustration of the organ. For
the predicates of mind can then be assigned in a bodily,
but not in a purely mental sense to the brain. If, how-
ever, the mind be regarded, as by the materialists or
cerebral Ptolemaics, as the meteor and wandering lamp of
the brain, then a mental, or in other words an inexplicable
influence or movement will account for or rather accom-
pany the cerebral states. But for ourselves we cannot
think of the mind as an ignis fatuus in the swamps of the
cerebrum, but as a distinct and superior organ, which has
48 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
the cerebrum and nervous system between it and the body.
But now if the brain has thought movements, there must
not only be a law of succession in these, a beginning, a
middle and an end of each ; in other words, an expansion
and contraction ; but also, as we shewed before, a ground
swell of motion on which they depend, and which if it
were not given by nature, no thought could lift the slug-
gish mass in time enough to give a thought-like action.
But after all, the question of motion is subordinate to
the question of what the motion is ? To shew by rational
arguments that the planets move, without demonstrating
their courses, would leave the theory not only short, but
curtailed of its strongest proofs. And to raise the problem
of the cerebral motion without shewing its 'times and rules,
would be to rest in an embryo law, and to fail of the sup-
port which the body itself ought to proffer of so important
a truth ; if a truth it indeed be.
In turning to this new aspect of the question, we
find in the body that there are already two movements,
which we will designate the systemic and the sub-sys-
temic ; the movement of the respiration is the systemic,
that of the pulse the sub-systemic. The breathing of the
lungs is the largest revolution of organic life that the body
executes ; the beating of the heart is but a satellitial mo-
tion freely included within the former. And if organic
life or motion be concentric, a strong presumption already
arises, that the animations of the brain, according to the
statement of Swedenborg, are coincident with the respira-
tions of the lungs. Moreover we have already seen, that
when the lungs inspire, the brain has room and invitation
to expand, and that when they expire, it receives an ad-
monition and pressure to contract. If the brain be im-
pressible at all, and if its motion be physical, it can hardly
fail to comply with these opportune times.
But again the motion of the brain is, or may be, volun-
THE MOTION OF THE BRAIN. 94
taiy, and the volitions as we know can play also upon
the respiration. Nay every muscular movement however
eccentric, is based upon the fixity of the respiration as a
central stoma. Whence voluntary breathing becomes ana-
logous to willing, and we are said to breathe the actions
which we strongly intend. This points, in the next term
of the reasoning, to the conclusion that animation, or the
common function of the brain, is analogous to common
breathing. For the argument stands thus, the mind of the
brain, in falling upon the lungs, controls their states, and
makes them voluntary ; and in descending into the muscles,
it always enters the lungs at the same time, raising up in
the breath a central air or tendency, corresponding to the
limbed tendency in the muscles. The motion of the mind
of the brain, therefore, is voluntary, and the breathing can
be voluntary ; and if the brain and the lungs coincide in
their extraordinary motions, is it not feasible that they
coincide in their ordinary motions ? This is the more
conclusive and exclusive, inasmuch as there is no other
viscus but the lungs manifesting a peculiar motion, upon
which thought and will play. Now these are, physically
speaking, the brain playing upon the lungs, or in other
words, the brain moving to move the lungs.
But secondly, we affirm that the correspondence is not
merely general, but precise. It will be remembered that
we are not now arguing the question of the motion of the
brain, which we consider for the present established ; but
the rhythm which the motion follows. And we proceed to
remark that there can be no doubt of its coincidence with
breathing. The cerebral motion, the movement of the
mind of the brain, is represented in the movements of the
lungs. We all infer the manner in which a man's brains
are moving, from the way in which we see his lungs mov-
ing. If we see deep breathing going on during conscious-
50 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
ness, we know that it means profound cogitation; slow
breathing concurs with deliberation, meditation, &c. And
so on through a thousand states of thought and emotion,
in which we reason instinctively on the principle of a
correspondence between the motions of the brains and
lungs. And diseases augment these phenomena. Ster-
torous breath signifies an oppressed brain ; hurried breath
in fevers, a hurried state of mind. And so forth. We
take no similar indications from the heart, or any other
organ but the lungs, which represent all visceral locomo-
tion, as the muscles represent the locomotion of the out-
ward body. The heart, indeed, is felt by its owner to
have a correspondence with the emotions particularly, but
it is not influenced perceptibly by the will or the under-
standing.
In the chest the condition of the nervous system con-
firms what we are advocating. For the great nerves run
through a space governed by the pumping of the lungs,
and their external coats, of necessity, are drawn outwards
when we inspire the air, and are pressed inwards when
expiration occurs. So also in the spinal cord. As these
parts are continuous with the brain, the effect also is con-
tinuous ; i. e., the brain is subject to the reciprocal invita-
tions and pressures of the lungs. The nervous motion is,
notwithstanding, automatic ; and if its expansion be in-
vited, or its contraction promoted, it is only that these
happen as the true circumstances of the freedom of the
brain.
To carry the thread into another sphere, but one which
is included in our plan, would it not seem that one of the
first desiderata in brains is movement, and in all further
progress, a history of the movements of brains ? not only
a history of fitful, but of organic and providential thought.
In the realm of science this translation of our position
THE MOTION OF THE BRAIN. 51
is indispensable ; the pistons of aspiration and practice go
up and' down, the brain opens for life, and opens the body
for work, as truth after truth is brought in and converted
for the moving intelligence of man. In the sphere of
conception and philosophy the same strokes of the mental
engine are perceived ; and the more we contemplate them
from the point of a Providence or a plan, the more regular
they seem ; the more rhythmical thought is found to be ;
the more its elements are measured; and the more the
stirrings of the great brain concur with the tune of the
stars, which measure the ages in their vortical tread. In
fact the idea of a plan or a relative Providence, cannot
subsist, without insinuating to us the oneness of all the
motions of the brain, and their combination into a rhyme
coordinate with the poetry of every universal law. Thus
to look at them from above and beyond the organ, shews
them all as one motion, coincident with the wants and
aspirations, or in other words, with the breathings of their
subject, man. And so again the outward and inward
wants, the thoughts and the breaths, are married to each
other. In isolated thoughts we cannot recognize so much ;
but the thought of epochs suggests a fate of thought, a
movement involuntary as the respiration of sleep, in
which the parts succeed each other as breaths, though full
of the special will and intellect which are the life of the
brain and the race.
For the last part of the subject, or the function of a
brain moving or animating in this wise, it will lie in the
distribution of the nerve life according to the principles
and forces of the soul, and in the mind, of the under-
standing and will, considered both as powers and organs.
If the fibres and nerves are the roads of life, and if the
globular heads of the nerves are its stations and reservoirs,
then the expansion and contraction of these in the times
D 2
52 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
of the breathing, amounts to the constant injection of life
into every portion of the body, at the moments when the
body itself gasps or opens or wants to receive them.
And this takes place in successive moments. Thus organic
thought and will are present everywhere with a breathing
or animating motion : a stimulus superior to nutrition is
poured into the frame ; and all this, with no thought on
our parts. But on the other hand, during our intervals,
and from our states, of consciousness, the distribution of
the cerebral fluid is varied, just as the same consciousness
varies the supply of air, or the evenness of the pulmonary
respirations. And by the coincidence or synchronism of
the latter with the brain-movements, the unity of life is
maintained : the lungs dilate the frame to receive, while
the nerves dilate to give. Thus the respirations of the
brains and lungs are the beginning and end of the animal
system, which therefore is poised in freedom like the
planet, not supported upon a tortoise of dead matter, but
swimming in double tides of motion.
The quantity, colors and kinds of the animal spirit thus
inflowing, measuring what it is by what it does, are greater
than those of all the other fluids ; for it not only fills the
brain and nerves, but occupies the interstices and the posts
of difficulty throughout the body. The good things which
seem to be so scarce that they are almost invisible, are
yet at the last the only things, are all in all ; and this
which is the least and most hidden element, is in its
volume necessarily the greatest, and the all-embracing.
Whatever is more than gravity and rest comes forth from
its active lightness It is the life of the blood, the strength
of the arm, the fire of the eye, and the bloom of the skin.
Each intellectual city, each convolution of the brain, nay
every spherule, sends forth its characteristic emissaries,
possessing the body with the varied spirits of the head.
THE SPIRITS OF THE BRAIN. 53
Dryads and naiads, muses and furies, gods, goddesses
and heroes in endless populations, throng the columns of
this old pantheon, whose last mythology is yet to come.
The starry dance, the music of the spheres, the astrologic
influences, the experiences of the supernatural, are but
aims to express the perceptions and properties of this
immortal nature which lives on the seeds of the sun. By
this liquid flesh it is that the soul sees its face in the
rushing river of creations, and feels the issuing universe,
and the finest tremble of the stars. In this wisest vest of
nature, it sits at the feast of nature's wisdom. This is
the panic element of man in unison with the panic of the
world. Could we see an apparition of the nervous spirit,
waving and sweeping with luminous shoots into the curves
of the body, we should behold a form complete in its de-
tails ; a design exceeding the mortal building ; solid as
flesh to the eye of the mind ; perpetually springing into
life ; yet though plastic, stable to its ends, and quicker
than thought to execute them : shadowy, or terrible, to
the senses, but safe reality to the soul. Then should we
see, but according to our insight, that there are motions
and mechanics which are the likeness and habitation of
life, sense, passion, understanding ; and we should know
by solemn experiment, that our organization is an im-
perishable truth which derides the grave of the body.
But if the brain is not shut but open, not empty but full,
and if the organ of thought and will is not stationary, but
moving ; if this is the first nature by which it answers to
those ever-moving creatures : and if it operates, not by
physical nothings, but by tides of animal life : further
if the motion be most regular, and the down-rush con-
stant then there must be a definite channel laid down,
or a nervous circulation. Of this circulation there are-
three elements, 1. The influence or influxions of the im-
54 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
material mind and soul, which come down as rays from a
solar brain above the body, and are the order and supreme
agent in organization. 2. The array of accordant agents
or imponderable spirits of physical nature, which are the
contribution of the world on its bended knees to the soul.
And, 3. the highest animal juices, the cream of the body,
proffered in the vehicle of the first blood of the heart.
Thus the brain confers on the organization, first, thoughts
and plans, wise as the soul, loving or unitary, and irre-
sistibly organic : secondly, the cosmical and physical kins-
men of these, which are dramatically what the first are
really, or which confer mundane efficacy upon the prin-
ciples of thought. And thirdly, the body of the body, or
the primal incarnation. These three, or life, nature and
body, are one in the nervous spirit. In a word, the
nervous circulation, with every stroke of its spirit pulse,
distributes the essential principles of thought, force and
organization : and the body, therefore, is full of eyes or ra-
tional light ; full of understandings and judgments ; full of
stupendously reasonable deeds ; and materially an incar-
nation of the soul. This is what the brain is empowered
to give ; the brain being the common centre of gravitation
of the three powers of mind, body, and universe.
The circulation then of the brain would be threefold ;
or that of all nature into mind and soul, and vice versa ;
that of the Kosmos into the brain, and vice versa ; and
that of the body into the brain, and vice versa. But as
we are treating of the body, we can only dwell on the
lowest of these circulations, though the brain modifies the
other spheres in the same way as the body modifies the
brain. Now as to the bodily nervous circulation, it comes,
like the rest of the secretions, from the blood, namely, that
of the carotid arteries, whose fine twigs, inserted into the
cortex, are the venae cavse of the cortical hearts. The se-
THE CIRCULUS VIT^E. 55
cretion is there received, and meets the thoughts which
build, and the magnetisms that clasp and cement it : by
the contraction of these cortical hearts it is propelled all
over the body into the terminal loops, from whose fingers'
ends it flies with its ministering spirits, and is again re-
ceived into the blood, whose life it constitutes, and which
it incites and forces to construct the body on the principles
of the wisdom of the soul and brain. Thus the nervous
circulation has solid channels only in the highest or proper
sphere ; in the rest it runs through the fluid blood. More-
over this system has its excretions just like the vascular ;
in the ventricles of the brain ; in every interstice of the
nerves : so that when it comes into its loops, it has put off
the body it assumed, and is again received into the red
circulation. Thus the aged spirit of the nerves becomes
the youngest life of the blood. This is necessary to the
continuity of existence : for every end is a new beginning
in the vortex of our providential universe. We now then
see that without this openness of the brain, this animal
spirit, this motion of the brain, and this nervous circula-
tion, the soul could not be incarnate, nor the body animate ;
nor could the latter for a moment preserve that unanimity
which gives it coherence, and constitutes it the ideal not
only of physical, but of all social unity.
If, however, there be other principles of explaining these
things, then we ardently desire to know them. But expla-
nation must be attempted, for the people is weary of hear-
ing that they cannot be investigated ; and from men too,
whose powers have no preeminence to entitle them to set
limits to the faculties of any new child who may be born
into the world. We know of but One whose rights went
to this extent, but His voice was, " Seek, and ye shall find ;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
It will not be difficult now, on these principles of motion,
56 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
to discuss the problem of the respective uses of the cere-
brum and cerebellum. And in order to approach the sub-
ject we would make the following remarks. The nervous
system is a casket of stimuli of various orders superadded
to the body : the bodily parts or animals are constructed
mechanically without it, and only wait to be ordered into
action by its spirits or voices. These spirits give different
instructions according to the chamber whence they issue.
The voice of the spinal brain to the body produces mimetic
perceptions and motions ; states that seem to be alive, for
they act life perfectly. The spinal cord then endows the
body up to the point of representing life by accordant mo-
tions. The voice of the sensual brain fills the body with
sensual perceptions and sensual motions : it raises it up to
the enjoyment of the cunning of the senses. Whatever is
required for their gratification comes from this source in
the shape of emotions and organic instincts. Under its
influence the organs and viscera are like the animals hunt-
ing for their prey ; and each takes what it wants from the
common stock, as the living creatures take their pabulum
from the earth. The organs would indeed do this without
these sensual brains, but only as vegetables in a kind of
wooden representation. Finally the cortical surfaces, or
the ganglia of thought and will, by their spirits diffuse
their own light through the body, so that all and singular
the organic acts and processes are done with the tincture
of a higher than animal wisdom. All these would be done
by the senses, but then their essence would be different ;
as the essence of bee architecture is different from that of
human, though not different in its mathematics.
Thus the human body is all obedience to these three
degrees of nerve-spirit, and if it stopped with the reflex
actions, it would be but a dramatic mask, involving no
wisdom beyond that of supreme mimicry : and in the same
FUNCTION OF THE CEREBELLUM. 57
way, if it stopped with the animal brain, it would still
involve no wisdom beyond the perfect adaption of sensual
means to sensual ends. It does not however stop here ;
but even its theatricism and animality become instinct with
reason and will. And the like process which impregnates
sense and motion, as we know them, w T ith reasonable
thought and voluntary action, strikes the same through
the secretest parts of the organization, and makes the
blood rational, and the bile rational, and in short makes
the whole body human by the radiation of that which alone
is human, from above its summit.
But now, in the human being, these upper states are
not only fitful, but also intermitting or regularly periodical.
Sleep comes to all, and takes away impression, sense ancP
understanding, as well as motion, impulse and will. And
in this respect waking too is full of somnolency, or abro-
gation of our superior powers. If then there were not
some provision, sleepless and permanent, to keep us up to
the human level, the answerableness of the body to the
soul, and consequently the animation of the former, would
perish many times every day, and certainly with the first
slumber. For if all that is animal really died do\vn to the
surface of the earth in the seasons of sleep, the body,
heavy mass as it is, and belonging of right to the ground,
would be in the clutches of the grave, irrecallable from
its congenial gravitation. To prevent this, there are two
brains, a constant and an inconstant, but each correspond-
ing to the other. The cerebellum does unconsciously and.
permanently whatever the cerebrum performs rationally
and by fits. The cerebellum follows and adopts the states
induced by the cerebrum on the organization, and holds
the notes of the ruling mind. Thus immediately after
sleep, the motions of thought may begin at once, for they
have not been organically, but only consciously suspended.
D 3
58 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
We see this in an image in the lungs. If the latter were
voluntary organs, the man would cease breathing so soon
as he fell asleep. But they are both voluntary and invo-
luntary, the latter when not the former; and the movement
is always proceeding, night and day, so that it has not to
be created, but what is an easy matter, merely directed
into the voluntary channels. Similarly so with the organic
motions of thought and will : these are always going on,
and merely require direction, not creation, by the cerebrum.
Concordantly with this we can explain sleep, and much
that occurs in sleep : e. g., the fact that our thoughts and
judgments are marvellously cleared and arranged during
that state ; as though a reason more perfect than reason,
and uninfluenced by its partialities, had been at work when
we were in our beds. This also, that our first waking
thoughts are often our finest and truest ; and that dreams
are sometimes eminent and wise ; which phenomena are in-
compatible with the idea that we die down like grass into our
organic roots at night, and are resuscitated as from a winter
in the morning. And it must again be adverted to, that
this would not suit 'the Grand Economist ; for after nature
has ascended to one plateau of life, represented by a day,
she will surely not tumble down into the valley because
rest is needed, but will pitch her tent, and make her couch
upon that elevation. We conclude then that the cerebrum
is the brain of the mind, arid the cerebellum the corre-
sponding brain of the body ; and as during sleep the cere-
brum is a body, the cerebellum at such time is the brain
of the cerebrum also. It may be added that the cerebel-
lum, in adopting the mental states as her standards, is also
a register of the mind, and converts actions into habits,
_or in other words, into structures. And thus the whole
man, genius, intelligence, logic, sense, skill, action, may
be called instinctive or given in nature, if we look at him
FUNCTION OF THE CEREBELLUM. 59
from this providential side, whose organ neither slumbers
nor sleeps.
Man then, as we see, is captured in sleep, not by death,
but by his better nature: to-day runs in through a deeper
day to become the parent of to-morrow ; and the man issues
every morning, bright as the morning and of life size, from
the peaceful womb of the cerebellum.
If these views be carefully weighed, it will be found
that they harmonize with the facts of the case, and not
less so with experiments and vivisections. For if the har-
monies of the frame, and the undercurrents which make
its fitful states normal, depend upon the cerebellum, so
also do the harmonies of motions, the production of which
has been supposed to be the office of the lesser brain. If
we are right, the removal of the cerebellum ought to leave
for a time the conscious machinery and powers, but fitful
as thought, sense or fancy : the body ought to change like
a mind, now acting in part, now ceasing, and in short in
everything capricious and partial, as might be expected
when the man or animal was given up to his own wisdom,
and had lost his organic providence. On the other hand
the removal of the cerebrum ought to leave everything,
and the power of everything, minus consciousness, and
therefore minus the stimuli and beginnings of action which
come through consciousness. This of course where no
other parts were injured. We may also infer on these
principles, that where the condition of animals approaches
sleep or inaction, there is less need of a cerebellum, for
these creatures are already on the ground, and compara-
tively secure. But where the least absence of mind might
cause a fall, there a permanent organic provision is required,
in the shape of a larger cerebellum. For we may lay it
down as a formula resulting from all now said, that the
perpetuation of high motion, composite motion, or harmony,
60 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
is the function of this organ. On the same principles again
it becomes probable, that the genital function assigned by
the phrenologists to the cerebellum is founded upon truth.
And now we leave it as a problem, whether there be, or
not, an analogous provision for the sensual ganglia, to
preserve the level of sense when our senses are annulled ;
and what the organ is? And the question may be repeated
for the spinal cord also, with the insinuation, whether the
sympathetic nerve be not its cerebellum ? For we regard
it as certain that the naturalness and economy of force, and
the accumulation, are secured everywhere in the bodily
system.
The above function of the cerebellum has its analogues
in every sphere. We see it in thought, which has two
elements, viz., that of consciousness and personal energy,
and that of natural growth, the first corresponding to cere-
brum, the latter to cerebellum. And these are often dis-
parted in individuals. In some there is a preponderance
of cerebral mind ; their thoughts move quickly, but flightily ;
as we say, there is a want of balance ; a want of body or
nature in their minds ; a defect of organic or cerebellar
faculty. Their mental movements are random and inhar-
monious ; they do not retain or accumulate wisdom even
repetition does them no good ; but they strike out afresh
in the vagueness of discourse, with no nature to back them.
They have all the senses but common sense, which is the
spring, incarnation and harmony of them all. In philo-
sophy or collective thought the same division is visible.
Philosophies are made, and also they grow ; they are both
cerebral and cerebellar. Universal tradition, the largest
pressure of common sense, is the philosophical cerebellum.
And here we see what complete experiments of vivisection
have been performed ; and what the result has been in
philosophies that cut away the nature, accumulation, force
FUNCTION OF THE CEREBELLUM. 61
and body of preceding thought ; which extirpate the fixed
organon of human growth, or the traditionary cerebellum.
Dr. Carpenter, speaking of smaller things, describes to
the letter the effects which follow : "It does not seem,"
says he, "that the animal has in any degree lost the volun-
tary power over its individual muscles : but it cannot com-
bine their actions for any general movement The
reflex movements, such as those of respiration, remain
unimpaired. When an animal thus mutilated is laid on
its back, it cannot recover its former posture ; but it moves
its limbs, or flutters its wings, and evidently is not in a
state of stupor. When placed in the erect position, it stag-
gers and falls like a drunken man ; not, however, without
making efforts to maintain its balance"* Such is the want
of health or wholeness that comes from rescinding the
natural brain that lies behind us, and beginning the intel-
lect afresh with each passing day : for where there is no
vis a tergOj there is no direction either in physics or meta-
physics. And the sphere may be changed again with the
same result. Law-making, which is the political cerebrum,
stands in a similar ratio to the public morality, which is
the political cerebellum ; and where the latter is ignored,
political vivisection is performed, and constitution- makers
repeat Dr. Carpenter's phenomena on the scale of nations.
And even in the highest sphere, where the cerebrum is
termed prudence, and sometimes wisdom, and the cere-
bellum is providence, we see the same thing. Here the
vivisection is frequent, and the results very confirmatory.
We see the quirks of men whose actions, vigorous enough,
are. all tumbling to pieces ; spiritual staggering and drunk-
enness ; a positive sense that there is no God, but that
man is the manager ; and the like aberrations. All these
* Manual of Physiology, n. 912.
62 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
instances are in the series of the cerebellum, and prove
the universality of its functions. Man is in the leading-
strings of God and nature, and what is greater than him-
self, to the end of his career ; he is as a little child, whe-
ther he benefit by it or not ; and the sovereignty of the
things above him is represented by an organ or envoy from
the everlasting, planted in his own head ; and which, as
we have now sufficiently said, is the cerebellum. But it
lies unobstrusively underneath the cerebrum, because its
guidance is nocturnal and unseen ; and where it concurs
with reason and will, it delights to seem to be their servant
and not their master. When therefore the cerebellum or
its similars are abstracted, the result is, motion and no
harmony, progress without balance, thought without com-
mon sense, art without nature, philosophy without huma-
nity, freedom without a career or destiny, and prudence
alien to providence. In constituting this little series, we
seem to hear the whisper of a reason why our own age
has no revelation concerning the function of the cerebellum.
A word with regard to the usage of the brain. This
grows with our years. At first all is impression and con-
vulsion : very little cerebral exercise concurs with this
state. Then all is sensation, and action gratifying sense ;
and the cerebral hemispheres are called into play in a more
important degree. Lastly comes the rational period, mixed
or marred with the others, and the brain movements are
directed more finely to suit the new demands. The mind
moreover handles the brain as the brain handles the body.
At first the thoughts are little better than confused impres-
sions, and the rational actions like sensual or spasmodic
states. But by degrees the will gets into the cortex, and
the understanding also, and mental continence is established.
The brain sits and notices, and stands and runs, as its limbs
are directed by the voluntary powers. It becomes to the
USAGE OF THE BRAIN. 63
full locomotive through a host of fears, trials and falls.
Every nerve muscle now comes under control, and the
brain enters on the command of its position. Learning to
think appears to be analogous to learning to observe ; and
learning to will, to learning to act. Hence a good edu-
cation would enable us to use all parts of the brain, as a
fine gymnastic system calls into play all and unwonted
parts of the body. But let the education be as good as it
will, there is still a difference in brains, and one can do
feats which another cannot attempt. The brain, however,
is not the limit but the vessel of the mind, nor do the facul-
ties of one sphere necessarily argue those of the other.
This world's idiots may only be taking a long natural rest,
to fit them for the activities of another station ; where the
brain cannot be a chariot to ride in, it is still a bed to
sleep upon.
We have thus taken notice of some leading problems
respecting the brain, dismissing many others ; but still
there are matters of importance on which a few words may
be said. And first as to the use of the two symmetrical
halves of the nervous system. This, we believe, is a deep
problem, and capable of a large superficial reply. Have
not all things two sides, and must not the brain and nerves
image and use the doubleness of universal nature ? Man
has two halves, respectively called the male and female,
and the body has two, in its right and left sides. Action
is the function of the one, and passion, answering to action,
is the function of the other. The left hand steadies the
object upon which the right hand works. The woman
constructs the material groundwork, the home, from which
the man sallies, and to which he reverts, as his centre of
operations. The one brain holds the object of thought, while
the other brain works upon it with active power. This
function of the two sides is a peculiar repetition of that of
64 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
the cerebrum and cerebellum, without which consciousness
would not hold, just as the male sex without the female
would be a power without a fulcrum, a wanderer without
the strength of home. Principles cannot be applied with-
out a special envoy of their own, and the cerebellum must
have the weaker sex or better half of the cerebrum in its
interest in order to manage the cerebrum aright. If the
reader consults his mind, he will find that in one and the
same operation the process of steadying the grasp of thought
concurs with that of exercising its active movements ; that
his soul has two hands ; and these two processes or hands,
widely different but united, are suited in the twofoldness
of the cerebral lobes. But what is more, the two brains
decussate or copulate, and the right head is married to the
left body, and the left head to the right body ; and this
crossing of powers, whereby active and passive are not
only collateral, but embrace, not only symmetrical, but
one superposed upon the other, is a necessity for action
and thought, considered as mental fruitfulness. The de-
lights of harmony would not be felt if the two brains did
not thus combine, nor would the brain have a circle in
itself, unless each half had the support of contact with its
partner before going forth into the body.
Furthermore, we have noticed in the nervous system a
reference to something beyond and above, which soon
lands us in the mind, as the first permanent station. Thus
the feeling of the fingers conducts us anatomically to the
spinal cord, in the centres of which, and not in the fingers,
the sensation lodges. The cord at once refers us to the
base of the brain, where sensation has its proper home.
We know, however, that it is in the cortical centres that
that attention lives, which is the inner sense, or the owner
of sensation. These cortices, however, are dead and ma-
terial per se, and thence the reference is straight to the
WHY THE BRAIN HAS TWO HALVES. 65
mind, as the first organism that appropriates sensation,
and calls it really its own. We stop here, not because the
journey is done, but because the day of thought is spent,
and our science wants a rest. Thus one lesson of this
system is the unselfishness of our organization, and its
recognition of a hierarchy which has no top save in that
which is more than body, and of supernatural endow-
ments. And in the downward series, running from wills
to motions, the prime movers are as much above us as the
original feelers in sensation : a superincumbent organism
to be called spiritual, and which makes itself away to
God with treble velocity of unselfishness, must be sup-
plicated as at once the original arbitrator of will, and the
last receiver of the thoughts which come from the world
under the dresses of sensations.
This system, however, whilst we think of the bodv, is
a land of mountains, from which the whole microcosm is
visible. It rises white, with its pillars of alabaster, from
the blood-lands of limb, heart and liver, and comprehends
wider scenes as steep after steep is surmounted. Its ele-
vation is measured by function, which gives the altitude
over the level of the rolling juices and their shores. The
representation of life by the spinal chain is already a
summit towering above the flesh. The streams from this,
falling upon the machinery of organization, give powers
corresponding to the height and force of the descent. The
rivers of sensation and impulse, again, descending from
loftier tables, have the force of their greater fall, and
press sense into parts and functions into which no weaker
torrents could gain way. And finally the mental streams,
each instinct with the view of the whole commanded from
the top, have a power of descent and penetration which
belongs to such intellectual rivers, whose sources are as the
beads that the sun engenders on the needles of the supreme
66 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
hills, heaven-kissing. We say nothing of the cloudy
ranges beyond or the spiritual temple, excepting that it
too is of a new mountain order, though built out of the
firmament, whose waters are above us as below us, and
all the rest but currents in their eternal sea.
We may here assign two reasons why the brain is at
the top ; in the first place, because nature herself is the
worship of rank and station under their other names of
excellence and power ; and secondly, because the soul is
the top of the top, and the brain by its place meets the
soul. And as the arts and industries flow down from the
brain, and the spiritual waters tend to find their level, so
here a force is provided which carries them back, of their
nature, when the channels are provided, to the altitude
whence they came, or to the feet of the soul : that the
life of man may not be wasted underground among his
viscera, but may circulate from his head to his head, with-
out a drop being spilt from the high nervousness of the
body.
It is not surprizing in this eminent region that physio-
logists, loyal to their heads, have assigned to the brain
the perpetual government of the body, or have regarded
every function and every structure as but a procedure or
emanation from these commanding parts. Indeed on the
spiritual or nocturnal side such a view becomes just, for
the brain absorbs all the light and power of the system,
and is the only noticeable part, or the body of the body.
So when the sun ceases to shine, our domestic and motherly
ground disappears, and contemplation, facing the vault,
sees no longer the opaque earth, but only the ignited
planets and the suns of systems, as it were the galaxies
of the starry brain. And so with the body also : when
its grosser senses cease to overwhelm us, and thought
kindles in the teeming night, the body drops away, and
RELATION OF THE BRAIN TO THE BODY. 67
organ after organ ceases to shew, until we are left in the
presence of a man, standing with luminous feet upon the
darkness, and we see the ghostly human form, all nerve,
feeling and volition ; the brain as head and eye, body and
limbs, founded not upon matter, but like the organic stars
on its own sufficient form. We awaken, however, from
these altitudes, and find that the planet too, and the ma-
terial body, are things in themselves, nay, are our mothers,
and deserve our best consideration in the homely way.
But the organic relation of the brain to the body gene-
rally, has not yet been well made out. It is clear that
the brain is the engine of the mind, and that the other
viscera make up the body, which seems to be nourished
on its own account. This however does not explain the
immersion of the one within the other, or the subjection
of each to the necessities of each. But surely if the body
gives the brain substance, the brain gives the body what
it has to give, namely, brains. In this case all the pro-
cesses, of nutrition, circulation, secretion, &c., must be
controllable by the brain according to its perfection ; and
that this is the case we know from the emotions which
always and involuntarily transfer the state of the brain
into the visceral lives. Convivial joy, the brain's joy,
makes the stomach do double digestion with no harm to
itself. Energy, brain tension, fires the muscles to feats
that muscles never meant. Other passions scourge the
liver or the kidneys into speed of manufacture quite be-
yond their proper powers. The function of the brain then
to the body is one of forcing or culture. The brain makes
no clod of the body, no drop of the secretions : it makes
no seed that the body grows. But it is the husbandman
of the corporeal farm. The farm may go wild, and it is
still something, though then called a desert. And organi-
zation may subsist without brains, but it becomes more
68 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
and more tangled, lower and lower, until you cannot say
that it is alive. The ratio of the brain to the body is that
of man to the planet. The planet is ready-made ; every
stone, plant and animal, night and day, the greater and
the lesser light, are all there, and could not be created by
us if they were not. But man comes, the brain comes,
as the cultivator. He is set there to have dominion over
all ; to be the image of the wisdom who made all ; to
spread himself as a head over all ; and to modify all, as
the last result or the secondary soul of all. Therefore
until the brain has penetrated every viscus and function,
it has not cultivated the body, as until man has grasped
the climates, and forced them through their products and
exotics, he has not cultivated the earth. The relation of
the brain then to the body is, as the cultivator of the
fields, originally wild, of nutrition, secretion, excretion,
and the like. The cultivation begins so soon as the emo-
tions of the brain begin, and every state of the brain plays
in good or bad husbandry upon the brute or visceral
powers.
But the brain could do nothing of this, if it were not
itself among the natures that it commands. For what
commander can speak to his soldiers unless he be a common
man like themselves, though an officer to boot? And if
man be not the supreme animal, the lion and the lamb
par excellence, how can he wield the animal tribes ? And
again if spirit have not all that matter has, how can the
soul govern the body? Now we have shewn in detail,
that the brain, as commanding organ, possesses the attri-
butes of the lower organs in a superlative degree. We
have shewn that it is the heart of hearts, for it receives
from the body and the universe a spiritual blood, which
its cortices pulse forth in infinite streams throughout the
frame. We have shewn that it is the lung of lungs, for
RELATION OP THE BRAIN TO THE BODY. 69
its animation is the breathing of the soul in the all-com-
municative ether. We have shewn that it is the stomach
of stomachs, because of its bold chymistry in the prepara-
tion of the food of food, which is the nerve-spirit. It is
also the gland of glands, and the muscle of muscles, for
it secretes the purest of juices, and obeys the beginnings
of the motor force. Aye, and it is the primal womb of
life and thought. In short, it is the body over again, piece
by piece, with a truth befitting the brain. Hence, again,
comes corroboration of our views, for we now perceive that
we have assigned functions to the brain, of opening, breath-
ing, moving, circulating, and the like, which are indis-
pensable to its maintaining relations with the similar
functions of the body. In short, we find that our deductions
are but the claim of a common nature, as it were a common
humanity, between the brain and the body. The brain,
however, we must remember, is unmeasured by the body,
and its attributes are peculiar, and not to be named by
low names, excepting for the sake of illustration.
With all these advantages, however, of a community of
nature and aims with the body, the brain could still do
nothing, if there were not a physical motion in the body
corresponding to the mental motion in the brain. If the
body did not conspire or breathe with the brain, the me-
taphysical force which alone the brain per se possesses,
could not be earned out. So, if the force of the seasons
did not concur with the force of the cultivator, husbandry
would be impossible. And so, if the moving disciplines
of an army were not unanimous with the commander's
voice, military operations could not exist. But we have
said enough on this subject, which concerns the seconding
of the fine brain thoughts by the powerful physical lungs.
The result of our observations hitherto is, that the brain
opens the body to new influences, or gives it animation,
70 THE HUMAN BRAIN.
and weighs upon it with the pressure of numerous changes
or reforms ; causing it to follow the mind, so far as the
latter consists in the brain, through its vicissitudes. A
similar animation, as we have seen, is introduced by man
upon the earth, which he is born to subdue, and to recon-
struct upon his own wants and ideals. By this means,
for example, the inanimate ground is covered with waving
vegetations ; the vegetable kingdom is compressed by the
animal, which browzes down its increase, and serves as a
partial end to arrest its exaggerations ; and all together
are braced round by man in girths and limbs of muscular
arts, upon which sciences and volitions directly play for
tightening the world to human aims, and carrying it
through those revolutions of culture which are its aspects
towards our wants. In this respect the trees are not in-
animate, nor the beasts without progress ; but they breathe
and walk after man down the line of ages as after Orpheus
in the days of old. Their proper brain, the genus homo,
takes them along with him, and they become what he makes
them, or are as he leaves them ; as God has ordained.
The last part of our theme has yet to be written, or the
comparatives and affinities of the brain. And here we may
state, that we extend the province of comparative reason-
ing, and if the reader pleases, of comparative anatomy,
above the human brain as well as beneath it. And we
hold that the brains of the creatures larger than individual
man are truly illustrative of his little brain, whereas ani-
mal cerebra are but falsely or negatively illustrative. By
the creatures larger than man we designate societies, na-
tions, races, or the individuals who cultivate the globe of
history. The bodies of these are definite, fibrous, and in-
dividual, like animal bodies : they are mechanical also,
though in a higher range of mechanics.
HIGHER ANALOGUES OF THE BRAIN. 71
In the second consideration of the individual man, the
brain is his genius that which fills him with spirit, makes
a truth or aim into his virtual intellect and will, and pours
luminous rivers of these over his works. This punctum
vivens of his mind animates the rest, and radiating its
ideals far and near, irritates his apathies to death under
hot arrows of zeal. This genius creates and then concurs
with his wants ; and the two together, or his life and his
necessity, animate up to the shape and point at which
determination can have actions done. These brain attri-
butes, absent in none, are brilliant in some men, who take
the name of geniuses on that account, and their deeds, by
a fated fortuity, are treasured by their fellows as a common
interest, though of no more than individual growth. These
are the open men of their time, who hinder God the least :
more rays shine through them than through the rest : you
cannot say what their genius is, apart from what it shews
and does, unless it be a natural road from heaven to earth :
influx and the fluid kingdoms are their substances, and
they know that the solid world is fuel laid up against the
day of heat; also that truths and ideals are kings and
priests, whose mortal namesakes, visceral and vegetating,
are clay as in the potter's hands when that day comes.
Their private thoughts seem the wants of the time and the
schemes of societies ; they are said to be sent and to have
their mission ; for the Maker has set them in the rhythm
of his plan, and this world and that world heave to help
them to shoot their lightnings to their destined ends. And
still they are only the first brains that the epoch touches,
and which, therefore, it publishes ; and being the highest
they are the longest visible as we pass away : but, as we
said, every man is a genius or an end, a space crowded
with ideals, and these ideals are the brain of the soul, or
the personal life.
72 THE HUMAN BKAIN.
This word, genius, reminds us also of what we may call
the Socratic brain, which attends upon the mortal organ. In
this sense the brain-principle is an organization of guardian
spirits, who live with our minds, fight our battles over our
heads, whisper wisdom more than belongs to us, make our
lights and resources exceed our days, and extend our debts
into the unseen land to which we are adjourning. This
vicarious function of souls is the result of their concatena-
tion on the cortical plan. For here, where we are, our
purer minds are infant, not yet detached from the matrix
of the brain, and they sorely need guardians on the other
side of time as it were, parent hands and instructions to
see them fairly through this big nursery, the world. We
know not how little our lives would be, or how inanimate,
if the gaps of power and the passingness of the day were
not filled and compensated from another source where power
is incessant and wisdom eternal. It would be as though
each nervous fibril had but one cortical dot prefixed to it,
and not the whole brain ; or as though each mind stood
alone, and were not environed and kept upright by an array
of minds as long as the ages and as high as the heavens.
But epochs have brains as well as individuals, and these
are the ruling spirits and ideas which are enshrined in
their institutions. For epochs are the duration of the
social life, and what is death and birth for the individual
is but the exchange of old atoms for new in the marching
epoch. These cerebral ideas are at first the private ends
common to the race in a given period, which appear on a
new morning in the field of individualities, and are the
germ and birthday of a social state. The principle as-
sumed, the grouping of the cell, governs the composition
from the least to the greatest, from the single family to
the epoch of twenty centuries. As the grouping proceeds
the action becomes grander, and the scale of operations is
HIGHER ANALOGUES OF THE BRAIN. 73
transferred from homesteads to continents, but the same
cause is carried on in both extremes. Like fate it revolves
through senates and priesthoods, whose maddest strifes it
builds into its plan. The truths of the time enter the
epoch through its own convenient sciences or eyes. The
acts and charities of life are interpreted according to its
familiar pattern, and committed to the spirit of its nerves.
In short, the collective brain has an animus like the in-
dividual. And like the individual it has its decline ; and
also its better successors, which are the appointed angels
of time.
These, however, are the animal brains of societies, re-
ceiving and transmitting the rush of destiny as it tramples
through the chaos of the worlds. But another brain, with
power over fate, is set above us as our social sun. For a
firmamental organism of Prophecy and Revelation over-
arches the weltering centuries, and sends down spirit and
divine light to the nations and races of the intellectual
clime. Openness and circulation here are religions and
adorations : the pressure of the life comes manifestly from
above : as there is a God and Lord, it comes punctually
to our wants, and the clank of our dire necessity is His
mercy heard in terrestrial echos ; the sighs and heavings
of mankind coincide with the birth of larger souls and
societies, and with the advent of fresh dispensations.
CHAPTER II.
THE HUMAN LUNGS,
HUMAN LIFE is illustrated by every organ of the body.
Each contributes a share to the general vitality. The
brains are as the tranquil inward respiring of existence
elevated into mind; a life which seems immaterial and
motionless, until from the opened head the capacities of
organization come to light, and the brain demonstrates
that our noblest powers are incarnate, real and progressive.
That which is the secret of the brains is the open lesson
of the lungs. They live physically and largely the same
life which the brains live metaphysically and most minutely.
In the running wheel of life the imperceptible motion of
the axle is thought ; the sweep at the periphery is respi-
ration. The brains give us the free principles of life, and
the lungs, its free play in nature.
It is this idea of the play of life which is the principal
point in our first knowledge of the lungs : it is in the com-
pletion of this idea that we must endeavor to bring out their
functions. Of all the internal organs, not excepting the
heart, the lungs move the most evidently. And as they
are the plainest engines in our frames, we must, in that
inevitable way from the known to the unknown, reason
DESCRIPTION. 75
perforce from them to other parts, which also are engines,
though more difficult to exhibit at work.
The nose and mouth are the two doors which open in-
wards towards the lungs ; the nose being the special en-
trance to the chest, and the mouth, common to the chest
and abdomen. The inner door leading to the lungs is the
fissure of the glottis, which opens directly into the larynx,
a cartilaginous box fitted up with muscles, membranes and
other appliances requisite for the articulation of sound.
The larynx terminates in the windpipe or trachea, a pipe
extending from below the middle of the neck to opposite
the third vertebra of the back, where it divides into two
tubes termed the bronchi. The trachea, the trunk of the
windpipe, consists of from fifteen to twenty fibre-cartila-
ginous rings, which, however, do not form complete cir-
cles, being deficient at the back part, where the tube is
completed by a strong membrane. These rings, like little
ribs, are separated from, or connected with, each other by
strong elastic membrane, so that first there is the mem-
brane, then a ring ; then again the membrane, then a ring ;
and so forth. The trachea is lined on the inside by a soft
membrane continued from that of the mouth. It is the
great stem which bears the ramifications of the lungs.
The two large branches of the trachea, the first bronchial
tubes, run on each side to the lungs. On arriving thither,
each divides into two smaller branches, and the subdivision
continues, of each little branch into two twigs, and of each
twig into lesser twigs, until at the last division the air cells
terminate the tubes. These air cells are minute hollow
chambers or vesicles, which hang like globules or grapes
from the ends of the bronchia, and the air passes into them
with every breath we draw, and is expelled from them
more or less completely during each expiration. They
form the characteristic element of the lungs, which are
E2
76 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
themselves nothing more than a vast, manifold and corro-
borated air cell. The amount of surface exposed by the
cells is very great.
The whole of the constituents of the trachea exist virtu-
ally, in function and principle, in the smallest elements of
the lungs, and the trachea with the lungs is a goodly dia-
gram of the minutest bronchial twig with its delicate air
cell. In the grand consistency of nature, the parts belong
to the whole, and vice versa, the mass being a spontaneous
association of myriads of equally integral and so far inde-
pendent structures.
We have now drawn an outline of the pulmonic tree.
Its roots are the nose and mouth extending into the atmos-
pheres ; its boss is the larynx ; its shaft the trachea ; its
first two branches are the bronchia; its other branches,
twigs and fruits are collectively the lungs ; the fruits or
air cells, however, are the lungs especially and essentially.
All the organs of the body are supplied by arteries
carrying vivid blood, and the lungs are nourished by the
bronchial arteries, which, running alongside the bronchi,
form an arterial tree corresponding in some measure with
their ramifications ; the blood of the bronchial arteries being
brought back out of the lungs into the circulation by the
bronchial veins, which again form an inverse system of
twigs, branches and trunks, answering to that of the bron-
chial arteries. The bronchial vessels are of small calibre.
Besides these there are the pulmonary artery and veins,
the former a very large vessel, which coming direct by a
single trunk from the venous side of the heart, accom-
panies the bronchia, and splitting into finer and finer rami-
fications, forms at last a "wonderful network" of blood-
vessels around the air cells, the blood in which is separated
from the air only by a membrane of extreme thinness.
From the air cells this network reunites from twigs into
DESCRIPTION- 77
branches, and from branches into the four trunks of the
pulmonary veins, which pour the arterialized blood direct
into the left side of the heart. Thus the lungs are like
forests of blood trees, the air cells being open spaces be-
tween, whereby the atmosphere is admitted to nourish and
ventilate them ; one set of trees, dull and venous, repre-
senting the blood before the ventilation, the other set,
blooming and arterial, representing the beauty and flower
which succeeds where the vernal air has blown. This turn
from autumn to organic spring is momentaneous in the
lungs, which may not inaptly be compared to trees, inas-
much as leaves are the lungs of plants, and the vegetable
kingdom, transmuting the earth and the atmosphere, be-
longs to the lung- department of material nature.
- The lungs, like the other important organs, have a plen-
tiful supply of nerves, which coming from both the cere-
bral and sympathetic systems, pursue the bronchia to the
air cells.
The parts enumerated make up the active constituents
of the lungs. In recapitulation, they are the tree of the
air tubes, four other arterial and venous trees, and a nerv-
ous tree, terminating around and within the air tubes. All
these are compacted by a system of membranes or skins,
which make of the lungs not a fivefold or sixfold system
of trunks, boughs, branches and twigs, but one solid though
distinctly lobulated organ.
These membranes may be generalized under the name
of the pleura, including under that title all the cellular
tissue which is directly continuous with the pleura. This
pleura is a skin enveloping each lung ; the cellular tissue
is a web of skins that dips down into the substance of the
lungs, and separates stem from stem, bough from bough,
branch from branch, and twig from twig ; at once dividing
the parts from each other, and uniting them into a common
78 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
body. The cellular tissue is therefore the bed in which
the several parts of the lungs are planted. As it runs
between the parts, and makes them into aggregate por-
tions, or lobes and little lobes, it is sometimes called the
interlobular tissue.
The lungs which we have thus endeavored to construct,
are two conical organs, filling, with the heart, the cavity
of the chest. They correspond in shape with the inside of
the chest, and press below upon the diaphragm. The pleura
which covers them, contracts and dilates with every respi-
ration, and maintains its spring during life. The elasticity
of this serous membrane is an indication that where serous
membranes are present, as for instance over the brain, and
over the abdominal viscera, a similar elasticity is intended,
or an expansile and contractile motion like breathing is
performed.
The chest, in which the lungs are placed, is a conical
box, moveable in its parts, and capable not only of dilata-
tion and contraction, but of infinite variations of shape. It
harmonizes with the lungs in their movements, forming
with them but one machine, so that it is indifferent whether
we say that we breathe with the lungs, or with the chest.
In good health, when consent between the two is perfect,
the bones and muscles of the ribs are of no heaviness in
function, but rock and swim upon the lungs. Thus when
we speak of the lungs in the sequel, we imply the whole
engine of breathing even to the skin, and regard the chest
itself as a dress or membrane inseparable from the lung-
principle.
Inspiration, or the drawing in of the breath, is caused
by certain muscles drawing out the walls of the chest, and
enlarging its inward cavity, in which case the pressure of
the external column of atmosphere causes the air to rush
down into the windpipe and fill the lungs, which then en-
ONENESS OF THE LUNGS AND CHEST. 79
large to fill the cavity of the chest. Expiration or breath-
ing out depends upon the relaxation of the muscles and
the resiliency of the parts of the chest, as well as upon
the elasticity and contractility of the lungs themselves.
Thus the force of the diaphragm and of the muscles between
the ribs engenders inspiration, and overcomes the elasti-
city of the lungs ; the elastic power of the lungs produces
expiration. The prolonged alternation of these two forces
is " a contest in which victory declaring on one side, or
the other, is [under ordinary circumstances] the instant
death of the fabric."
In the act of breathing we notice four divisions, each of
importance to our sequel. First, inspiration ; secondly, a
pause which ensues when the inspiration is completed ;
thirdly, expiration ; and fourthly, a pause when the expi-
ration ends ; after which inspiration again occurs, and the
same course is measured. Inspiration rises to a certain
level, and there rests for a time ; expiration descends also
to its level, and registers it by a pause. Further, the
inspiration may either take place continuously in one long
breath, or by several smaller inhalations and pauses the
expiration likewise may either proceed without a stop, or
it may be divided into several levels of exhalation, each
with its own proper pause.
But let us come to the use of respiration, or the benefits
of breathing. These are twofold : 1. The use of the air
drawn in, towards the renovation of the blood, and of the,
air emitted, towards its purification. 2. The mechanical
effect of the breathing upon the circulation and the body
generally. We speak first of the first of these uses, be-
cause of the exclusive importance usually attached to it.
The result of investigations on this subject need detain
us but a short time. It is in substance this, that when
the air is breathed in, the expanded network of capillaries
80 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
besetting the air cells absorb from it oxygen into the
blood, and at the same time pour forth carbonic acid gas
from the blood, which is carried out of the system by the
air leaving the lungs. In consequence of these two changes,
the reception of oxygen and the expulsion of carbonic acid,
the alteration of the blood from dark venous to florid arte-
rial in the air cells, is accounted for.
These changes, authors tell us, are purely chemical,
and the same as happen to venous blood out of the body.
We rejoin, however, that this theory is out of place, being
chemical and not organic. It deals only with what is ex-
ternal to the body. The air of inspiration is on the way
in, and the air of expiration is on the way out, but neither
the one nor the other is a part of the living frame ; how-
ever deep either may be in the passages oft the body, still
it is not indoors. The lining membrane or wall of the
cell is the partition between life and death ; inside the cell
is vitality, outside of it, dead nature : within it, the man
lives ; without it, the universe environs him : the oxygen
which is lost is missed from the outside, and the carbonic
acid which is found is on the outside also ; but on the in-
side no corresponding observation has been made, or can
be made ; and it is a questionable inference whether car-
bonic acid, as such, exists in the blood, or whether oxygen,
as such, is there either. As an account of the food of the
blood, and of the excrements of the blood, both external
to the man, the chemical report is valid, but is it a satis-
factory statement of any changes in the blood itself cir-
culating in the system? Assuredly not; and let us here
remark, that the terms of every subject should be in
keeping with the subject ; the things which are life's
should be rendered to life, and those of chemistry to
chemistry. We cannot judge of the living, either by the
raw material which they pasture from the world, or by
CHEMISTRY. 8 1
the refuse which they leave behind them ; or even by both
together. Organization is the one fact in organization ;
chemistry disappears into it, and is seen no more as che-
mistry. The blood, as an organic creature, into which
all things stream, and from which the body issues as the
work of works, is the sole reality in our veins ; it is as
blood alone that its elements come before us. As well re-
gard all heroic actions as instances of muscular exertion,
and these as powers of lever and fulcrum, and other pro-
duce of mechanics, and not connect them with the foun-
tains of human nature, as make the living union of all
things in the blood into a congeries of chemical substances.
Chemical indeed they are when they die and are experi-
mented on, but chemical is not their name while they are
part and parcel of our human blood. They must be ad-
dressed in the language proper to organic life, or the
keeping of their science will be violated irretrievably.
We the more insist upon this, because by a very natural
insurgency, chemistry has of late years been pushing what
are called its conquests into the domain of physiology.
But physiology has to consider the organic characters of
things, whether animal or vegetable ; chemistry, their
inorganic or mineral elements. This is a broad distinc-
tion, and easy to apply. We would not rescind one che-
mical experiment, or deny the value of one fact therefrom
resulting ; but we protest against the logic of reasoning
from chemistry to physiology ; from bricks to architecture ;
from neutral matter to forms shapen for particular pur-
poses, and with qualities that constitute the.ir point, and
their very existence.
At the same time there is no objection to regard life as
a fire, and the chest as one of its principal grates ; the
fuel being the blood, and the draught, the fresh air of
the lungs. In proportion as the outward world is cold,
E3
82 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
this lung-fire must be kept up by more inflammable mate-
rials, just as larger coals and logs are in use in December
than in May. And moreover in proportion to the size of
the fire is the quantity of smoke or carbonic acid disen-
gaged from the system. All this is safe analogy and good
experiment. But let us not be deceived into regarding
this as animal heat: it is as purely mineral heat this
presumed " combustion" of carbon and fat as the heat in
an ordinary stove. Animal heat is that which warms life,
or inflames the animal, as such. Its burnings are de-
sires, the flames of animal existence. These are kindled
by their appropriate objects. The universal animal heat
of the body is the organic zeal or love of self-preservation
hotly present in every part. This is the origin of hunger
and thirst, which tend to continue bodily life, and lay the
world under contribution, not despising even its mineral
fire. There are different orders of fire; even in nature
there is a substratum of heat of which we make all our
fires. And so in the body there is an animal heat which
lies at the basis of human warmth, even when the tem-
perature can be fully accounted for by the " combustion"
of the food. Take the sun out of nature, and the numbed
flints will have lost their sparks ; and take the soul out
of the body, and you may indeed roast it or boil it, but
cannot warm it with one ray of " animal heat."
Moreover there are several kinds of chemistry. The
present chemical sciences are of the mineral degree, al-
though their higher branches are indeed mineral- vegetable
and mineral-animal. But there is no such science yet as
either vegetable or animal chemistry. Mineral chemistry
teaches the composition of mineral substances by analysis
and synthesis. It makes minerals by mixing together
their components under favorable conditions. In like
manner vegetable chemistry makes plants, and animal
CHEMISTRY.
83
chemistry makes animals. Nature does this, and so far
nature is the only vegetable and animal chemist. But
though we cannot produce in her laboratory scientifically,
but only blindly, we can observe her processes, and learn
the results. For example, the mixture of sexes produces
animals, and in a certain sense plants also. The mixture
of breeds varies these substances, namely, animals, and
creates new compounds or animal varieties. The mixture
of opinions produces ideas, and then we have intellectual
chemistry. The present is distilled out of the past by
the same law. Chemistry then is the mineral term. Raise
it a step into the vegetable, and in plants it becomes pro-
pagation ; into the animal, and it becomes generation :
and so forth. This of synthetical or creative chemistry.
The terms alter as the theatre changes. But to run one
term through all the stages, is to miss the essence of all
but the lowest. When science does this, it not only finds
" sermons in stones," but is petrified by their discourses.
Dwelling therefore briefly, and under physiological pro-
test, upon the oxygen and carbonic acid disengaged, or
absorbed, during respiration, we proceed to remark, that
the whole of the venous blood of the body, w r hich is com-
paratively exhausted by its circulation, and also the whole
of the new chyle or realized essence of the food, passes
by the pulmonary artery to the networks of minute blood-
vessels in the air cells, and so through the lungs, and in
those fine vessels is counted out and thoroughly sifted,
and its purification takes place. Whatever disabled por-
tions it contains, are there taken to pieces, their broken
elements thrown away, and the sound reconstituted. What-
ever injuries the blood may have received from the pas-
sions of the mind, which as we know have all power to
bless or to hurt it, are palliated by the removal of clouds
of exhalations, as witness the odor of the breath. When
84 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
the fire of life burns dark and fuliginous, the windpipe is
as the chimney that relieves the body of its noxious smoke.
Moreover, whatever crudities or superfluities the new
chyle, or the milky produce of our food, may contain, are
expelled by the lungs through the same channel. In
short, the lungs are the general strainers and cleansers of
the blood. Globule by globule they discuss its problems,
separate its truths from its errors and its dead from its
living, and hold it to its brief but energetic trials for
purification and the consequences which follow.
Let us now turn from the act of expiration, from the
air " laden like a mule," as has been aptly said, " with a
burden and baggage of adulterations, and forced to carry
them out," to inspiration to the newly-arriving air, the
provision for supporting, and the blast for rekindling, the
blood. And let us spend a moment upon the admirable
means of nature for managing this very air, and presenting
it to the blood in the last place, clear, genial, and warm.
First the nose, as the administrator of the sense of smell,
takes cognizance of any odorous or stimulating properties
in the atmosphere, and acts accordingly ; if pure, sweet,
and fragrant, it draws in the air by volumes, inspiring
confidence and openness down to the very air cells : if
manifestly noxious or impure, the nose closes in propor-
tion, extemporizes a thousand valves that keep out the
baser particles, and the air is driven against the sides of
the passage, all the way to the same cells, its uncleanly
accompaniments being caught in a viscid snarework all
down the tube : it also gives notice to the mouth, whose
mucus catches its share of effluvia, which are rejected by
the shortest way. The mucus of these passages performs
an important use, detaining clouds of particles which are
unworthy to pass inwards, and this operation increases in
strictness the further the air advances in the narrowing
PHYSICAL ACTIONS OF THE LUNGS. 85
tubes. Consequently when it arrives in the cells, it is
clothed with kindly vapors issuing from the body, has
caught the tincture of the living heat, and is in fine unison
with the blood. And the blood has no sooner sniffed it
well, than it again becomes auroral and arterial. Imme-
diately that this is accomplished, the air, exhausted for
this primary use, is spent, as we saw before, upon the
secondary and servile use, of undertaking and carrying
forth the dead exhalations.
The blood that comes up to meet the air is all the blood
in the body, for after circulating, it all requires refresh-
ment or purification. It is carried into the lungs through
the trunk of the pulmonary artery. But we mentioned
another artery, the bronchial, which performs an office in
the lungs. The old, exhausted and impure blood is con-
veyed in the pulmonary vessel ; the blood which is pure
and young as the heart can make it, runs parallel with
the former in the bronchial. The pulmonary blood is to
become regenerate in the lungs ; the bronchial is the run-
ning model of its future state, and exercises a contagion
of youth upon its pulmonary associate. For nature never
prescribes an end, without shewing a present example
of it.
The air ministers to the blood an infinity of fine endow-
ments which chemistry does not appreciate. How full it
is of odors and influences that other animals, if not man,
discern, and which in certain states of disease and over-
susceptibility become sensible to all : moreover at particular
seasons all fertile countries are bathed in the fragrance
shaken from their vegetable robes. Is it conceivable that
this aroma of four continents emanating from the life of
plants has no communication with our impressible blood ?
Is it reasonable to regard it as an accidental portion of the
atmosphere ? Is it not certain that each spring and season
86 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
is a force which is propagated onwards ; that the orderly
supply, according to the months, of these subtlest dainties
of the sense, corresponds to fixed conditions of the at-
mospheric and imponderable world adequate to receive
and contain them; that the skies are the medium and
market of the kingdoms, whither life resorts with its
lungs, to buy ; that therefore the winds are cases of odors ;
and that distinct aromas, obeying the laws of time and
place, conform also to other laws, and are not lost, but are
drawn and appreciated by our blood. Nay more, that there
is an incessant economy of the breath and emanations of
men and animals, and that these are a permanent company
and animal kingdom in the air. It is indeed no matter of
doubt, that the air is a product elaborated from all the
kingdoms ; that the seasons are its education ; that spring
begins and sows it ; that summer puts in the airy flowers
and autumn the airy fruits, which close-fisted winter shuts
up ripe in wind granaries for the use of lungs and their
^.dependent forms. Thus it is passed through the fingers of
every herb and growing thing, and each enriches its clear-
shining tissue with a division of labor, and a succession
of touches, at least as great as goes to the manufacture of
a pin. Whosoever then looks upon air as one unvaried
thing, is like the infant to whom all animals are a repeti-
tion of the fireside cat ; or like a dreamer playing with
the words animal kingdom, vegetable kingdom, atmosphere,
and so forth ; and forgetting that each comprises many
genera, innumerable species, and individuals many times
innumerable. From such a vague idea, we form no esti-
mate of the harmony of the air w r ith the blood in its
myriad-fold constitution. The earth might as well be
bare granite, and the atmosphere, untinctured gas, if the
vegetable kingdom has no organic products to bestow
through the medium of the air, upon the lungs of animal
THE WEALTH OF THE AIR. 87
tribes. Failing all analysis, we are bound to believe,
that the atmosphere varies by a fixed order parallel with
that of the seasons and climates ; that aromas themselves
are abiding continents and kingdoms ; and that the air is
a cellarage of aerial wines, the heaven of the spirits of
the plants and flowers, which are safely kept in it, without
destruction or random mixture, until they are called for
by the lungs and skin of the animate tribes. Fact shews
this past all destructive analysis. It is also evident that
accumulation goes on in this kind, and that the atmosphere
like the soil alters in its vegetable depth, and grows richer
or poorer from age to age in proportion to cultivation.
The progress of mankind would be impossible, if the winds
did not go with them. Therefore not rejecting the oxygen
formula, we subordinate it to the broad fact of the recep-
tion by the atmosphere of the choicest produce of the
year, and we regard the oxygen more as the minimum
which is provided even in the sandy wilderness, or rather
as the crockery upon which the dinner is eaten, than as
the repast that hospitable nature intends for the living
blood in the lungs. The assumption that the oxygen is
the all, would be tolerable only in some Esquimaux phi-
losopher, in the place and time of thick -ribbed ice ; there
is something too ungrateful in it for the inhabitant of any
land whose fields are fresh services of fragrance from
county to county, and from year to year. Chemistry it-
self wants a change of air, a breath of the liberal land-
scape, when it would limit us to such prison diet.
Here, however, is a science to be undertaken 5 the study
of the atmosphere by the earth which it repeats ; of the
mosaic pillars of the landscape and climate in the crystal
sky ; of the map of the scented and tinted winds ; and the
tracing of the virtues of the ground, through exhalation
and aroma, property by property, into the lungs and the
88 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
circulating blood. For the physical man himself is the
builded aroma of the world. This, then, at least, is the
office of the lungs to drink the atmosphere with the
planet dissolved in it. And a physiological chemistry
with no crucible but brains must arise, and be pushed to
the ends of the air, before we can know what we take
when we breathe, or what is the import of change of air,
and how each pair of lungs has a native air under some
one dome of the sky ; for these phrases are old and con-
sequently new truths.
We notice, indeed, a great difference in the manner of
the lungs to the different seasons, for the genial times of
the year cause the lungs to open to an unwonted depth.
The breaths that we draw in the summer fields, rich with
the sweets of verdure and bloom, are deeper than those
that we take perforce on our hard wintry walks. Far
more emotion animates the lungs at these pleasant tides.
Nor is this to be wondered at, any more than that we
open more freely at a table loaded with delicacies, than at
a poorly furnished board. The endowments of the vegeta-
ble kingdom in the atmosphere not only feed us better with
aerial food, but also keep us more open and more deeply
moved; and we shall see presently that the movement of
the lungs is the wheel on which the chariot of life runs,
with more or less intensity according as the revolution is
great or small. Now in summer it is great, and in winter
it is small, for manifest motives.* Furthermore, our noses
* In a regular treatise on the chemistry of the lungs, the atmosphere
would be separately considered in its mineral, vegetable, animal and
human constituents, and in the effects of these, as introduced through
the lungs, upon the body and the mind. In this work, however, we
make no pretensions to treat the subject according to this larger order,
though other considerations following out the above series will be
presented in the sequel.
THE WEALTH OF THE AIR. 89
themselves, the features of the lungs, are in evidence that
there is more to be met with permanently in the air than
inodorous gases. For we cannot suppose that scent ends
organically where we fail to perceive it with the sense.
But enough has been said already On the flavorless world
and noseless doctrine of the chemists.
This extension of the subject has a practical bearing.
The chemical view blinds us to the seeds of health and
disease contained in the atmosphere. We pound it into
oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, and find its ruins pretty
invariable in all places under all circumstances. Plagues
and fevers give a different analysis, and tell another tale.
They prove that the air is haunted by forcible elements
that resist segregation and distillation. The strokes of
these airy legions are seen, though the destroyers them-
selves are invisible. In the atmosphere as a place of retri-
bution, the cleanness or uncleanness of the ground and the
people is animated by ever wandering powers, w r hich raise
cleanliness into health, and filth into pestilence, and dis-
pense them downwards according to desert with an unerr-
ing award. But who could guess this from the destructive
analysis into oxygen, hydrogen and carbon ; which misses
out the great shapes that stalk through the air, and laugh
at our bottles and retorts often with a diabolic laugh?
But we shall recur to this subject when we treat of Public
Health.
To conclude this part of our subject, we have seen that
the lungs raise the blood into its principles, and discuss
them on a higher arena ; that they continually refresh and
enlarge it by bringing it into contact with the outward
world in the shape of the atmosphere, where at once it
gives up its antiquities as the free breath unlocks it ; that
the lungs also humanize the air as it enters, and fill it with
the organic warmth and movements of the nose and the
90 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
head. But further, the blood, in passing into the lungs,
is held as it were above the body by virtue of the light-
ness of the sphere. And not only in the lungs but every-
where in the system, the pulmonic levity, or the rise of
the surface, operates statically upon the fluids ; so that
each breath amounts to a posture or rather a hover of the
entire capillary blood and nervous spirit of the body. This
levity- giving is an intermediate function between the aerial
and motor offices of the lungs. We shall speak of it again
at the end of this Chapter.
We have now considered the chemical and physical
functions of the lungs, and glanced at their statical office ;
it remains to treat the second part of the subject, namely,
the respiratory movements, or the mechanics and dynamics
of the lungs.
That the effects of the lung movements are not small, a
short description will convince us. Every time that we
draw in the air, our brains fall, from the venous blood
being sucked out of the head to fill the threatened vacuum
in the chest ; and when we breathe out the air, the brains
rise, from the return of the blood from the head to the
chest being impeded. The same also takes place with the
heart. During inspiration, the lungs breathe up the venous
blood into that organ, and retard the passage of the arte-
rial blood from it ; during expiration they keep the venous
blood away, and increase the onward impulse given to the
arterial blood. So likewise in the belly. Largely emptied,
as it is, of venous blood in inspiration, and subject to the
movements of the superincumbent lungs, it necessarily
undergoes great motion during breathing.
Now, that movements like these have a universal part
to play, it would be idle to deny. They actuate the body
some fourteen times, or more, every minute of our lives.
If we watch our neighbor as he sits upon his chair, we see,
THE LUNG -MOVEMENTS. 91
not his wind chest only, but the man himself, expand and
contract each time he breathes. If we watch the face, we
see a corresponding change : if we lay the hand upon the
stomach, we feel it rise and fall as plainly as the chest.
And common sense ordains, that in a machine divinely
economic, the use of any motion is co-extensive with the
motion itself, and if the motion be universal, the end it
serves is likewise universal.
As we have seen, the pressure of the atmosphere dis-
tends the lungs and produces inspiration : the living con-
traction of the lungs causes expiration. The result is, to
engender a power which alternately stirs the frame. As a
familiar instance of what this power is, I appeal to those
who have sat to the sun for a daguerreotype portrait.
You know that the greatest stillness is needed to bind
down that quick artist to the execution of single portraits ;
to make his successive ideas or touches fall in identical
lines ; otherwise, he will paint you not one, but a chaos of
likenesses, equal in number to your variations of position.
In the painfulness of your anxiety to sit still, to suppress
the breath, you find that you are a frame which verily
exists in motion you ascertain what a struggle it is to
combat your life's progress, to wrestle with the moving
lungs. To the fingers' ends, to the toes' ends you pant
and swell, and sink again, with irrepressible heavings ;
and the voice which emancipates you from the effort, and
bids you breathe as you please, unobservant of the fact, is
release from a straitness which could not be long endured.
The same thing is experienced more or less, whenever it
is necessary to use great stillness, to control the breath.
The consciousness which is then awakened comes into col-
lision with a power whose resources we never estimate
practically but at such times of struggle. Ask any of
those who have been engaged in poses plastiques, and they
92 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
will tell you that of all hard work, standing still is among
the hardest.
What becomes of the power created by the air falling
with the whole weight of its column upon the moveable
lungs, and displacing or expanding them, and by the sub-
sequent living contraction of the lungs ? Can we imagine
that its use is confined to the outside of the system ? to the
admission of fresh and the expulsion of contaminated air ?
This would be as reasonable as to suppose that the main
office of a water wheel, connected with an extensive and
complicated machinery, was confined to the water which
falls upon it, and that the mechanical power engendered
was not communicated inwards to the plant. At this rate
nature would be less thrifty than our engineers, who know
that power is precious, to be husbanded to the last degree,
conducted where it is required, and never expended with-
out a result. Suppose that a portion of the water be needed
inside the mill, as is generally the case, this is easily sup-
plied by some sideward allowance of the machinery, or by
the pressure of the water itself, which contains the power in
an unmechanized state ; but the main action is never spent
upon that which comes of its own accord. The blood is
aerated in some animals, and the juice in plants, without
any motion of the lungs, which may suggest that the aera-
tion of the blood is not the grand office of these movements.
But in machineries, any motion which is superabundant,
or not turned to use, is hurtful to the object sought, pre-
cisely because motion always has effects, which in the
latter case mix with the intended result, and confuse or
disarrange it. This applies more strongly to the human
frame than to anything of man's making. *
Thus, we observe that there are really two questions
which have been confounded with each other : Firstly,
What is the use of air to us ? and Secondly, What is the
OFFICE OF THE LUNG-MOVEMENTS. 93
use of breathing ? And with respect to this second enquiry,
we now see that it will be puerile to say that we breathe
in order to breathe. Let us grapple with the problem,
and solve it otherwise than by a verbal retort. We an-
swer, then, that the use of breathing is, to communicate
motion to the body, to distribute it to the different ma-
chineries or viscera, to enable them each to go to work
according to their powers.
Our position is, that the blood and blood-vessels make
and repair the organization, and keep it in working trim ;
while on the other hand the lungs and the brains use and
work it : like as an engine is made in the factory by one
set of artizans, but is taken elsewhere to enlarged condi-
tions of liberty or motion, to be worked by another class of
persons. Thus, the heart's fabricative strokes are the
lesser motion : the experimental play and employment of
the lungs is the greater motion. By the one the hammer
is plied upon the engine ; by the other, the completed en-
gine is made to use its qualities, and to work according to
its construction. Everybody contains two bodies, the one
which is forming, and the other which is finished and
working : the heart is the spring and centre of the first,
and the lungs of the second ; the one represents matter,
and the other spirit ; and the ratio between the pulses and
the breaths gives the constant equation which subsists be-
tween these inseparable two.
It needs but little consideration to shew that the organs
and viscera of the body require a supply of motion to ena-
ble them to perform their functions. These functions con-
sist, firstly, in the reception of a peculiar quantity as well
as quality of blood, from which they, secondly, are to se-
parate certain materials, or upon which they are to produce
some change : the quantity and quality required varies
also at different times. What is it that supplies them with
94 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
this peculiar blood ? Not the impulse of the heart and
arteries, for this could cause no discrimination in the sup-
ply to different parts ; on the contrary, its action is uni-
form all over the body. Each organ then requires an
individuality to enable it to choose and take what it wants
from the common system. How can this individual power
be given to the organs, except by their exercising a motion
of expansion and contraction, whereby they draw in or
shut away the blood, as they find it necessary ?
But again, if the organs are alive, the operations that
they perform upon the blood demand a general motion on
their part. If we are to regard them as dead sieves or fil-
tering stones, then it may be sufficient for fluid to run into
them, and the various secretions, the bile, the saliva, &c.,
may drip through them without any action on their part.
The humanities and industries of the inner man may sit
down deadly still, like mesmerized Turks. But is such a
conception proper in a body overrun by spirited nerves,
which in proportion as they are impressed or passive on
the one hand, rise up in activity on the other ? And if
the parts of the organs are not only passively but actively
engaged in elaborating the various juices, must not their
activities combine by a law into one general action or mo-
tion common to the whole organ ? Does not all function
in a living body imply motion, and is not the sum of par-
ticular motions necessarily represented by an aggregate
motion equal to all its parts. Though his blood may be
circulating, yet a motionless man is a man doing nothing ;
and a motionless organ is just as ineffectual. To exist is
one thing ; to do is another and a further. In the whole
man, the management of his motions constitutes nis skill ;
in the partial man or the organ a corresponding manage-
ment performs its functions. Without precise means set
in real motion, you have no art and manufacture, no saliva
NECESSITY OF THE PULMONAKY MOTION. 95
and no bile. These latter are the most marvellous of fabrics ;
the body is the most stupendous of factories. Our com-
monest thoughts upon such subjects are the way to the
best. Destruction, then, is in a manner compatible with
rest, but construction never.
The sap is indeed distributed in plants without any ap-
parent expansion and contraction of their organs, as it were
by a magnetic or elective affinity between the parts of the
plant, and the fluids they require. And this election is,
doubtless, involved in the animal also. But then the mean-
ing of animal as contradistinguished from vegetable, is
motion as distinct from growth, or local as different from
and superior to molecular movement. And the several
organs of animals are animal like the whole. No vegeta-
ble tissue could associate in the body of life, but it would
be the sport of activities which it could not share or recipro-
cate. A liver that was merely vegetating would be pressed
to death in a body that is ceaselessly animating. There-
fore the motion of the organs is indispensable to make
them parts of the whole, or to raise them into the animal
sphere.
To return to facts, we find in the motion of the lungs
communicated to the system, the very power which the
organs require. For the body is a chain of substances and
organs, whose connexions are so disposed, that motions
communicated from within, vibrate from end to end, and
from side to side, and extend to the extremities of the
limbs before they are absorbed. And in the intimate fel-
lowship pervading it, and which is brought about by the
skin and the membranes, we see the condition whereby a
general motion, like that of the lungs, amounts to an at-
traction exerted by the frame and its parts upon the world
without and the world within ; by which, in each different
voluntary expansion, it draws in as it pleases the fluid
96 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
contained in its own cavities, as well as whatever it requires
from the great ocean of the atmosphere. Such is the value
of the movements of the lungs. They not only breathe
themselves, but make the body breathe similarly with
them ; and in this consists its life, whereby it becomes an
individual, and takes what it wants for itself, suffering no
intrusion from within or without, whether from the blood
of the heart, or from the pressure of the universe.
To follow the gear by which the motion of the lungs is
communicated to other organs, belongs to anatomy and
experiment, but the general fact belongs to common sense,
and science has only to confirm it. We do not now enter
upon the anatomy, but will content ourselves with observ-
ing the effect of the pulmonary engine upon the great de-
partments of the system. And first for the effect upon
the nerves and the brain.
First, with respect to the nerves, the motions of the
lungs, occurring fourteen times per minute, act upon them
more than upon any other part, because they are the most
impressible of the organs. Now a large portion of the
nerves runs through the chest, a space subject to threat-
ened vacuum during every breath ; and more than a third
part of the spinal marrow virtually lies open into the same
exhausting receiver. The plain consequence is, that the
nerves and the spinal marrow are expanded with each
inspiration. Either that or they resist the inspiration,
and in this case the unity of the body is at an end. But
we cannot make the latter supposition. If they are ex-
panded or enlarged when the lungs draw them out, of course
a physical fluid enters them to fill the space created, and
tends to fill the organs to which they are distributed. In
this way the nervous system, the focus of life, opens the
frame at the same intervals as the lungs, the circumference
of life ; the lungs being simply the want of living fluid,
THE BREATHING OF THE BRAIN. 97
and the nerves the corresponding supply. This is an or-
ganic cooperation between effect and cause, whereby the
highest purposes of the organization are seconded most
absolutely, and yet most freely, by the lowest.
The nerves then breathe their atmosphere, the nervous
fluid, at the same intervals as the lungs breathe theirs,
which is the proper atmospheric fluid, and the breath of
the nerves is the life of the lungs, as the breath of the
lungs is the bodily action of the nerves. The nerves, how-
ever, are continuous with the brain, and secondly, we
observe that their expansion is its expansion. It opens,
for motion's purposes, into the chest, by the nerves, and
by the spinal marrow ; the lungs have their suckers upon
it everywhere, through the membranes and the blood-
vessels. It therefore breathes under the attractions of the
pulmonic air-pump. Like every other part it respires its
own thoughts or objects. What these are, it does not
behove us to enquire, but we may affirm generally, that
they are those fluids which are the brains of the body and
outward universe. The lungs breathe that which answers
to lungs in nature, namely, the air. The heart breathes
that which is the heart's in the system, namely, the blood;
and each organ, as a rule, breathes its own corresponding
fluids.
The heart, as we have just anticipated, breathes also
with the lungs, and so manifestly, that physiology already
contains many chapters upon the influence of the respira-
tion upon the circulation. The pulmonary motions acting
upon the heart and great vessels, cause the venous blood
to return to the heart, and somewhat retard the outgoing
arterial blood, during the inspirations ; and vice versa ; and
imprint upon the pulse at the fountain-head the force which
is destined to supplant the pulse where the vessels enter
the organs. By this means the ultimate intention is inti-
F
98 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
mated from the beginning ; the blood in its childhood is
let into the secret of its destiny ; and the sanguineous sys-
tem is prepared at once for submission to the brains and
lungs. The lungs then inaugurate the grand circulation
into the life and habitudes of the rational body, animat-
ing the blood itself with the moving spirit of the atmos-
pheres.
The belly too is in the human conspiracy ; it would be
dead to the rest if it did not breathe. The abdominal
breath is the most physical of all, commanded by power-
ful muscles, and destined to suck in that large food upon
which the belly lives, and whose pleasures it respires. As
we have observed already, we need only lay the hand low
down, and we shall feel our hunger moving and busy in
the workings of its native cave.
The belly, however, not merely breathes its general
atmosphere, the food, from the world of food lying in the
stomach and intestines, but its organs and viscera breathe
in each their peculiar blood, and breathe out their excre-
tions. For each organ has a precise form and constitution,
and like every other machine acts according to its con-
struction. The power of the great steam engine, the lungs,
is communicated to all, but each takes it in its own way.
For example, when the liver is drawn out or breathes, and
is filled with liver-thoughts and energies by its roused
nerves, the expansion follows its make and texture ; it is a
motion of the machinery of the liver ; and the purified blood
on the one hand, and the bile on the other, are woven
accordingly. So when the kidney is drawn out to act, it
is a motion of the machinery of the kidney. The different
machines moving in different ways, perform their functions,
draw in their blood and manufacture it, exactly according
to their build, each with a difference from the rest. There
is no tyrannous influence of the lungs ; their traction upon
THE BREATHING OF THE BODY. 99
the gear of the organs is only the power necessary to set
them to work, to enable them to revolve in their places,
and to put forth their given genius for the commonwealth
of which they are independent members.
Each organ of the body has therefore its own sphere,
within which it is individual. It is true that its force
comes from without, but then it is a force answering to
that which it desires from within by the very nature of its
nerves. It is therefore a rule, that the blood is merely
carried by the heart and vessels to the doors of the organs,
but is not intruded ; for on the threshold of the organs it
encounters another force, and is drawn inwards or sent
outwards only at the times when the organ draws it or
expels it. In a word, at the organs the jurisdiction of
the heart and arteries ceases, and that of the organ itself
begins.
To complete the empire of the respiration, we notice
that the muscles and limbs breathe like the rest. During
repose this is more difficult to shew, but even then, if we
attend carefully to the draw of the expansion passing from
the belly down the legs, we shall find that the skin tends
out in an inverse pyramid from the loins to the toes and
heels; like trowsers tight at the bottom, but expanding
and contracting above, and chiefly at the top. While,
however, w r e are at rest, the respiration of the limbs is
scarcely noticeable, beyond the parts of the arms and thighs
immediately contiguous to the body. But when we rise
into motion, and the will comes forth, the effect is differ-
ent ; and in powerful volitions and actions a limb of air
become steel, runs rigorously down to our toes and fingers.
The skin is braced so tight, that the muscles threaten to
start through it, and the will in the same manner menaces
to bare itself by throwing off the muscles. The clothes
and the body fly out like concentric planetary rings in a
F2
100 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
rapid vortex. The man becomes more and more of air ;
he ceases to lie, he ceases to sit, he ceases to stand, and,
like an elastic sphere bounding upon a point, the ball of
the foot is his only contact with the ground. This is the
extreme effect of the aeration of his limbs, He has be-
come a bird for that moment, and can then fly through
difficulties, which are the atmosphere of these great actions
of the lungs.
The lungs then are consenting organs in muscular and
gymnastic efforts, and precise muscles of breath or spirit
lie under the muscles of flesh, and lend them force, hard-
ness and sphere in their operations.
It is also to be remarked, that as inspiration commences
a posteriori, or from the muscular system, and as all the
muscles concur to it more or less, so the inspiratory effort
may commence from any part of the frame, and the breath-
ing will be differenced according to the part. In ordinary
normal breathing, the thoracic and intercostal muscles
appear to begin the act ; but in pleurisy the centre of
operations is changed, the breathing becomes u abdominal,"
and the action upon the chest is secondary. In like man-
ner any muscle of the frame may take the lead in initiating
the action, for all the muscles are connected together, and
tend instinctively to influence each other. Thus we may
have splenic breathing, or umbilical breathing, or hepatic
breathing, according to the part of the surface which
begins the inspiratory traction. Now the spirit of any
action is according to its beginning in the body. But
this is too important a subject to be discussed within our
present limits.
It is now therefore evident that the movements of the
respiration are not confined to the chest, but are systemic
motions pervading the head, body and limbs, and lying at
the basis of the functions of the parts ; and thus that bodily
THE BREATHING OF THE BODY. 101
actions or functions are never created, but only shaped or
formed out of a stock of motion given in the nature of
things. Furthermore as habits are no sooner engendered
than they are written upon the body, and especially upon
the nervous system, it is plain that this habit of reciprocal
breathing is deeply inscribed as a second nature upon the
animal textures, and that they tend to fall into it upon the
least impulse given ; according to the well known laws of
recurrence in the bodily frame. Thus, on the showing of
facts, life may be denned as the progressive education of
the organs and viscera into habits of breathing which con-
tradistinguish them from dead organs.
What we have said might have been taken by analogy
from the air as well as from the lungs. For the air also
has the three functions ; a chemical, by which it combines
with other substances ; a statical, by which it presses with
so many pounds to the square inch ; and a mechanical, by
which it serves as a motor force whenever its columns are
displaced or its volume agitated. The lungs, as we have
now shewn, correspond to and make use of the air in all
these three departments. We may therefore resume in
saying, that the chemical powers of air are chemico-vital
powers of lungs, and the mechanical powers of air, me-
chanico-vital powers of lungs.
We do not forget in these observations, that breathing
commences only at birth, and that another order of things
prevails previously. But this different state does not con-
tradict the views put forth. Were this the place, we
might pursue the thread of science into that other and
attractive but mysterious sphere of whose still spring the
round of this life is but the first expansion. But we must
be content with remarking, that during embryonic exist-
ence, the main business is the work of formation ; the
body is then upon the stocks ; and as the blood first and
102 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
the heart afterwards are the builders of the body, the brain
or nervous principle operates through them, and its move-
ments keep pace with theirs ; but after birth the usage of
the body is the main thing ; the life becomes more than
the meat ; the body is now to be worn out in action ; its
growth and repair are secondary, and all with reference
to its employment ; and this, as we have seen, depends
upon the lungs ; wherefore in the second case, the brain
shifts its patronage and alters its step, and works through
and with the lungs. It is what might be expected, that
the brain should respire with the heart in the heart-epoch,
which anticipates the period of birth, but in the epoch of
the lungs, or conscious life, should sympathize or syn-
chronize with those organs which have the ruling mission,
and transfer its sceptre to the younger dynasty of the
chest.
The views we have been considering find an agreeable
response in established laws of nature, constituting a branch
of the doctrine of universal attraction, whose appliance they
shew in the human frame. Nor is this an insignificant
support that they receive. When a law is sure for one
department, we have a right, assuming unity of system,
to look for that law in every sphere, though modified in
each by its new circumstances. So if attraction be the
most general law of the dead universe, we know that in
a new sense it is the general law of organization, and also
of the human or living universe. But in the actions of
the lungs we have found it omnipresent in the body ; and
have seen the spring of an attraction applied to the organs,
which causes them to operate very much according to the
Newtonian formula. Here then we join forces with the
discoverer of material attraction, who regarded it as the
immediate finger of God, freshly noting the solidity of
whose wisdom, we find in the body that attraction is no
UNIVERSAL ATTRACTION. 103
abstract formula, but palpable and living lungs. Nor can
we doubt than when analogy is better known, and can be
boldly worked, the light that issues from the unfolded
doors of the human body, will stream forth into the vault
of nature, and kindle celestial physics with a breathing
wisdom that never could come from inanimate things, even
though their theatre be ancient night with its gorgeous
pageant of stars.
The active or alternate attraction in the body, like all
attraction, amounts also to a law of association, in this
case the association of the organs. If each organ takes, and
does, what it wants, each organ is conveniently placed to do
and to take it. The organs which need the best blood, are
so seated at the banquet that they obtain it naturally and
necessarily. They are succeeded in punctilious rank by
the rest, each having its attractions seconded by its place
round the table. There is a society in our members. But
this is such a subject that we must be content with a glance
at its stupendous proprieties. The order which it involves,
could we open it but a little, is of visionary magnificence,
and might make us into propagandists of the organization
of the body. For the Divine Architect rests not in mid-
dling fitness, but now, as at the first, perfection is his
way, and embodied truth is his everlasting child.
Surely, then, we say, at the risk of repetition, it is no
longer difficult to see the fundamental importance of the
lungs in the human body. Life consists in the peculiar
faculties, passions, instincts, senses and actions, which our
bodies execute; or life is spiritual motion. This cannot
be founded upon physical inertia or dead body, but upon
physical activity or living body. And this activity must
be constant and pervading, lest life should be stopped by
some lump of rest or carcase remaining on its hands. Mo-
104 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
tion or vibration therefore in various degrees continually
sways the organism, and shakes it out of the rank of death-
like things. Thus it is always on the tremble and tiptoe ;
its motion its main essence, and ready for obedience, as a
servant all ear, eye and sense watching for command.
This could not be the case if the body or any part of it
were at rest. The rest w^ould require to be broken, and
the body to be roused, before it could obey, and a thousand
volitions would fail before one was brought into effect.
But by means of the lungs which keep everything on the
move, the man is ever ready for living operations. Thus
the quickness of the body's service depends entirely upon
its response to the animations of the lungs. Or life is
founded upon motion, and the motion is evoked and main-
tained out of rest by physical life, animation, or in other
words, pulmonary breathing.
Thus far we recognize a scale of physiological truths
pertaining to the respiration, and which we may distin-
guish into vegetable, animal and human. The doctrine
which recognizes the lungs as providers of air, is on the
vegetable level ; well for it if it does not think that it is
talking about men when it concerns only cabbages. For
plants are like men in this particular, of taking in and
giving out air. The doctrine which regards breathing as
of use for motion, belongs properly to animal physiology.
Lastly, that doctrine which considers the psychological
part of breathing, or the manner in which the motion em-
bodies, represents and carries out those faculties of thought,
feeling and action, and those destinies that are peculiarly
human, is proper human physiology, j So each thing is
named and characterized from its own essence, and from
nothing either beneath it or above it.
This concludes our present study of the effects that the
SUMMARY OF MATERIAL BREATHING. 105
lungs produce upon the exterior, and thereby upon the
interiors of the frame ; we observe that they endow every
organ with outward life, courage and spirit, and call forth
its talents in its daily work by the influence of attraction.
And the attraction being most general, is common to all
the members, which therefore conspire or breathe together
for realizing the goods of life, and thence come under a
genuine law of association.
Now as truths always point out duties, there is some-
thing immediately practical which arises from our view of
the importance of the movements of the lungs. If each
organ contributes its share to the ensemble of life, each
demands a special care in the maintenance of health, which
is the wealth of life. Much has been written, and justly,
upon tight lacing, as injurious both to the development
and stability of the body. But if our ideas be correct, the
duty of leaving the chest and the body free, becomes ten-
fold more imperative than before. If motion be the essence
of the life of the organs, and if it extends to the whole
frame and to the limbs, then all articles of apparel may
fairly be supervised and limited in their pressure, in order
to give our persons their lawful liberty. In this case the
emancipation of the body itself is a subject of individual
and domestic politics of the utmost importance, and the
science of every organ should wring a progressive Magna
Charta of dress from the kings of fashion. It is another
proof that we speak the truth, because it tends so directly,
yet so newly, to reinforce our old duties, which is an ex-
cellent test of truth. There are in fact as many kinds of
public health as there are different organs. There is one
which should be represented at the board of fashion, as
having a veto, and establishing a precedent upon whatever
is enslaving in dress. And it is not to be doubted that in
what we wear, equally as in what we are, grace, pleasure
F3
106 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
and beauty are compatible with freedom, and with freedom
only.*
But dress is not the only thing that coerces the frame ;
or rather I should say, the body itself is a dress which
under certain circumstances may oppress and hinder the
breathing. A " belly with good capon lined," is a gar-
ment difficult to ensoul. Over eating is a tyrant against
motion. It impedes the play, not only of the lungs, but
of the other members. A mass of crude food is like an
avalanche of stones descending upon a country, which
buries the soil under dead materials. How plainly do we
see the small life in the scant breath of the unwieldy bon-
vivant, whose lungs have porter's work to do in lifting his
disproportioned paunch. So it is that liberty and temper-
ance are among the natural commandments of the lungs.
We have now spoken of the first commerce of the lungs
with the body ; it remains to consider some relations which
they maintain with the senses and the other powers, that
is to say, with the faculties of the brain, and by which
they again influence the bodily organs.
Now the material senses inspire the body with its first
proper life, and concur with the pulmonary inspiration.
For beginning with touch, we find that pleasant contact
which soothes the skin, is accompanied M r ith full breaths,
sometimes running into deep sighs if the sense be pecu-
* All parts of the body may be smothered or suffocated if confined.
This is often seen in disease, and particularly in delicate and nervous
females, who begin to gasp if there is the least pressure of physical
restraint, and a touch sets them off into hysterical movements, the
feeling of suffocation reacting from the circumferences or limbs to-
wards the centres. Life in such persons is an exquisite balance which
appreciates quantities of compulsion and restraint that make no sensi-
ble impression upon hardier organisms.
THE BREATH OF THE SENSES. 107
liarly grateful ; and in extreme cases of the kind, inspira-
tion almost obliterates expiration, which survives only in
gasps and nrvmurs. Painful contact on the other hand
straitens the hmgs, and causes the breath to be held as
long as possible. In short we breathe in the touches that
delight us, but confine to their first place of invasion, and
shut away from the vitals, the discords or agonies of our
skins ; and this by fixation or resoluteness of the lungs.
Respiration then draws up the sense of touch towards the
general sensorium. It also sucks in the sense of taste to
the same goal. For taste lives when inspiration is pro-
ceeding, but when we breathe out, or stop the breath,
sapid substances do not make their proper impressions.
We keep back breath when we swallow drugs, and the
nauseous taste is not drawn into our consciousness. At
meals, however, we breathe with satisfaction, for the cir-
cumstances are inspiring ; and tending, as they do, to en-
large the man, they set his machineries in motion with a
life of extra breaths. Smell is inspiration in its highest
case ; the nose is a lung planted upon the brain, to feed it
with perceptions and excite it to operations. Air and
scent are inseparable companions. To breathe therefore
involves to smell, the one function following the other up
into the brain, and down to the bottom of the lungs. The
motives to breath furnished by these three senses make
inspiration deeper and larger than it would otherwise be
(p. 88), for pleasure takes great lungfuls ; thus they ani-
mate the lungs with superior life, and the organization is
opened by the senses through the lungs to a degree beyond
what insensate lungs could effect. As for the senses of
hearing and sight, the lungs do not so directly aid them,
because light and sound are above their attractions. Their
active offices terminate with the blood and the air ; only
their passive offices extend to the ether and the nervous
108 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
system. For hearing and sight, so far as they are essen-
tially acts of attention, are best transacted when the breath
is held ; and indeed impressive sights and sounds tend to
suspend it. We observe then, with regard to the senses
and their connexion with the lungs, that touch and taste
browse in the fields of inspiration; that smell, a winged
sense, flits with ceaseless play between inspiration and
expiration ; and that sight and hearing, concurring often
with suspension of the breath, live above the lungs in the
airless calms of the brain. Touches and tastes we breathe
in ; smells we scent, or breathe in and out ; and sights
and sounds we do not breathe, but see and hear, athwart
the air, either in spite or in the absence of its proper
motions.
Thus much for the passive immission of the material or
pulmonary senses. The senses however have an active
condition in which their sensations are perceptions. In
this state they partake of the common law of the two
higher senses, and are awake and efficient at the times of
suspended respiration. For active sense is a breathless
power, and does not draw in body, but puts forth soul.
Thus touch as a mental product is tact: it turns the tables
upon its objects, makes itself critically harder than they,
and resists and rejects, picks and chooses their impressions
by deliberate inquest. The breath awaits while the steady-
fingering thought explores, and then inspires, not whatever
comes, but precise information. Let the reader observe
himself when he is feeling for such information, and he
will find his curiosity rejoicing in periods of suspended
lungs. In active taste the same rule obtains. We no
longer draw in the pleasant flavors by mouthfuls, but dis-
parting the tongue for special acts, we make little sucks
and respirations of the palate upon specimen morsels ; we
fill the decent sense with judgment, taking small account
THE BEEATH OF THE SENSES. 109
of pleasure; and holding the general breath, we calcu-
late the result, undistracted by the lungs, in its smallest
figures. Tasting, then, as contradistinguished from taste,
is carried on in the intervals of common breathing. So
also is smelling, which works its problems upon minute
quantities of odors, shutting away the volumes ; actively
we exert our smell upon mere snatches of scent made to
run hither and thither in the inquisition of the nose. And
as we said before, we hear best in breathless attention, and
see most observantly when the eye-thought gazes, un-
shaken and unprompted by the lungs.
It is also to be noticed that the voice, which consists of
perceptions freed from the mind, and launched into the air,
is made of the material of the expirations. The mind is
breathed out into the social world by the expirations and
their pauses, and not by the inspirations.*
The sum of these remarks is, that the exercise of the
senses is rhythmical, chiming with some part of the respi-
ration of the lungs ; either with inspiration, expiration, or
some level or pause of the one or the other at which the
breath may be suspended. And as the senses belong to
the brain, evidence is afforded that its animations, which
comprise the senses, coincide with the respirations of the
lungs, f
* Oratory especially requires the management of the breath, or the
economical guidance of the expirations by the conceptions. If you
spend your air too fast, a part of your in-coming air will go to pay off
the extravagance, and you will probably be in nature's debt through-
out the speech, presenting more or less of the phenomenon of a
person who has " lost his breath." To " lose the breath " is to fall
into an unnatural rapidity of inspiration and expiration, which will
not be governed by the will, in which case the mind has pro tanto
lost the power of dispensing the air.
f We have a further proof of the consentaneousness of the lung
movements with the brain movements (pp. 48 52), in the fact that
110 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
Passing to another sphere, we may glance at the con-
nexion of the lungs with the passions. On this theme it
may be sufficient to say, that the breathing varies with
every emotion ; a circumstance which may be verified in
experience, by noting the respiration at different times. If
we could remove from the language of passion all reference
to these organs, we should cancel I know not how much of
its expressiveness. If we could take the variety of the
breath itself away, the man, the bigger he was, would be
the more an unmeaning lump. Where would mirth be, if
it lost all its laughter ? What would become of hope, if
it had no dilated breast ? What would be the plight of
love, bereft of its delicious sighs ?* How could pride exist
without its hardened chest and swollen throat ? Or rage
the voice, proceeding from the head of the lungs, is the voice of the
mind, and images its thought or corresponds to its animations. But
if in this exalted function of air such correspondence exists, does not
the lung air correspond in its times with the brain spirit, equally with
the larynx air, which is the voice. If the top of the pulmonic wind
answers to the surface of the brain spirit, or, in other words, the
voice to the mind of the moment, does not the correspondence run
upwards and downwards, and does not deep call unto deep through
silence more than through speech, and the spirit above to the spirit
below through the lifetime as well as through the second ? Do not
our little harmonies swim in great harmonies, which are not ours only,
but creation's and the Creator's ? But upon this subject we do not
dwell, because we purpose to treat of the voice on another occasion.
* Here we may remark that the spirit of the passions and actions,
nay, of the states of man generally, may receive its formula from the
breath of the lungs; for the breathing is a representative phenomenon,
and is to action what words are to thought, and what tones or music
are to feeling. If we hear the breathing of those whom we do not see,
we infer to a certain degree what they are doing, and their general
tranquillity, or the reverse. And this is a walk of observation that
may be cultivated to almost any extent. In very susceptible persons,
the inferences drawn from the breathing of others are wonderful.
THE BREATH OF THE PASSIONS. Ill
without his choking breaths ? Or anger without his tem-
pests ? How should our poor weariness endure, if it had
never a yawn to console it? And how would joy and
gladness fail if their healthy bosoms did not swell with
trembling airs of the clear blue firmament, eager to reas-
cend in songs ? But these are only a few of the presents
that the lungs draw from the mighty winds to bestow upon
their brethren, the passions. The law is this. Each infant
or dawning passion disports itself first in the brain ; atti-
tudinizes there to the top of its bent in the chambers of
imagery ; observes and admires its goodly appearance in the
mirrors of fancy, and is king uncontrolled in its own little
cortical spheres. Then as the lungs are plastic as air, it
descends into the theatre of resistance through their conve-
nient mid- way, and shapes and crystallizes the wind for
the moment into hardness and strength, softness or gentle-
ness, sighs or fulness, or any of the other forms which the
dramatic occasion requires, or the muscles and limbs de-
mand as a ground for peculiar action. For each emotion
it hews the body into a different block, wherewith the
emotion pushes its way in the world. In a word, the
lungs are the bodily arena of the passions ; they give shape
to our impulses, increase and deepen them, and begin to
carry them into works. In inward gestures and deeply
silent murmurings they first unprison the words and deeds
that are at last to resound through history, and push the
nations to their goal.
But to trace the special inhabitation of the passions or
brain spirits in the breaths or lung spirits, will require a
volume.* It may however be noticed that the inspiring
passions concur with the pleasant senses, and are housed
* We have made some progress with such a work, but the field is
of an unexpected magnitude.
112 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
in the inspirations ; that the depressing passions tend to
lower or kill the breath; as extreme fear, for instance,
which makes us aghast or ghostless, and causes the lungs
to forget their reciprocations : and that the middle passions
have a middle effect. And it may further be noted that
the peculiar respirations which are the bodily spirits or
tendencies of the several passions, have the office of pro-
voking the latter, or reacting upon them. For example,
in rage, does it not begin to fume and swell in the lungs ?
is not "the steam got up " in those locomotives ; and does
not the brain, with tempests in its hand, not only lash the
body into the pace which answers to its own madness, but
feed the madness out of the wind- swift speed ? These
passionate breaths, although not classified by science, are
known to the observing, and interpret the underplay of the
feelings, even when speech and smiles dissemble. In this
field then the lungs have several offices. By concurring
with the passions they raise the frame into each, or com-
municate it to the blood and secretions, enabling the
mind and body to keep company through all changes, or
to be impassioned together. By the same concurrence
they amplify the field, and stimulate the fire of the pas-
sions, fanning it with the oxygen of their spacious move-
ments. They also enlarge the material body to the scope
of animal life, which is passion, causing stomach and liver
to flame and expand with it ; as we saw in the case of the
senses, that they extend the enlarging breath of sense
through the lungs to the same material organs. The lungs
then lend the passions of the mind physical force, and the
organs of the body passionate movements; and by this
means they make the one and the other, or the brain and
the viscera, into perfect bodily animals.
But the imagination also, which is the intellect of pas-
sion, builds especial houses in the breath, or, as it is said,
THE BREATH-BUILDING OF IMAGINATION. 113
forms air castles. These are its own expirations, in which
it revels, for what it draws in is nothing to it, but what it
breathes out is all. It does not however expire either to
do or to die, but to run after its breaths as they sail through
the air ; not desiring to leave the world, but to propagate
its image children in the universal imagery. The smoke
of its lung-pipe keeps it busy with the plasma of a thou-
sand twirls. It makes its objects out of its breath, and
hence we locate it among the expirations. During such
imagination, accordingly, the head is held up, and the
breathing tube to the very mouth levelled like a barrel :
words fly forth with arrowy straightness ; the inspiration
is inaudible though sufficient, but the man pants audibly
towards the unseen, and each pant externizes more of the
breath on which the faculty pulls and feeds. When the
breath-palace is built, the laws of gravity bring it to the
ground ; whence air castles, as the frequent beginning of
earth castles, are not to be despised; imagination being
the proximate architect of the arts and sciences. We may
formulize the respiration of this faculty by saying, that
during its exercise the lungs take their airs to themselves
just as the imagination represents its objects to itself ex-
ternally. This lung conceit is one means by which the
body holds its own sphere, and protects it amid the great
fluctuations.
Respiration has also a peculiar relation to the intellectual
processes, which lie, it will be found, in fixity of breath,
proper state of lungs, or suspended respiration. Among
other reasons for this is the fact, already pointed out, that
inspiration is a means of drawing up the bodily sensations
to the brain ; for the body is as a sponge let down into the
world, whose attraction upon the waves of Toaaterial sense
is exerted by pulmonary inspiration. But in proportion as
these lower influences are admitted, often in the same pro-
114 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
portion intellect is drugged, and sleeps in the cortical beds.
We speak of a familiar fact. But6ecause the mind has
power over the lungs, it can handle the senses by their
means, and prevent the floods of worldliness from pene-
trating to the upper sensoria. So also can it stop the
mounting passions. This it does by suspending the breath,
and cutting off the supplies of sense and animality. Or, to
speak more anatomically, the brain at such times refuses to
be invaded by the blood, which contains the turmoil of the
lower life : the cortical spherules keep it at arm's length :
for it is to be remembered that the brain expires concur-
rently with the lungs, and when the latter shut off the
blood, the brain does the like. Hence it is that thought is
still, and contemplation breathless : each involving, first,
fixed breath, and second, a small expiring ; and so on, until
the thought is traversed, or the effort ends and begins anew.
Deep thought, then, where not given directly by heaven,
but conceded to human effort, is gained by the descent of
a ladder of expirations, and the body dies down into intel-
ligence by this scale : the best of such perceptions come
from the confines of expiration and the grave, which lies
at the bottom of the lungs. Intellect, therefore, in this
light, is the capacity of standing and expiring, and living
still ; death to the body governing the body ; an infinitesi-
mal immortality into which thought expires and expires,
to brighten and brighten its lives. To the senses, sus-
pended animation is suspended consciousness : to the intel-
lect suspended animation may be life, thought and supreme
wakefulness. For it lives when the body is gasping : its
chosen sons, as they drag the world onwards, are verily
at their last gasp, in the acceptance of their own mortal
immortality. The intellect, then, through the lungs,
puts the body down under its palm ; whispers to the
sea of delirious sense, " Peace, be still !" and plays
THE BREATH OF THOUGHT. 115
its melodies in the charmed air upon the whitest keys of
silence.Jf
Intellect touches so near upon trance, that the highest
cases of either involve common phenomena, and exist in
the same persons. But trance is complete suspension of
the breath, sometimes for long periods. This suspension
of the breath of the lungs involves the standing of the
spirit of the brain, and the stand of this is the gaze of the
intellectual eye, whose final and hard victory is to see.
In some subjects, if the lungs are fixed, including the
brain, the body can wait for breath and spirit for an inde-
finite time. It still lives, because there is a standing spirit
in the body and a standing breath in the lungs, which par-
take of the fixity, or are charmed and entranced. These
are cases in which life stands, and the proper spirit can
go and return, because the animal state is safe and fixed.
Nay, the time of the trance or separation counts for nothing.
We do not know a limit to the duration of the body under
these conditions ; it is as a day miraculously prolonged,
when our sun stands still upon Mount Gibeon and our
moon in the Valley of Ajalon. Nor do we know a limit
to the excursions of the intellect on these holidays, when
it visits its celestial birthplace, secure of finding its lungs
and factories ready to start into reciprocation at a moment's
notice on its re-arrival.*
* The reader will notice that scientific experiments may be made by
whoever pleases, upon the concurrences of the lungs with the mind
and the body ; and that for this purpose no apparatus is necessary
beyond observation on the one hand, and the possession of the human
frame on the other. This, then, may be a universal science. In the
same way we shewed, in the Chapter on the Brain (pp. 60, 61), that
there are vivisections which may be studied without torturing animals,
namely the divisions and sects of a certain creature which cuts up its
own species and its own brains for us every day.
116 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
It must be recollected that in these conditions the lungs
are not emptied of air ; for expiration does not go to that
extent, but plays upon a certain depth of the pulmonary
reservoir, leaving the remainder undisturbed. The in-
voluntary right of the lungs to the air is strongly asserted
if we attempt to expire beyond a certain point. Otherwise,
the body would lose its life size, the wedge of atmosphere
would have ceased to open it, and the spirit crushed out
of the body could not lift it a second time into the opera-
tions of breathing.
Moreover, in these conditions of suspended animation
the chemical laws do not persist, but like the rest are sus-
pended. Held breath concurs with held spirit, held blood,*
held life and held time. . The tissues, particles and fluids,
and the wind in the lungs, are entranced; the body is
absent from chemical corrosions as the mind from animal
provocations. The air is not required for exchanging pro-
ducts with the blood, but for maintaining the level of the
state, and serving as an elastic animus under the fixed
attitude of the brain. And even when the air is expired
in partial trance, it is not because it is vitiated, but for
deepening the state, and as it were steering and standing
in nearer to the shores and lighthouses of death.
We now see what this concurrence of the lungs bestows
upon the organs, for they all stand when the lungs stand,
taking up their places as fleshly eyes in the attitude and
body of the intelligence.-}- It is the interpolation of the
* The heart indeed in itself, though not in its blood in the organs,
is an exception to the universal concurrence of the frame with the
breathing ; for although influenced thereby, it is not reduced, like
the organs, to the pulmonic rhythm. But as we shall shew, it be-
longs to another regiment of natures, and to a different discipline from
the lungs.
f The concurrence of the head with the body is provided in many
SUSPENDED ANIMATION. 117
higher life and endurance into the organic movement ;
breathless but deathless moments set in the midst of the
ways ; but the moving harmony of the lungs and the brains appears
to be at the basis of all. Let us take an instance of this concurrence
from the muscular system, and let the subject of the experiment be
walking. Now let him fix the eyes in a gaze upon any object. Soon
the walk becomes slower, and the body is brought to a pause, as it
seems, voluntarily. If the gaze be continued under favorable circum-
stances, the will thus brought into the topmost muscles (those of the
eyes), and which has rivetted the feet, will begin to rivet the muscular
attention from above downwards. And although the eyes close, if
the will be kept up, rigidity will invade the jaws, then the arms, and
then the legs, producing a state like catalepsy. These facts are
familiar to those who are acquainted with Mr. Braid's admirable dis-
coveries in Hypnotism. It is upon this principle that lockjaw, attack-
ing the high ranges of muscles about the jaw, runs down the inclined
plane of the muscular system, locking it as it goes, and bringing
muscle after muscle in tributary streams to constitute tetanus. And
it is by acting on the still higher point of the muscles of the eyes,
that this disease may be commanded from muscles loftier than its own
origin. By the force of this inclined plane system, the expressions of
the face tend naturally to produce the gestures of the arm and the
postures of the body, which may be looked upon as torrents of will,
that have come down at first in little streams from the mountain
springs of fleshly action in the countenance.
Thus the muscular frame is all made for concurrence, and forces
which act upon one part of it, tend to be diffused through it, as through
a continuum, but with a difference of function according to the regions.
The expression of the face, which is the dial plate of the general mind,
is the main spring and clockwork of the active body. Upon this prin-
ciple, we see that smiles precede laughs,, that clenched jaws go before
clenched fists, and, in short, that expression not only anticipates but
also stirs action.
These considerations furnish fresh evidence that the body is solidaire ;
that whatever the head does, the trunk does in its way, and the limbs
in theirs : in short, that man is so formed as to act only in wholes,
each full size. In this way we are constructed upon the principles of
poetic unity, the mind and the body being but one volume written out
in the rhymes of the brain and the lungs.
118 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
wear and tear of the tissues ; chemical moth and rust ceas-
ing their gnaw, and incorruptibility paramount in the
corruptible. So the body represents the proper mind ; the
intellect sinks a shaft into the flesh, making it dramatic of
the moments that we live beyond sense and passion. Man
would not be embodied if that which is best in him were
not bodily set forth. The lungs then introduce this tran-
scendent representation, and the moral virtues that inhabit
this order of intelligence commune with the organs through
their means. They put down the body, give it the lesson
of death or self-denial, and frame in it still windows of
experience opening to the timeless state. They emancipate
the mind for the occasion from the stimulus of the passions.
In short, they embody the moral intellect, or give the
frame a hyper-animal life not lying in physical movement ;
and they intellectualize the body, or contribute their share
towards constituting its peculiar humanity.
If sense, passion and thought are in a certain dependence
upon breathing, so also is action to at least an equal extent.
All fineness of work, all that in art which comes out of the
infinite delicacy of manhood as contrasted with animality,
requires a peculiar breathlessness and expiring. To listen
attentively to the finest and least obtrusive sounds, as with
the stethoscope to the murmurs in the breast, or with
mouth and ear to distant music, needs a hush that breath-
ing disturbs ; the common ear has to die, and be born
again, to exercise these delicate attentions. To take an
aim at a rapid-flying or minute object, requires in like
manner a breathless time and a steady act ; the very pulse
must receive from the stopped lungs a pressure of calm.
To adjust the exquisite machinery of watches or other in-
struments, requires in the manipulator a motionless hover
of his own central springs. Even to see and observe with
an eye like the mind itself, necessitates a radiant pause.
THE SPIRIT OF ACTION. 119
For the negative proof, the first actions and attempts of
children are unsuccessful, being too quick, and full more-
over of confusing breaths ; the life has not fixed aerial
space to play the game, but the scene itself flaps and flut-
ters with alien wishes and thoughts. In short, the whole
reverence of remark and deed depends upon the above con-
ditions, and we lay it down as a general truth, that every
man requires to educate his breath for his business. Bodily
strength, mental strength, both lean upon our respirations.
The co-operation and state of the lungs in mental effort
is represented on a large scale in their strain during par-
turition, in which they let out the air in groans from the
relaxed and almost closed larynx. This, which is the type
of all labor, as child-bearing is the image of all productive-
ness, is earned on by holding the breath, and determining
it not towards the air but towards the obstacle ; the portion
of air whose spirit is broken by the effort escaping imme-
diately afterwards in the form of a broken breath or groan.
The air, which exercises everywhere a universal pressure,
exerts in the body, when compressed by the muscles, a
universal push, and is a medium in all our fruitful pangs,
whether those by which children are born, or those by
which thoughts, which are the mind's children. For the
brain is the womb of the soul, and the held breath during
the effort of thinking tends to exclude the desired thought
when the determination of all the parts strives towards the
right part of the brain. After the effort comes the groan,
which shews that the breath has no more will, but has done
its work. It would seem that in labor, the rhythm of the
uterus takes the lead (pp. 100, 117), in commencing the
breathing, and the lungs are obliged to follow the strong
contractions by shutting their apertures, and laboring pre-
cisely like the womb. The nervous system and the mind
labor also at the time in the same ratio. There is neither
120 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
the free child, the free mother, the free breath, or the free
spirit, until the birth takes place ; but the bondage of all
is common and oppressive to ensure the emancipation.
We remarked before (pp. 79, 109) that the respiration
is divisible into four terms, namely, inspiration, the pause
or satisfaction succeeding inspiration, then expiration, and
then the deliberation or pause which follows expiration.
And we have now shewn that inspiration concurs with the
agrements of sense and feeling. This is the first motive of
the lungs, or the pulmonary atom of the pleasures of the
world, compounded however of two elements, the nose-
breath and the mouth-breath, the former to please or in-
spire the mind of the brain, and the latter to please the
mind of the body. This term, if persisted in, leads to
swoon, from defect of expiration ; whence swoon is the
prolonged or compound atom of the pause after inspiration.
The pleased lungs are so gluttonous of this world's life,
that the world, bent upon equilibrium, swallows and drowns
them in this swoon, which is the ocean of sensual satisfac-
tions. Expiration, however, concurs with the spiritual life,
and is the condition of intellect, or of dying daily. And
the pause which follows expiration, the refusal to breathe
in from the surface, and the stand taken in the depths, is
the atom which in its least form concurs with abstraction
of thought, but when compounded, runs on into trance.
The likeness of this in the animal world is hybernation.
Thus every thought is a little trance, and every pleasure
an initial swoon, as we shall presently see that each fair
breath is a little life, whether of sleeping or waking. And
thus; if the breath is given in inspiration, the spirit is im-
pressed upon expiration ; for the spirit of humanity is not
in the breath which is taken in, but in that w T hich is given
out ; the former being planetary, but the latter psychical.
There is, then, something beyond foul air which man
THE SPHERE AROUND THE LUNGS. 121
breathes forth ; for the air is charged with the vital move-
ments ; there is the character of the life wrought into the
atmosphere, as drawn upon the organs. And here again
we turn to chemistry, and demand of it, besides the ana-
lysis of average breathings, the contents of the accidental
breaths emitted in peculiar moments ? We ask of it whe-
ther the breath of mercy is foul to the lungs of those over
whom the mercy leans ? Whether the laws of vitiated air
hold here, or no ? or whether there is an angel-galvanism
by whose tension at such times the body and the air fly
clean above matter and its pedantries ? Whether there is
any antiseptic significance in the fact, that Jesus breathed
upon his disciples, and said, receive ye the Holy* Ghost ?
or in this, that we swallow the breaths of those we love,
and listen to the breaths of those we venerate ? Whether
the last breath of beloved friends, caught in all unsophisti-
cated times, is exhaustively represented by the formula,
+ H + C ? Whether the blood and the body decompose
in the same ratio during all states of the mind ? or whether
there are not moments, and degrees every moment, in the
ratio of destruction ; moments of immortality in which no
waste occurs, and all intermediate grades between these
and physical ruin and decay ? And further whether there
are not facts in human society, as of intimacy, closeness of
persons, community of breaths, which shew that the ex-
pirations of one man are in a cheerful and life-giving sense
the inspirations of another ? But chemistry can no more
analyze human air, than animal air and vegetable air, but
it throws them down before oxygen, hydrogen and car-
bon, the insatiable Cerberus of the laboratory. On the
contrary, we induce from larger facts, not otherwise ac-
counted for, that the motions of the intellect and will, or
the better faculties, are the salts of the human air, which
varyingly wrest it from the gripe of the chemical laws.
122 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
We induce that humanized (p. 104) lungs have a duty to
perform to the social sphere outside, and that the expira-
tions from such pay back the world with usury for the
simple air which the inspirations take away. This, how-
ever, cannot be confirmed from the steams of crowded
assemblies, but from the closets of privacy, and from the
exceptional facts and moments in which neighbor comes
close to neighbor, and man hangs as a lover upon the
breath of man.
Indeed it seems remarkable that the influence of the
vegetable world upon climate, and of electricity upon the
atmosphere, should be admitted, and that no influence of
the human world of a similar but higher kind, should be
suspected. Are the thought-movements and the will-
movements sooner absorbed than the sound movements?
do they pattern and sculpture the air with less efficiency ?
or in what do their modifications end? Is the music of
man's brain and lungs of no Orphic power in the tenseness
of God's created harmony ? But the time is not yet for
these and similar questions; they are however as doves
which float already in the poetic air, and the dry land of
science is about to appear, upon which they can alight.
Quitting this consideration we have to say, that not only
the moments but the lifetime are parted into breathing
spaces ; for the first breath and the last are the bounds of
this existence, and the ends shape the means, or constitute
the career itself into a series of breathings. These larger
lines of breath consist of habitual modes of respiration
answering to the tone of life, and constituting pulmonary
morals, manners and customs. They are determined by
the mixture of the four terms already specified in various
proportions, and by the velocities and spiritual qualities
which are carried into these. In this way the lungs move
and associate individuals, as we before noticed that they
THE CONSPIRING OF MANKIND. 123
move and associate the organs (p. 103) ; for only those who
conspire or breathe alike are together in thought and in-
tention ; and the society of persons tends to last only so
long as they have common respirations. The attempt to
prolong companionship beyond these limits disarranges the
springs of the organs ; the presence of heterogeneous per-
sons straitens our breath, or as we say, dispirits us. But
we shall have to recur to this subject, of discord or want
of tune in breathing, when we speak of Public Health,
which means public association on the principles of the
organs.
In mechanical cooperation the unanimity of breathing
among the workmen is essential to oneness of effort. Hence
the rude cheery work- shouts that sailors extemporize in
weighing anchor, masons in hauling up blocks of stone,
and so forth ; and hence the adjunction of music to batta-
lions, which require to have one spirit and step. A mass
that is to be as one man must breathe alike in its parts.
The same thing is true of society, or unanimity in its
higher departments. The heard breath of your neighbor
is moreover regulative and contagious upon your own, and
increases and realizes the union of which it is the effect,
especially when the breath of all is represented in an audi-
ble rhythm. In this way the Eddas and poetries bind
mankind into sheaves, being as common respirations or
great world-tunes, the sum of beginnings of musical acts
from the sailors upon the river of time.
And here we may observe that throughout life the lungs
exercise the dramatic office of producing in the frame those
motions which answer to the periods of existence. When
the man is to sleep, the lungs give the effigy of sleep in
the system, and the slumbering soul is imbedded in a slum-
bering body. When he is to awaken, the breath of morn-
ing sparkles from the lungs throughout him, and master
G2
124 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
and servant rise in a breath for their unanimous day's
work. As a child, his innocent brains find a sisterly help-
mate in his playful and peacebreathing lungs ;* his blood
and vitals, like his pretty face, are full of sweet and inno-
cuous motions ; his lungs transplant the childhood to his
tissues ; and soul and body, head and feet, he is all one
child. The youthful spirit again and the youthful body
are each the others, and the bond between them is still
lung, attraction, or the lover's link. When he is a man,
his lungs too put away childish things ; heart, liver, brain
and bowels are engaged in manly movements ; the breath
of manhood strengthens him ; his vitals are adult and per-
sonal ; and the man lives well in an outer man who is the
body of his powers and the servant of thoughts. Age
steals upon him in the wants of a second childhood ; he
begins to breathe fainter ; his old days are a young lesson
of living above the air ; and his last breath sets the body
free as no longer able to move in his service. And so
from the beginning to the end of life, the body conspires
with the mind, through the friendly intervention of the
lungs.
But in speaking of the four parts of breath we have
separated qualities which are not incapable of union. Thus
we have regarded expiration as of spiritual significance,
and inspiration as of sensual, whereas these two may be
balanced, and the just lungs in consecutive moments may
shew them to be equal weights. Pleasure indeed makes
inspiration, and energy and resolve animate expiration,
but pleasure and energy are sometimes united in the joy of
* Let the reader try to breathe like a child, and let the auditors of
the breath decide whether he succeeds, or no. There is indeed in
adult breath such a peopling of multitudinous thoughts, such a tramp
of hardness and troubles, as does not cede to the attempt to act the
infantine even for a moment.
EVEN BREATHING. 125
work, and then the inspiration and expiration are at one,
and the man breathes con amore. Thus in what we call
happy moments, when we do our little miracles, put in our
least imitable touches, and sing our best songs, we breathe-
as if we breathed not ; there is no greed on the one side of
the lungs, or effort on the other, but levelness of taking in
and giving out : the gold of inspiration is minted with the
die of action, and it passes through expiration without a
challenge, and so expiration itself becomes plenarily in-
spired. In this state both sides of the Janus of breath,
peace and war, pleasure and energy, are combined in hap-
piness. The highest moments and emotions are of this
balanced order ; innocence, peace, and the perfect qualities,
produce equality on the two scales of the functions of the
lungs. Man inhabits the world aright, in this equilibrium
between his passions and his actions, whose hours are as
the immortality of his childhood and the genius of his life.
And innocence, peace, and all the sweet even-breathers
glide down through a variety of states into that which is
their compound atom, sleep, the fountain into which they
descend, and from which again they arise like love born
fresh from the morning ocean -waters. In this sleep there
are many depths of the level breathing ; the child's, which
scarcely stirs the surface of his tiny lake of breath ;* the
man's, which goes deeper, but always according to justice
and equation. Thus in the fair proportion of the four
terms, we locate the model states of waking and sleep :
* The laws of the diffusion of gases are adequate to produce the
function ordinarily assigned to expiration ; but the motion of expira-
tion, and its constant variations, are additional to this function, and
to be looked upon as livingly-mechanical, or, in other words, psychical
phenomena. Moreover, the chemical impregnation of the air with
the breath, is a different thing, both in regard to space or extension,
and time or permanence, from the vital impregnation of the air with
126 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
even-nrindedness, which gives all things their places, and
is the ever- vigilant balance of the soul ; and even-bodied-
ness, which lays us along under our happy coverlets, and
makes our slumber as still as our good conscience. This
state is the rare complement of lop-sided pleasures and
duties ; of the swoons of delirious sense, and the trances of
the ascetic soul : and he breathes best who most completely
enjoys it.
We have now seen how fully the breathing is inhabited
by the living powers, and how our breasts heave with our
natures and our minds ; in other words, how the faculties
of the soul go up and down through the arches of respira-
tion. We have seen what a thread of human life courses
through the actions of the lungs, and by them is transferred
to the organs. One function then of the lungs consists in
equating the body with the soul, and momentaneously
keeping up the equation. But these organs produce also
the momentaneous connexion between the psychical and
corporeal frames. For if it is they that give motion to
every organ ; that attract material sense from the world
towards the head; that represent all emotions, passions,
and imaginations, and give them to the body; and by their
power of station are the footstool of thought and will, first
submission to which they likewise embody : if it is they
that sleep with sleep and that wake with waking : again,
if it is they that prepare the body by a model agency for
every action ; and furthermore, that draw down the real
motions : for the material breath falls in dregs which soon pass away,
while the mental breath endures, we know not how long : for as the
poet says of the Forum,
" Still the eloquent air burns, breathes with Cicero."
Poor Byron ! Even for the sceptics, as soon as they begin to sing,
nature is either nothing, or haunted !
PULMONARY CONNEXION OF BODY AND SOUL. 127
spirit of the brain into the body, or, in other words, pump
us out of our spiritual reservoirs ; then it follows that it
is the lungs which physically connect the organism with
its animating soul. And what connects the lungs them-
selves with the same soul is, that their movements corre-
spond with those of the brain ; whence the feeling which
we all have, that in breathing we are living.
We have endeavored throughout this doctrine to follow
learned Vestiges, and to shew that knowledge, like organi-
zation, may pass through " developments :" that science is
sometime a cold-blooded animal, and sees respiration from
a fishy point of view, as is the case with the existing
physiology, whose doctrine lies motionless in the seas of
knowledge, and without proper breathing takes in and
gives out the little and casual air which is dissolved in
the waters. But it is time for the scientific fish to undergo
another stage, and putting off the piscine, to busy itself
with warm-blooded motions. And finally the fish must
become a man, and derive the pulmonary motions from
another kind of warmth, which in old wisdom is the Soul.
This will be something practical in the doctrine of " deve-
lopment."
For assuredly the lungs give our bodies a series of
endowments which are not animal ; comparative anatomy
sheds no light upon these, unless you reckon the anatomy
of the soul in the series of the comparisons. And this
leads us to speak again of the lungs as space-makers ; a
function of which we are so jealous, that if we be confined
in breath, or restraint put upon the chest, arms, legs, and
every muscle fight with convulsive energy against the
oppressor. For human liberty is doubly grounded, in the
body, and in the soul. And in the body, the liberty, by
virtue of the airy and opinionated lungs, is given attrac-
tively to every organ, as we shewed before. Thus each
128 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
faculty has its proper size, or liberty, which, is the air it
breathes ; and if it has it not, it dies. Breathing makes
the living body bigger than the corpse. Sense makes the
body roomy enough for a lustier exercise of powers. The
passions dilate it to the scope and size of public strife.
Thought again diminishes it, because thought does miracles
in minimisj and alters worlds, if need be, from the throne
of poverty, or from examples radiant through dungeon-
walls. But free thoiight, by the blessing of God, is a
liberty beyond liberty. In truth each faculty, and each
fixed opinion, spaces the body to suit its own play ; whence
sects and parties wear their very bodies for liveries, and
are dry or juicy, liberal or stinted, sensual or spirited,
according to the openness that their tenets put into their
lungs, and their lungs into their livers and frames.
Much has been written about the cause of the first
breath, as though it had not the same cause as all the
breaths, being derivable from no other source than the
motion of the organic mind in the head. To be born alive,
is to be born with a germ of mind related worldwards ; to
have such a spark, is to have a rhythmical motion of the
brain directed bodywards, which motion cannot subsist or
be promoted without a seconding rhythmical action of the
lungs. There is no need of any other principle than the
harmony of the lungs with the brain to account for the first
act of breathing, which in fact is the beginning of our life.
We take the first breath because we choose, and we take
the ten thousandth for the same reason ; and when we do
not choose, as in sleep, it is as if we did, because Provi-
dence backs our wills with similar wills of His own, then
called souls, which fill up our intervals, and make our lives
coherent.* Before all enquiries into the causes of begin-
* Here it may be noted that the lungs correspond to both the
THE LIGHTS. 129
nings in the body, there stand two inexorable axioms :
1. The soul ; and, 2. The consentaneousness between it
and the body. After this, the explanation of any given
first effect, as, e.g., breathing, lies in our knowledge of the
functions of the effect, which account for our using it.
The argument of the human body is like the body, living;
or every physiological problem may be put thus : Why
does the soul do so and so ?
Before concluding, we revert (p. 90) for a moment to
the statical function of the lungs, to remark how these
organs distribute life into strata. The vulgar call the
lungs lights, and so they are; for the belly gives us
gravity and links us to the ground, but the lungs give us
levity, and lift us towards the air. Erectness of attitude
(p. 99) begins in the chest ; we give ourselves the airs by
which we strut, first in the breaths and last in the muscles.
The second power of erectness is flight, such as we see in
birds and insects, which conspire with the air so well, be-
cause their bones and tissues are open to it ; besides which
they can rarefy the air, both by their heat, and by the
cupping action of their powerful muscles upon the closed
cavities of the frame. Their feathers too are outward air
cells, answering to the universality of their lungs within.
Man seems heavy compared with the swallows and the
eagles. Yet with faiths for his second lungs and sciences
for his wings, he is the lightest of the tribes ; and if he
seems chained to the ground now, it is because these, his
lives, have not been admitted into his bones. His lungs,
which may hang in the air (p. 90), are a prophecy that
cerebrum and cerebellum. For their breathing may be either involun-
tary or voluntary. In this respect they combine in a single organ the
functions of the accidental and permanent life, or of the will and the
nature (p. 58). They therefore cement the bond between the two
brains by a marriage of their motions in the body.
130 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
his body, and bodies of his body, may be similarly sus-
pended. For what are his lungs but a balloon corded
down into his flesh, of which, when fully inflated by the
spirit, his body is the car? The earth belongs to the
human lungs as birthright and natural gift ; they are
" tied" to have it. The ocean belongs to the human lungs
by the held breath of the diver, who is at once the fisher-
man and the fish. The air belongs to the human lungs by
want, prophecy and science ; by the leading of Him who
has ascended already, and trod the lightness of the crystal
climes. The spirit belongs to the human lungs, by their
sails filled with every sense, passion and thought; by the
trances of man, which are above the air, and by the breadth
of the supernal life, which does not disdain the concurrence
of the lungs. And peace and greater powers than these
belong to them in all and through all, as the gift of God,
who breathes his blessings upon his chosen.
It is good to look to the ordinary language of mankind,
not only for the attestation of natural truths, but for their
suggestion, because common sense transfers itself spon-
taneously into language, and common sense in every age
is the ground of the truths which can possibly be revealed
to it. If there be no common sense to welcome a truth,
that truth, however vivid, is lost in the darkness of the
mind. It is of no use to speak it. If we set our ideas of
the lungs before the glass of language, they receive, to say
the least, a cordial welcome. For undoubtedly most of the
words expressive of life, are borrowed by analogy, either
from the atmosphere, or its organ the lungs. Thus anima-
tion is the Latinized form of breathing ; an animal, a living
creature, is a breathing creature ; an animated body is a
breathing body ; the soul also is an anima, a breath ; the
mind or disposition is an animus, also a wind or breath ;
we receive inspirations, which are the breathings in of high
THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE AS AX ORGANON. 131
influences ; we have aspirations therefrom, which are our
voluntary breathings back after the good which has been
shewn to us $ we are spirits, that is again to say breaths
or attractions towards one Eternal Object who through
our finite organism draws us to Himself. Finally we read
of the breath of life that was breathed into the nostrils of
our first parents, and man became a living soul. Now we
have attempted to shew that these phrases are nature's
own analogies ; that the functions of the lungs are so
identified with that motion which is the representative of
life, that life cannot be imaged save in words borrowed
from the lungs and their august ministrations. In this
respect I trust to have the whole of the depositories of past
truth and genius, the old wives, upon my side, which will
atone for the absence of others, because there are no better
beginnings of physiology than these old wives' tales. Most
of them are point blank true, and will come out more and
more as they are wanted, constituting in time the last
novelties of a sublimely scientific age.
But when shall the theme be ended of the atmosphere
of the microcosm ? Or what is the entire drift of these
^Eolian harmonies let out upon the sciences from the lungs?
We can only further say, without pretending to a formula,
that the planet-air is the double of the lung-air. For in
the human sphere the viscera stand as trees with the lungs
for leaves, and quiet absorption subsists in this vegetable
degree. But furthermore, the superincumbent lung- air
presses down upon the vitals, whence the physics and me-
chanics of the atmosphere run parallel with those of the
lungs. But again, the lung-air has its system of winds,
beginning whencesoever the will pleases, and blowing from
the poles either of matter or spirit, love or hate, passion or
consideration, and making the climate of the ruling state
to travel through the whole body. Then also* the lung- air
132 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
is as full of the soul as the world is full of the sun. And
lastly our little atmosphere in motion, like the great at-
mosphere, rubs our atoms against each other everywhere
with electric rustle and collision, and by its congenial fric-
tions magnetizes the assembled parts, and they open the
cases of the life-gems. But for the rest, the voice would
cease to speak before these truths are exhausted that chant
themselves up from the deep well of the lungs. For ever
and anon as we listen we hear a more inward chorus.
At least we have seen that the body lives in alternation ;
that the voluntary moments of the machine are the breath-
ings ; that thus time is meted out in our frames, and we
are introduced as finished clocks of time into a world of
time of measured changes. So it is that we are tuned to
the universe, which exhibits the same play in its furnitures
through all their fortunes. And so it is that we are fitted
to our place in humanity, which expands and contracts
from epoch to epoch, from idea to idea, from institution to
institution. All things are as cycles of not an unending
but an ever-during providential change. Their existence
in time consists in their motion and change. Merely sub-
sisting without moving onwards, would involve their rejec-
tion into the rear, among the shadows of the past. They
live in the present by breathing as the universe is breath-
ing. Moreover all things have their own space, their
means of liberty, the play- ground of their being. And the
wonder of the body lies in this, that it brings man into the
whole order of the world, without surprise, because with
full preparation. If he is to be subject to day and night,
there is day and night already written upon his members ;
half his moments are a rest, even when work and thought
are in their fullest power ; his aims and desires have their
gay, fresh morning, their high-flown noon, dubious twi-
light, meditative evening, and night of cessation or repose.
UNIVEKSALITY OF THE LUNG-PRINCIPLE. 133
If lie is to ride in the train of the fourfold seasons, the
reins which direct the procession pass through his own
soul and system ; he finds that there is a season for all
things human ; that the body has its spring, of refining
delight and happiness ; its good summer ; its fruitful au-
tumn ; its winter, whether of needful rest, or unhappy
torpidity ; and this, on the minute scale of hours as well as
in the circle of the threescore years and ten. If he is to
live in the revolutions of his own societies, his mind and
body are still at home, for they themselves are nothing but
revolutions. And if he is to die to expire at last does
he not die in his atoms, and expire many times every
minute during his longest life ; and carelessly lets go his
breath after each inspiration, secure that the outward and
inward powers are ordered to revive him from the fast em-
brace of this mimic death. So he is a genuine part of the
series of nature ; a true heir of time ; a life depending on
variety ; a moving accident of progress ; a being of alter-
nate cycles ; one to whom nothing is alien that happens or
can happen in the wide creation. This is owing to his
body first, and subsequently to his mind. The lungs are
the divine provision which introduces and accommodates
him to the world of change.
Let us then end by translating the lungs into thought
and humanity. Every principle has a first name by which
we lisp it in material representations. First it is an indi-
vidual thing ; next a being with relations ; and at last it
figures among the grand ends of existence. The world
and man are the same principles, translated, as they rise
from the ground, into other atmospheres, or into more and
more universal languages. Form in the lowest degree,
means life in the second, and love in the third, and intel-
lect in the highest ; terms and things which are very
diverse, and yet but one principle, full of resources, and
134 THE HUMAN LUNGS.
shewing its face through different windows of the universe.
The soul, an inhabitant of all heights and climates, ad-
dresses the tongue of each to the creatures of the same ;
and one word is a brain, another the lungs, and so on
through the hieroglyphical polyglot of the body. Every
syllable there has its mission, to make mind, to support
mind, and to alter it. Good is the interpreter of the whole,
and truth is the interpretation.
What now are the lungs ? They are a yawning hollow
in the top of the man, the sides of which cavern are alive.
The world enters them bodily. Tendency to vacuum,
which nature abhors, is their spirit. They draw us out
into more than we are, and we shrink back as nearly as
we can into our old dimensions. Reluctant vegetation
ceases as they open, and life is born, crying. They are
an engine added to the body, under whose draw it becomes
progressive, and every space therein is enlarged, to take
in more, and to live more. They pull open all the solids,
that all the fluids may enter them ; and strain every nerve
and bloodvessel into fresh activities and virtues. They
give room and airiness to the inward parts, and set them
to work in a daily larger sphere. Now these, in altered
phrase, are also the functions of the understanding mind,
which as it is opened, shews and causes new wants, and
new wills and ways. Our wants are so many threatened
vacua, according to the form of which, we open to the pres-
sure of the truth, whether of nature or of heaven. The
necessity to be more and better than we are, the divine
dissatisfaction in which we live and move, is the germ of
understanding ; it is the want which can never be done,
but is to breathe and ponder on through incessant ages.
The understanding, like the lungs, is no wind, or shadow,
but the substantive power and voice of all our wants, call-
ing us away to larger lives and finer occupations. It is
HIGHER ANALOGUES OF THE LUNGS. 135
the consciousness of our position, and of how to change it 5
the solemn claim of the future on the present ; the beck-
oning of the universe to the atom, to come up among
the stars.
This is the root of the lungs, this is the mind which
they carry, but mathematically speaking, what are the
powers? Millions of vesicles make one lung; greater
millions of lungs figured afresh make one humanity. Here
they are want again ; first, physical wants, necessities, the
iron understandings which are the mothers of inventions ;
the looms and hammers which must ever ply, or we lapse
into nakedness and starvation. Second, and based upon
the first, all the necessities of public progress which strain
and distress the time ; domestic, political, social and spiri-
tual understandings ; which shew us, in bold imagination,
ideal commonwealths, built all of white justice, and bid us
strive, although we die, to reach them ; Utopian societies,
lovely and reciprocal, peaceful in the length of a redder
sunshine, in plains beyond our travels' strength ; our own
and the world's infancy, painted with agonizing truth upon
the stormy skies of manhood, or the dark cope of age ; and
with no desponding voice command us to be born again.
These are signs and warnings, portents, or promises, in
every understanding; there is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard ; attracting, commanding,
or threatening, to one and the same intent ; and airy or
cloudy though they be, they stand in the breath of the
eternal.
CHAPTER III.
ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
ORGANIZED beings grow from, and subsist upon, matter
which is extraneous to themselves, and the fitting of this
matter for the purposes of their lives, constitutes the pro-
cess of digestion in a wide sense. In the human body, the
immediate end of digestion is the blood, which is the foun-
tain or beginning of the whole solid fabric. The food, on
the other hand, is the matter to be digested to be con-
verted into blood. Looking then at the food as the one
end, and at the blood as the other, and noting the marked
difference between the two, it may be anticipated that a
long chain of means is necessary before the one can become
the other. Where the diversity is great between any two
things, their assimilation must be proportionately gradual,
and their reconcilement gently successive ; and the pas-
sage which either of them describes on its way to the
other, will probably have many joints, and lead about
through strange turnings to an unexpected union. Such
is the case with the food itself, and especially with the
portions of it that are introduced as chyle into the sangui-
neous current. Digestion, therefore, and its organs, pre-
sent us with a new element in our studies of organization ;
THE LAW OF SERIES. 137
with the element of a series pervading the body ; in this
case, a series terminating in the blood, and recommencing
from the blood ; and as a consequence of the powers of series
or gradualness, with the notion of assimilation, or the liken-
ing of one thing to another through a succession of changes
occurring in a certain order, and exhibiting a play of har-
monious differences and increasing likenesses running with-
out a break through the whole. Let us then bear in mind
for the present, that successive series, and successive assi-
milation, are the meaning of the digestive act, and that
these apply to the digestive organs, as well as to the di-
gestive objects or the alimentary substances which we
consume.
Let us also remark in the preliminaries, that if the sub-
stances of the external world were not inherently adapted
for our sustenance, the possibility of any series of changes
harmonizing them with our physical system, would be cut
off ; so that in the very fact of digestion we find a co-
ordained fitness between man and nature. This we detect
in all things the more and the better we look for it. It is
a well of truth to draw upon in the sciences, and especially
in human physiology.
We have said that organizations depend for growth and
maintenance upon materials extraneous to themselves, and
this is equally true of the vegetable as of the animal king-
dom. There is however a difference between the methods
of nutrition in the two cases. The plant or tree is fixed by
its roots into the soil, and imbibes at their extremities the
nutritious juices ; it is imprisoned in a particular spot, and
its supplies depend upon the fertility of a very limited area ;
although by its leaves it extends into the moveable atmo-
sphere, and at the summit of its powers begins to take ad-
vantage of the new principle of locomotion. In the animal,
on the other hand, motion is the pedestal of life ; the pillars
138 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
which support it are engines of movement, and the ground
under it is fluid ; its roots also are turned inwards, collected
and associated, and constitute repositories or stomachs, into
which alimentary substances are carried by proper animal
actions. The range and freedom of animal existence im-
mensely excel the strait security of the lower nature ; the
precarious income of life is far better than the small cer-
tainties of vegetation. Thus while the stately tree sub-
sists on a few square yards of earth, the animal which it
shades, and the bird that lodges in its branches, choose
their food from wide districts, and are only confined by the
barriers of nature, as the shores of the ocean, or the limits
of the climate. Moreover the vegetable, with few excep-
tions, draws its sap from the underground, from the dark
scurf of the mineral kingdom ; whereas the animal takes its
nutrient juices from among the children of air, light, and
motion ; from the succulent tops and fruits of nature ; from
the results of an elaborate previous digestion in the bosom
of the earth, the plant, or even the animal frame itself.
Much more are these superiorities true of man physi-
cally, or rather of the physical man considered as a mem-
ber of society ; for apart from society man is not a man,
but the most destitute of animals ; an animal without in-
stincts ; with a germ of reason never to be expanded ; with
wants never to be known to himself, never to serve as
ends of action : his intellect, a sad surmise of a false destiny
and lost estate ; his jaws, hands and limbs embruted and
maimed in the attempt to awaken his dead mother, nature,
and in contesting his mights with his fellow-creatures, the
beasts. Man, however, as in this late age we are to ob-
serve him, man as the unit of society, is infinitely more
locomotive than any animal in its natural condition, and as
all men are travellers either by proxy or in person, each
as a centre can draw his supplies from all. The human
COOKERY. 139
home has one universal season, and one universal climate.
The produce of every zone and month is for the board
where toil is compensated and industry refreshed. For
man alone, the universal animal, can wield the powers of
fire, the universal element, whereby seasons, latitudes and
altitudes are levelled into one genial temperature; nay,
whereby every spot may in time bear its harvest of men,
and contribute its proper merchandize to even the poorest
brother of the social table. Man alone can command the
architecture that will hold the domestic hearth, and on the
inevitable model of his own frame, build a house in which
he can use, and yet shut out, the universe and its atmo-
spheres. And man alone, that is to say, the social man
alone, can want, and duly conceive and invent, that which
is digestion going forth into nature as a creative art,
namely, Cookery, which by recondite processes of division
and combination, by cunning varieties of shape, by the
insinuation of subtle flavors ; by tincturings with precious
spice as with vegetable flames ; by fluids extracted and
added again, absorbed, dissolving, and surrounding ; by the
discovery and cementing of new amities between different
substances, provinces and kingdoms of nature ; by the old
truth of wine, and the reasonable order of service ; in short,
by the superior unity which it produces in the eatable
world ; also by a new birth of feelings, properly termed
convivial, which run between food and friendship, and
make eating festive ; all through the conjunction of our
Promethean with our culinary fire ; raises up new powers
and species of food to the human frame ; and indeed per-
forms by machinery a part of the work of assimilation ;
enriching the sense of taste with a world of profound ob-
jects : and making it the refined participator, percipient
and stimulus of the most exquisite operations of digestion.
Man then, as the universal eater, enters from his own
140 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
faculties into the natural viands, and gives them a social
form, and thereby a thousand new aromas answering to as
many possible tastes in his wonderful constitution ; and
therefore his food is as different from that of animals in
quality, as it is plainly different in quantity and resource.
How wise should not reason become in comparison with
instinct, in order to our making a right use of so vast an
apparatus of nutrition ! Is it surprizing if the prodigy of
human digestion too often sinks into a perverse develop-
ment, or if diseases that happen never to simple animals,
are engendered in the course of the indefinite appetites of
man?
A controversy that may one day be of importance, and
whose data seem coeval with history, requires a passing
mention while we are speaking of human food. It has
been held by many individuals, and even by sects, that
vegetable substances are our natural and proper aliment,
and that our taste for the flesh of animals is an acquired
and a morbid appetite, the gratification of which unmans
us in our better part, aggravates whatever is low and fierce
in our characters, and discourages our highest and gentlest
affections, and our calmest reasons. As to what may be
natural to man, the argument is suspect. An old writer
has pithily remarked, that " many things which would be
preternatural in a natural state, are natural enough in the
preternatural state in which we live at present." Human
nature indeed is always changing by its own act and deed,
by its own choice of change ; and no change in which
it concurs is to it artificial, but it remains human nature
still. The career of mankind is a line and chain of new
human natures, and nothing is so natural to us now as
artifice itself. For the rest, experienced anatomists and
physiologists, reasoning from the teeth, and from the com-
parative properties of the intestinal tube, its length, and
VEGETARIANISM. 141
so forth, are confident that the human being is omnivorous,
and they have the historical and geographical fact, if not
the right, upon their side. There seems to be a series of
aliments required by the different races from the equator
to the pole ; the vegetable predominating at the equator,
and running by a lessening scale down the sides of the
globe ; the animal commencing, if I may so speak, at the
polar end, and likewise running by a lessening scale, modu-
lated according to climates, towards its minimum in the
torrid zones. Thus we have the highly baked white meats
of India passing through long gradations to the raw red
flesh and blubber* of the Arctic regions ; and again by a
* Although fatty substances seem to be taken in cold climates upon
the principle of supplying fuel to the animal fire, yet oils or vegetable
fats are consumed in large quantities in warmer countries, and espe-
cially in the summer season. The diet in Italy, for example, is largely
mixed with oil. The frigid zones provide animal fats in abundance,
the torrid yield vegetable fats, rich oily nuts, &c. ; and undoubtedly
the staple of the soil is a kind of measure of the diet of the inhabi-
tants. In cold latitudes fat makes heat, and keeps out cold, for a
well-lined skin is an important ingredient of warmth, and is the basis
of warm clothing. But in hot parts oily aliment is taken upon a dif-
ferent principle. It is demanded in the latter case as a corrective to
the watery, pungent, acid and cold things which are so refreshing to
the frame. On this principle it is used with salads, cucumbers, &c.,
&c. It acts mechanically or sensationally, communicating its own
smoothness to the otherwise irritated stomach and intestines ; or giving
a soothing organic feeling to the parts, which is communicated to the
nervous centres. All foods have this contagion in addition to their
other effects ; they propagate their own feel to the body. The plea-
sures of taste depend partly on this feel, as well as upon proper gus-
tation ; thus the crunch of nuts and the smoothness of cream are agree-
able apart from the taste. We cannot but think that this demulcent
use of oil is important in a medical point of view, in spasmodic actions
of the intestines. It is said to have been remarkably successful in
Spain in the treatment of cholera, which involves intestinal insurrec-
tion of the greatest intensity.
142 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
curious inversion, the highly flavored vegetable dishes of
India decline in the same manner towards the insipid vege-
table cookery of the north. In the tropics, taste is the
great allurement, and cookery there, as in China and Hin-
dostan, is in its most varied perfection ; in the frigid zones
hunger is the predominating sense, and readiness and quan-
tity satisfy it best. As measured by the sense of taste,
the hot countries are the tongue of the world, delicate,
liguriating, fastidious, in which hunger is near to thirst ;
the other regions are the successive portions of the alimen-
tary canal, ravenous and void at last ; little appreciating
quality, but loving impletion. The tropical man lives
upon the sun, which gives him its warmth, and he requires
to be strongly attracted to material food ; while at the
extremities of the planet food is the gross fuel of life, which
is constantly consumed in large quantity, and must be
constantly supplied.
What is true of the world at large holds equally of its
countries, which partake of the roundness of time in the
whirl of the fluent seasons. Summer is our torrid zone,
and winter, our frigid ; and we feed as Esquimaux in our
nocturnal solstice, and are as abstemious Hindoos in our
melting dog-days. The planetary dinner-table has its
various latitudes and longitudes, and plant and animal and
mineral and wine are grown around it and set upon it, ac-
cording to the map of taste in the spherical appetite of our
race. There is the great ecliptic of thirst, with its lesser
circles, the path and parallels of the burning sun ; and
there are the poles of hunger, also with circles, terminating
in the equator of languid appetite and easy satiety. For
hunger is the child of cold and night, and comes upwards
from the all- swallowing ground ; but thirst descends from
above, and is born of the solar rays. The fluid and the
solid are of inverse genealogies, and different centres, and
THE PLANETARY DINNER-TABLE. 143
their primordial wants are as much opposed as their sources.
Thirst lives in the throat, at the summit of the alimentary
tube ; substantial hunger low down ; and the two run up-
wards and downwards, intermingling their desires, are
happily blended in the stomach, and each is lost in each at
the extremes. And so the man is solid, or fluid, which
you please; the blood, so liquid in its vessels, becomes
bone in the bones, and flesh in the muscles ; the human
form looked at from within, is an ever-changing fountain ;
seen from without it is one steady crystal, congealed and
unmoving, though rolling swiftly still along the line of
years.
Let it however be observed, that hunger and thirst are
strong terms, and the things themselves are too feverish
provocations for civilized man. They are incompatible
with the sense of taste in its epicureanism, and their grati-
fication is of a very bodily order. The savage man, like a
boa constrictor, would swallow his animals whole, if his
gullet would let him. This is to cheat the taste with un-
manageable objects, as though we should give an estate
to a child. On the other hand civilization, house-building,
warm apartments and kitchen fires, well-stored larders,
and especially exemption from rude toil, abolish these ex-
treme caricatures ; and keeping appetite down to a mid-
dling level by the rote of meals, and thus taking away the
incentives to ravenous haste, they allow the mind to tutor
and variegate the tongue, and to substitute the harmonies
and melodies of deliberate gustation for such unseemly
bolting. Under this direction, hunger becomes polite ; a
long-drawn, many-colored taste 5 the tongue, like a skilful
instrument, holds its notes : and thirst, redeemed from
drowning, rises from the throat to the tongue and lips, and
full of discrimination becomes the gladdening love of all
delicious flavors. At the same time there is this benefit
144 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
also, that we can always descend to the lower condition,
and find an agreeable variety in the plainest fare.
But to recur for a moment to the vegetarians (not to do
them an injustice), although we accept the testimony of
the anatomists and physiologists, and the dictation of facts,
as of value for the present, yet it must be admitted that
it is not conclusive for the future ; for in a being mutable
like man, capable of improvement and of deterioration,
with power to alter his mind, and therefore his brains and
his body, it is difficult to say to what extent his anatomy
may have conformed to his habits, good or evil. No doubt
our frames have changed with the times since the world
began. Existing customs and organisms are not fixed
points to limit the truth, or to govern the future. A new
appetite for flesh, conceived in the mind, and daily grati-
fied, and of consequence daily strengthened, could not fail
in the course of generations to mould the consumer to the
desired end ; and in short to make animal food natural to
the human constitution, by modifying the latter- That it
may fairly be called natural now, is evident, for where is
the race that abstains from flesh unless either religion, or
strict necessity, forbids it use? The question therefore,
like other administrative questions, is one of times, and
wants, and wise expediency. If by other sorts of tempe-
rance the members of society find their thoughts calmed
and deepened, their senses refined, their emotions more
constant, powerful and peaceful, it is hard to say to what
new sublimities temperance may not aspire; what fresh
interpretations it may not assume, or how it may not as-
sault the carnivorous man. Every herb and every fruit
may presently be for our meat, as in the days of our first
parents. In the meantime, however, man is strictly and
potently omnivorous in the nineteenth century ; and we
may well question whether the vegetable kingdom is at
MILK, THE INFANT OF ALL FOOD. 145
present sufficiently comprehended to supply the varied
qualities of food which are necessary for our support; for
how few of the said herbs and fruits continue to be eatable.
We cannot banquet like the first men, until we get back
the golden earth. As it is, the encroachment of drugs
and poisons has driven our esculents into a penfold, and
we are fortunate if from the exceptions to the kingdoms we
can furnish our table. Assuredly the woods, fields, and
gardens must be more humane, which no doubt they are
willing to re-become ; the stomach also must put forth the
hands of a more inventive agriculture, before the vegeta-
rian crusaders can be allowed to wave their leafy flag over
the city of the cooks. But by dabbling too much, or pre-
maturely, in their limping pultaceous diet, we should be-
come not the children, but the abortions of Paradise.
It has been suggested by Dr. Prout, that the milk which
is our first aliment, an aliment certainly human, if not
animal, and which is the food prepared by nature herself,
is the type of all food whatever : that it contains certain
alimentitious principles in combination, which are but re-
peated, and their combination re- attempted, in the most
elaborate cuisine. His analysis of the components of the
milk, is, into oily, saccharine, and albuminous matter ; and
after investigating our food and its combinations, he finds
that his view regarding milk is borne out by the instinc-
tive tastes and artificial cookery of mankind. According
to this, all our meals are but aspirations to our original
milk. There may however be different analyses of milk
besides the partly chemical one he has mentioned, and it
remains to be seen whether other views will equally com-
port with this reference of food to the lacteal type. We
can scarcely doubt that the idea has a truth ; it wears so
organic an aspect, and takes its stand with such powerful
innocence at the head of a science of alimentation. More-
14 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
over nature, the mighty mother, offers herself breast-
wise to all her little natures ; she swells in landscape and
undulating hill with mammary tenderness ; each creation
is a dug held forth to a younger creature ; and milk is
thus again a symbol of the food and feeding which are
everywhere.
But let us pass onwards from the food which is the
matter, to the fluids which are the medium, and to the
organs which are the instruments, of digestion. Now there
is nothing more general in animal life than the digestive
apparatus, because matter is the largest, if not the greatest,
fact in the material universe. Eveiy creature which is
here, must be made of something, and maintained by some-
thing, or must be landlord of itself. Every part, and every
faculty, of every being inhabiting the planet, must be duly
clothed and ballasted with stuff derived from the earth, or
it would have no operation in the body, or upon the body,
much less upon the external world. Hence the stomach is
an organ of the first importance to all mortals. You may
take away brain and nervous system, and leave their place
to be supplied by the fluxions and imponderables of nature ;
you may take away the lungs, and consign their office to
the circumambient lifeless atmospheres ; you may abstract
the heart with its blood-vessels, and commit the dull, gluey
circulation to the almost mechanical and chemical laws of
affinity that obtain in vegetables : and notwithstanding all
this, you may still have an animal being remaining. In
short, there are animals which are nothing but stomachs,
but there are no animals which are nothing but brains. In
the human race also the stomach is of the same paramount
importance ; its existence, and due impletion, are the first
or last conditions of the existence of the individual ; they
are the basis of humanity, and nothing is so sublime but it
rests upon them, and must perish out of this world if the} r
IMPORTANCE OF THE STOMACH. 147
cease, and otherwise follow their vicissitudes. The assured
feeding of the nations, is a question that involves in its
settlement all other questions, and postpones sublimities
until necessities are complied with. Jewelled goblets there
are besides, but this earthern cup must be satisfied before
the other vessels of the man can begin to be filled.
The food, consisting of matters from the animal, vegeta-
ble, and mineral kingdoms, is at first received by the lips,
which present to it a more and more delicately sensitive
surface from their beginning at the external skin towards
the roots of the teeth ; and especially where the sight is
not employed, it is apprehended by a sense of touch so
gradually fine, as if touch itself were passing into taste, as
the food is passing to the tongue. It is next transmitted
to the teeth arranged in manifest row and series. What is
received by the front or incisor teeth, is delicately treated,
or minced, and the fine things set free go at once to the
tip of the tongue, which is waiting close behind to receive
them. At the sides of the mouth the molar teeth stand
ready to grind their portion, and their milling surfaces be-
come more and more severe and powerful from before to
behind ; they also are a distinct series of structures, and
involve a series of operations ; for every new tool has a
new action. Intermediate between the mincing and grind-
ing teeth are the canine, so large in carnivorous animals,
which both thrust and cut the food, and submit it to the
molar action. It is good to believe, that the juices sepa-
rated by the different teeth go primarily to the part of the
tongue alongside those teeth, and are especially to the
taste of that part ; for the neigborliness of the body is not
useless but functional.
All this time the food has not been merely reduced, and
its juices set free, but animalized also ; and this, from the
very porches of the mouth. Even before the first nutrient
H 2
148 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
fluids are expressed from it, a living fluid, the saliva, has
come out of the body to receive them. There is a series
of salivary glands running from the lips throughout the
tube. The sight of the food, the action of mastication, the
pleasantness of the morsels, and the suctorial power of the
tongue, draw out the saliva from the respective glands in
the mouth, as it is wanted to moisten the organs, and to
penetrate and dissolve the food. Especially do the emo-
tions call out the attentive saliva, and the mouth waters
with appetency. Sight and fancy wherewith it is full, and
which it obeys in the first place, have fed it with anticipa-
tory fire, and schooled it for its duties. Moreover the
saliva is no menial, but the immediate product of the blood
proceeding to the head and the organs of the senses, and if
not summoned into the mouth, goes its course towards the
brain ; and being thus descended from the blood, and akin
to the blood, it is clearly an excellent medium between the
blood and the new food, whose finest portions, under its
guidance, are themselves to be educated into blood. The
expressed food is the new guest which is to be inaugurated
into the duties of the household ; the blood is the royal
table itself; the saliva is the commissioned master of the
ordinances, who busies himself to instruct the food in the
laws of the place, and in the conditions of its hospitality.
The saliva, like everything else in^this system, exhibits
a play of varieties. In the mouth this is manifest to all.
Do we not feel that in the front of the mouth the saliva is
thin and trickling ; in the back part, as it approaches the
throat, more ajid more viscid and tenacious ? How this
difference in thickening is produced, we need not now
enquire, but ma)^ simply note the fact of an orderly series
existing even in this small compass.
The food already upon the tongue, carved by the front
teeth, pierced by the middle teeth, and ground by the back
THE TONGUE FEEDS. 149
teeth ; also saturated by the saliva ; affords the sense of
taste to the sensorial papillae of the tongue, which tongue-
like themselves, protrude and exert themselves to enjoy it;
and this nimble member seeks and suffers the pleasures of
the time with infinite agitation and emotion. What is the
sense of taste f Is it merely that abstract thing, an influ-
ence, made of nothing but metaphysical motions? Do
tasty substances knock at the door of the organ, and leave
their names, without going in themselves? It may be
difficult to demonstrate by anatomy the absorption of juices
by the tongue, yet facts shew that such absorption takes
place. The sudden recruiting of bodily and nervous power
by matters taken into the system ; the effect produced by
wine and other fluids when only held in the mouth ; the
fact that the tongue is the beginning of the great absorbent
organs, and must therefore in consistency begin the ab-
sorption ; also the variously-formed prominences or papillae
upon the tongue, which are poorly accounted for by phy-
siologists, because they overlook the right of the tongue to
taste in that real sense which tasting implies ; moreover
the certainty that there are in creation no abstract influ-
ences or impressions unaccompanied by streams of tangible
stuff : all these reasons establish, that the tongue enjoys an
antepast of the food ; drafts its best essences, recruit after
recruit, into the system, in union with the finest saliva ;
and only sends down into the stomach the portions which
are exhausted for the mouth.
But current science tells us, that there is no tasting in
the tongue, and no feeding in the stomach, but that the
man is nourished entirely from the lower belly from the
intestinal tube. A physiology that confesses to living so
grossly, can have little enjoyment of refined truths,
small sympathy with the good things of the world. It is
the very servility of the senses, to make the man dine in
150 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
his own kitchen ; to bring the repast laboriously down from
the drawing-room of the mouth and the saloon of the sto-
mach, to the place of sanded floors and wooden trenchers.
It is indeed a matter of taste. For the reasons stated, we
cling to the upper story, and the other opinion.
As soon as the exhaustive feast of the tongue is ended,
the food is prepared for its next destination, and an act of
swallowing takes place ; the tongue rolls the morsel back
into the pharynx, a chamber intermediate between the
mouth and the gullet ; the pharynx, successively contract-
ing, moves it down into the latter ; and this, taking up the
contraction, forwards the ball from point to point, until it
reaches the upper or cardiac orifice of the stomach. The
viscid saliva of the back of the mouth, and moreover all
the fluids supplied, or drank, either sheathe the food, or
lubricate the passage, and make the transmission easy,
and almost spontaneous. Arrived at the entrance to the
stomach, which is shut by a circular muscle, the food opens
the latter, and passes into the great cavity of the organ.
The passage from the mouth to the stomach is accomplished
with rapidity, yet perchance there is a graduated absorp-
tion which takes place more swiftly still, and leaves not
even an apparent break in the absorbent function following
the absorbent structure.
At the back of the mouth, under ordinary circumstances,
the food becomes lost to our consciousness ; but as in the
tongue we have found manifest taste with invisible feeding
or absorption, so here the matter is reversed, and we have
henceforth to contemplate manifest absorption with a latent
sense of taste. Generalizing the functions of the elongated
parts we are enumerating, we may consider that the func-
tion of taste or quality reigns throughout it, equally with
the function of eating or quantity ; that to the alimentary
organs, from beginning to end, there can be no substance
THE BANQUET OF THE STOMACH. 151
without taste; and on the other hand, no taste without
substance.
In the stomach, judging by what there is done, what a
scene we are about to enter ! What a palatial kitchen, and
more than monasterial refectory ! The sipping of aromatic
nectar, the brief and elegant repast of that Apicius, the
tongue, are supplanted at this lower board by eating and
drinking in downright earnest. What a profusion of covers
is made and laid! What a variety of solvents, sauces,
and condiments, both springing up at call from the blood,
and raining down from the mouth, into the natural patines
of the meats ! What a quenching of desires what an end
and goal of the world, is here ! No wonder ; for the sto-
mach sits for four or five assiduous hours at the same meal
that the dainty tongue will despatch in a twentieth portion
of the time. For the stomach is bound to supply the ex-
tended body, while the tongue wafts only faery gifts to the
close and spiritual brain.
The stomach, anatomically speaking, is a vaulted cham-
ber consisting of three walls or coats common to the whole
tube. Its inner wall is made up of little compartments
placed side by side, and which open into its cavity, and
differ in construction in different parts. These are beset
by a mesh of the smallest bloodvessels. The inside of the
stomach forms a kind of honeycomb surface crowded with
little mouths, and when the organ is roused, red and turgid
with blood. At this time also numerous little points or
papillae waken up upon the membrane, and bring forth a
dissolvent liquid termed the gastric juice. These honey-
comb structures are the stomachs of the stomach ; the na-
tural components of the organ.
The muscular coat is the middle wall of the stomach.
Its fibres run circularly, spirally, vertically, in all the
writhings of stomachic taste. They are the moving arms
152 ASSIMILATION AND IT'S ORGANS.
of the stomach, which enable it to lay hold of the food,
and to work and agitate it. The principle of the mouth,
the jaws, and the fingers, here ensouls a sheet of mem-
brane, which extemporizes shapes of every required variety.
Thus this seemingly simple organ erects itself into a thou-
sand different apartments, in each of which a peculiar
digestion, and a peculiar assimilation, is proceeding. This
encameration, ensured by motion in the human stomach, is
the fixed condition of the part in some animals, as the
camel, the ox, &<?., in which one of the stomachs is formed
of deep pouches, lodging the food. The body-kitchen of
man and carnivorous animals is levelled away when the
stomach's meal is done ; while the kitchen of creatures
which chew the cud, is a permanent building, hi order that
eating may consume the bulk of their waking hours.
So much for the muscular coat of this series, whose ac-
tivity constantly builds the plastic walls into new and
ever- varying chambers, in which the functions of the place
are carried on ; for every passing wrinkle on the surface is.
a fresh thought and artifice of digestion and assimilation.
But as we are not on a medical quest, let us henceforth
rather pursue the food that is assimilated, and the organs
which take, and convey it, than the portion which is re-
jected, or the extensive system of public works that under-
lies the thoroughfares of the human city. Respecting this
department it will be sufficient to note the principle, that
series governs here as elsewhere ; that what is renounced
as useless by the first cavity becomes the especial food of
the second ; that the leavings of the second are the table of
the third ; and finally that what is of no use to the animal
kingdom becomes the support of the vegetable world. Thus
the purposes of the aliment are drawn forth one by one in
regular order, and with a thrift that can go no further, the
last use returns to the first, in the fertility of the earth, in
THE SCALE OF ASSIMILATIONS. 153
the precious yield of the plant, and in the support of the
animal, which reverts to the human body by this circle of
renunciation and absorption.
Let us now note the distinct divisions or joints of the
alimentary tube, which prove that a series of different
digestions and assimilations are performed therein. Ob-
serve the mouth, which is guarded by the lips, and then
by the teeth, against any unmeet intrusion of the food.
This is the type of what takes place five times over in
the lower parts of the series. Thus the entrance to the
pharynx and gullet is analogously guarded. The entrance
to the stomach is secured by strong muscular lips, which
are only opened by the muscular wave flowing down the
oesophagus, and playing upon the wedge of food. The
exit from the stomach is a similar lip or ring, which is
likewise opened by the successive action of the stomach
and the aliment. And so forth. The cause therefore
which determines the passage of the food from cavity to
cavity, is that the first cavity has assimilated its portion,
and digested its portion, and having no longer any affinity
for the latter, the walls contract against it, and send it
down stairs, where it is received or wanted by the next
chamber ; which in like manner exhausts, digests and de-
trudes it. In this wise the successive digestion by the
agency of the successive muscular coats, is the means of
sending the aliment from stage to stage of its useful
journey.
In health however there is no intrusion from above
downwards, which is not commanded by an equal attrac-
tion from beneath. The food lies upon the plate, and the
man and the mouth voluntarily take it. Eating and drink-
ing are quasi voluntary all the way down as in this first
instance at the top. Whatever violence of supply is super-
added, is the answer to a greater urgency of demand ; for
H 3
154 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
the intestines become bigger as they proceed, and more
and more ravenous. The lower belly, hollow by nature,
calls to the upper with loud Halloos. But the consequence
of any force unsolicited from below, is seen in a lively
image when food is thrust down our throats without our
consent, in which case we cannot swallow it. And just as
jealous as the man, is the stomach, and are the intestines,
of having anything thrust down their throats. So food to
which we are averse, rouses the hostility of the whole line,
and is successively unswallowed by part after part; for
swallowing in its finer meanings, blends with digestion..
Many facts prove this case, and also that a series of in-
stincts or voices are located in the tube, which command
or refuse particular aliments.
But the series of parts has a series of powers whose ex-
istence is written upon the forms of the organs. The
velvety palpation of the food by the lips, its reduction by
the teeth, the warm squeeze of parts and juices by the
tongue, are again the exemplars of all the forces and ac-
tions which succeed them. There is however nothing so
violently physical in any other part of the tube as in the
mouth, but motion, warmth, long delay, incessant working,
and the semi-chemical forces of certain fluids, perform
changes which are in reality far more sweeping, without
the assistance of any rude agency. Nevertheless from the
stomach the muscular powers and opposing surfaces become
more forcible and urgent, and thrash out the last grain
from the chaff with somewhat of indignant exasperation.
As the point of this series of muscular forces there is a
corresponding series of solvent fluids. These are the
wheels of the digestive chariot, carrying its passengers
either inwards as food, or outwards as drainage, for food
and drainage are the same problem applied to two differ-
ent worlds, the animal and the vegetable, and constipation
ORGANIC PROPERTIES OF THE SALIVA. 155
whether in a town or an individual, whether in gut or in
sewer, is a limit to the circle of nutrition. Now of all the
solvent and locomotive fluids, the saliva, so called from its
salty properties, is the head and the type. It is the vehicle
and the flux of the particles which it liberates from the
food. These it dilutes, softens and dissolves ; draws forth
their essences ; alters them into suitable forms ; sheaths
the latter, and enables them to glide through the pores
which carry them to their destination in the chyle or the
blood. These are organic properties of the saliva, as de-
clared by its acts. But each joint of the tube has its spe-
cific saliva, in addition to the previous fluid that descends
from above. The saliva of the stomach is the gastric
juice. This saliva the stomach can digest, and leave it
mild, or grind it sharp, according to the materials upon
which it is to act. It can vary the fluid, and suit the con-
diment, to its own want and palate. Moreover it can
modify the heat which is disengaged, and alter the shape
and intensity of its own culinary fire, fuelling it well, and
stirring it up, as the viands require. This the stomach
chiefly effects by the opening of the saliva itself, when the
vital fire comes cheerily forth, and eats up the chemical
heat which is also disengaged. The saliva of the next
compartment is the threefold contribution of the liver, the
gall-bladder and the pancreas. This triple-headed saliva
is more raging and terribly chemical than what went be-
fore it, and wastes and melts the food with gross heat and
uncompromising persecution. Nor are there wanting other
fluids suited in a series to all the offices of these elongated
tables. The point to be kept in memory is, that there
exists a commonwealth of salivas, and that the saliva of
each part is derived into the next when its proper uses
have been accomplished. These uses have been already
enumerated in part. In the first place they consist in the
156 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
business of absorption, of which they are the primary me-
dium ; in the last, in the work of rejection, of which they
are at once the measure and the stimulant.
We now come to the series of matters realized or ab-
sorbed. The food of the mouth is the freest, comprising
the particles which only require the moving opportunity
offered by the teeth and the tongue, to quit their former
attachments in the substance they belonged to, and to rise
at once into the new society whither they are bound.
They put off their bodies with nimble ease, and are pre-
sently at home among the particles and occupations of the
human form. The grosser molecules never miss them, or
know how they go in, or whither they have gone. The
most living saliva, wing-footed as Mercury, spirits them
in by the secret paths which it has trodden perhaps often,
and of its own nature knows so well.
The food of the stomach, immeasurably more bulky, and
subject to greater and longer probations, yet passes imme-
diately into the hungry blood : the little veins which stand
open-throated on every portion of the distinctly ventricu-
lated surface, carry crowds of these slower individuals into
the bosom of the abdominal circulation. The alimentary
mass reduced into chyme in the stomach, yields its reluc-
tant vintage directly to the blood. The possibility of an
immediate reception of the food by the blood, appears for
the most part to end with the stomach ; the way for the
next order of particles is long and difficult, and the pre-
paration corresponding. Beyond the stomach a lower order
of vessels than the veins receives the food, namely, the
lacteals ; there is an intermediate school between the food
and the blood, namely, the chyle. These lacteals arising
from the alimentary tube, but decreasing in number in its
lower parts, where there is less of the milky chyle to
absorb, converge from the intestines to the receptacle of
INTESTINE SERIES OF FOODS. 157
the chyle, a small reservoir seated in front of the lower
vertebrae ; this reservoir is then continued upwards in a
fine pipe called the thoracic duct, and runs all the way to
the left side of the neck, where it runs into the fork of a
great vein that pours its blood directly into the right side
of the heart. A long passage for the chyle, contrasted
with the short cut which the higher portions of the food
enjoy, to their desired haven in the blood ! We infer from
this, the comparative imperfection of the chyle, vexed as
it is with such abundant trials, and ultimately let in
through the intervention of a peculiar saliva, termed the
lymph. This lymph is brought by the lymphatics from
all parts of the frame to the same receptacle and duct : it
is the old spirit of the blood serving to inaugurate the new
body, and thus is the last of the salivas, which digests and
introduces the chyle itself as the other salivary fluids digest
and alter the food.
As a corollary of this we may infer, that delicious,
pleasant and agreeable foods contain a native series of
offerings to our intestine wants. Fruits, aromatic and lus-
cious, hold their delights the loosest of all, and give them
away at the first solicitation. Their nectars claim instant
kindred with the tongue and the oral saliva. Nature has
cooked them, and they need no mixture, nor artificial fire :
the grape and the pineapple are a sauce unto themselves,
and are baked and roasted and boiled in the sunlight.
They are at the top of their life at the table ; their nice-
ness is not foreign, nor does their beauty depend upon
disguise. By feeding the eyes with bloom and loveliness,
they call forth a chaster saliva into the mouth to welcome
and introduce them ; different from the carnal gush which
savory meats engender. They are flasks of the spiritual
blood of the earth, of the kith of our tree of life, and nearer
to it than aught besides, unless it be the mother's milk.
158 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
The term fruit implies that which is for use, or which has
attained its own object, and seeks its place in another sys-
tem. Fruits therefore hang before our mouths, and tempt
us by nature's sweetest wiles ; as it were the nipples of
her bosom, which still run pure with rills of the milk of
her ancient kindness. They belong essentially to mouth
digestion, which is mere melting.
Meats belong to the lower man, to the blood and the
chyle. Animal life has diverted them to itself, and the
spirit of the beast has to be exorcised ere they can enter
the human body. They demand a long and severe process
of reformation and excretion; artful fire and elaborate
treatment before their preoccupation is put aside. They
are proper to the belly, and are the taskmasters of diges-
tion. Vegetables are, in these respects, intermediate be-
tween meats and fruits ; and milk, eggs, and the like pro-
ducts, which are the fruits that animals yield us, are also
intermediates put forth from the animal side. As we said
before, the modern man requires all these viands to supply
his different natures, seated one after another adown the
long hungers of his entrails.
Let us then assimilate this idea in passing onwards, that
every step of the alimentary tube has its distinct food ; and
let us be sure that these great varieties are necessary to
the maintenance of the human blood, that the spirit may
come down into the world thereby, through its own myste-
rious process of avatars and incarnations.
But in this extensive system, for aught that we have
hitherto said, the parts might be deficient in unity, and
want active combination. Have we then left out no fact
in our treatment of these straggling organs ? Undoubt-
edly, for we have said nothing of the motion that we
feel pervading the belly, and whose use should be as
palpable as its existence : we have taken no account of the
THE CONSPIRING OF THE INTESTINES. 159
alternate movements of the lungs, " which press and ac-
tuate the inferior viscera as the atmospheres press and
actuate the earth." Now the grand effects of the body
depend upon this actuation of the lungs ; it is the source
of mechanical power to the whole of the organs. This is
manifest in the alimentary tube. When portions of this
tube are exposed to sight, or removed from the rest, they
still exhibit a creeping or peristaltic motion. This is their
last individual effort, when they have lost the support of
the neighboring organs, and the fulcrum of the skin and
muscles ; and it is vague and indeterminate. They still
indeed move for a brief space, though no lungs draw them,
because everything in the body is constructed to do of itself,
as far as may be, whatever other parts do for it ; so little
is man's work physical, and so helpful are all things to
all things. But this individual life, though it exists, can-
not of itself maintain itself. Before, however, the machine
is broken into, the movement of these parts is rhythmical
and exact, chiming with the motions of the breath. For
the gullet runs down through the lungs, and necessarily
obeys their attractions, and as necessarily rolls onward its
motion to the subsequent structures. As for the stomach
and abdominal organs, we know by touch that they are
subject to reciprocal breathings coming down from above.
The same is the case with the lacteal s and the thoracic
duct, which latter runs up, as the gullet down, through
the active space of the chest, the air-pump of the frame.
Thus the digestive series, from the mouth of the lips to
the mouth of the subclavian vein, and including the myriads
of mouths between the two, eats and drinks (for the two
are no longer two in assimilation) in alternate moments,
as the lungs draw in their food, the air ; and in the next
moment swallows along the whole line ; then eats again ;
and so forth. It is in this way that the lungs are conti-
160 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
nually drawing up the food to the blood, which is seconded
by every point of the tube, successively contracting and
expelling it ; somewhat as the arteries contract upon the
blood, and produce the pulse. And by the same agency,
through the general framework of the body, the lungs
harmonize and combine these creeping parts, and their
motions, peristaltic and vermicular, into one coordinate
system.
We have seen above that the work of assimilation ter-
minates in the blood, in the introduction of new elements
into the living circle, and we have to note that the blood
itself, so soon as it is formed, begins to undergo the pro-
cess of regeneration, or to be eaten by higher purposes
and powers, and charged with impurities that must be put
aside. Thus as there is a scale of stages leading upwards
from the food to the blood, there is a parallel scale leading
downwards from the blood, and consisting of its excretions,
or the various salivas, which come out of the system near
the spots where the new materials are entering it, and
uniting with the latter, as the similar old with the similar
young, lead them to a certain distance through the first
schools that conduct them towards their destination in the
organs.
What is the end in view in all this digestion and assi-
milation ? In one sense, the formation of the blood ; but
let us advance beyond this answer, and enquire after the
human end for which we instinctively, and our bodies
organically, appropriate the substances of the external
universe. The end is, that we may live in the world by
means of a body derived from the world, and representing
the world. Each place has its laws, and when we are at
Rome we must do as the Romans. To be full freedmen
of nature, we require to be allied to her by our constitu-
tion ; to marry into all her royal families ; and to take a
THE END OF ASSIMILATION. 161
body from every kingdom, in order that we may enter,
inhabit, appreciate and understand it. The sense of taste,
and that alimentary series which we have been considering,
afford us our material embodiment, by which we are brought
into fellowship with the mineral, vegetable and animal
kingdoms ; the sense of smell and the pulmonary series
draw down our aerial food, by which we gain the freedom
of the atmosphere ; finally, the brain is the governor of
assimilation, and compasses on our behalf the ethers and
spaces of the mundane system, introducing us to the illi-
mitable spheres. The human body, as Pan's last flock,
crops every nature that it touches. The highest organiza-
tion also coincides in this with the lowest, that it is an
omnivorous stomach, which has the senses and faculties of
humankind domesticated as tastes in its comprehensive
cellwork. And so by a just divination, the word taste is
synonymous with whatever is refined and of good fashion
in the objects of our knowledge.
And in the process of assimilation, and the parallel pro-
cess of nutrition, we are to consider that day by day, and
year by year, the spiritual essence is assiduous to constitute
the body in its likeness ; this being the reason of the vast
series of materials supplied by the earth and the atmo-
spheres ; of the various influences brought to bear ; of the
manifold changes and purifications that occur momentane-
ously in the body itself; of the stupendous chemistry and
growth carried on there : all with a view to bring forth,
and support, a piece of nature, which shall availably cor-
respond to the soul, to which, however, nothing in the
world can more than conveniently approximate. This
ever-nearing, ever-distant correspondency of the soul, is
the human body, whose form or plan is spiritual, or from
the spiritual, and only the matter of its seeming is mate-
rial.
162 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
It is wonderful indeed how this correspondence is main-
tained during our quickest variations. We sleep and
wrestle, work and play, weep and laugh, with the same
body, which answers equally to all these states. Every
passion, as a human extense, uses the person of this dra-
matic frame, in which all that we do, or can do, is con-
templated from the first. This is notorious from the coun-
tenance, which assimilates with the momentary spirit.
The world also and circumstance are as flexible and corre-
spondent : acccording to our wants, they feed us with good
or evil, and bend about to the whole exigency and gladi-
atorship of the spirit. The soul distils the food not into
chemicals and gases, but incarnations of its moods. Anger
sops in the same dish with love, and both are confirmed at
the one supper. This rapid ensoulment of the alimental
chain is especially marked in the saliva, which as we
noticed before is a running commissary between the mind
and the food. The soul glitters down upon its salts, and
smites them with the reigning love beam. They become
as different at different times and in different persons, as
the billing of the dove from the bite of the rattlesnake, or
the sweetest milk from the deadliest poison. There is
saliva full of care and sourness, which eats, not the food,
but the stomach itself. There is saliva charged with con-
tempt, which is spit upon meanness, and carries the badge
from soul to soul where it lights. There is the saliva of
disgust, which is vomited from the loathing blood, and
avenges our disgust upon the ground. There is the spittle
of self-complacency, elicited by the happy tongue, and
too good not to be swallowed. There is the saliva of
luxury, which runs greedily after the meats, and loses
its life of immoderateness. There is the saliva of rage,
which foams violently forth upon the beard, and that of
haste and hurry, which froths and sputters. There is the
THE EMOTIONS OF THE SALIVA. 163
saliva of grief, hard to get down, and full of choking. There
is the mouth of fear, from which the saliva is frightened,
and the dry tongue cleaves to the palate. There are lovers'
kisses, in which soul is fluid unto soul. In the lower
animals the saliva becomes actively poisonous, sometimes
by nature, sometimes by vehemence and passion. We
might extend the instances to every well-marked affection,
and point out the sympathy of the saliva with each. It
is, however, sufficient to observe, that this medium between
the food and the blood is the abode of an ever-varying
life, according to which it summons from the food the
pabulum of that very life, making the new elements of
the body into vehicles and implements of the inclinations.
Were it not for this, every meal would disarrange the
harmony between the body and the soul, by furnishing
materials that could not become incorporated.*
Recurring for a moment to the act of spitting, it teaches
us that the casting out of evil spirits is a branch of bodily
truths. The excretions are emotional, i, e., they are ex-
cretions of the emotions themselves, and as they pass off,
they help to rid the body of disturbances. Speech is an
excretion from an overburdened heart ; we tell our sorrows,
and halve them. Tears abate the grief which they carry
and signify, for they roll it out. The excretion of the
bile affords a similar vehicle and relief for other strongly
troublous states. The saliva, full of melted feelings, is
very busy in these clearances. Filthy odors assailing the
sense and striking foul upon the mind, are rejected and
forgotten by the satisfaction of spitting. It is not merely
the material but the animal sense, not only odor but idea,
* We postpone speaking of the psychology of the abdominal organs
until we treat of the heart, when we shall offer some general remarks
on the life and feelings of the viscera. In anticipation we assure the
reader, that these parts belong to the soul as much as the brain itself,
164 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
that is thus cast out : were it the former alone, the nose
ought to be blown and not the mouth cleared : whereas
stenches cause the holding of the nose : the fingers nip it
to take no more, while the downright mouth acquits us of
that which is already. The motion concerned in rejection
goes some way towards the riddance of the mind ; hence
inner annoyances of various kinds cause shocks, muscular
twitches, efforts, throes, and in short bodily struggles, by
which their effect is not only symbolized, but in part thrown
away. Nature begins the cure of diseases in their own
first results upon the instincts. It is where no excretion
or movement occur that trouble works with terrible energy
upon the vitals : the dry eye of great grief is nearly in-
sane ; its motionless attitude is the frost of catalepsy. But
the subject of " casting out " requires a volume. As a prac-
tice it is resorted to unconsciously every day in medicine,
which stimulates the excretions. We are most familiar
with its rationale in our Saviour's casting out of the devils,
and their entrance into the herd of swine, as it were the
carnal salivary medium which conducted Satan to Satan,
or spat the devils into the deep. This miracle is no iso-
lated case, but has little miracles of a similar kind and
from the same God, happening constantly in our bodies,
the name of whose troubles also is legion. I do not know
whether this be not the prime law of excrementitious re-
jection. It is morally true also, for we have the power of
clearing the mind through its nutrient tube, the memory,
when evil contents come in, by refusing to think of them,
and rejecting them. The excretional herd is always ready,
and the infernals beseech to pass into the pigs as soon as
the whole man is against them, or the divine power is
fully present.
We have further testimony to the ensoulment of the
tube in the play of the emotions upon the appetite of
THE EMOTIONS OF THE SALIVA. 165
hunger. Who does not know that the stomach may be
hungry, and provision at hand, and yet the receipt of pain-
ful news, a tale of horror, the arising of disputes, or the
suggestion of anxieties, may in a moment not only expunge
the sensation of hunger, but produce a loathing worse than
heavy satiety? The organic mind will not extend its
miseries by feeding them. But when it is in peaceful
outflow, respiring unhindered action, the appropriation of
food which supports it is delightful. Cceteris paribus,
peaceful workers have the best appetites, and can consume
the most with benefit. Peace indeed is the eating-time of
whatever is best in our informations ; it is the spiritual
world of the satisfactions of conviviality. On the other
hand, the time of trial is the time of fasting, and it is only
afterwards that we are again an hungered.
Let us then remember, that every permanent passion
that we cherish, dines with us at every table ; and that as
for temporary conditions, tranquillity can eat, but strong
emotions go to suspend the want of food, that they may
use the time for their own work.
The subject of food subdivides itself into quantity and
quality. A certain assured amount of provision, a decent
minimum, is the ground of further wants. This annuls
those distressing anxieties that consume the stomach, and
make it the seat of care instead of exhilaration for a large
portion of our fellow men. Under these circumstances the
body feeds upon itself, only miserable sensations are alive,
and the mind has neither leisure nor wish to pursue its
own avocations. But when the first demand is satisfied,
quality and variety are the next necessities to be consi-
dered. And here there is room for a new gastronomy, to
instruct us under all circumstances and seasons, what nu-
trient matters, and what artificial compounds and altera-
tions of these, will enable the body to cany forward hap-
166 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
pily the various works required at our hands. We know
that the mind can modify the frame to almost any extent
by the manner of feeding it : by the substances introduced
we already produce the baser conditions, of fatness, intoxi-
cation, stupidity, ferocity ; and it must be the business of
a charitable science to reverse the direction, and to feed
the industries and virtues with their daily bread, from
among the riches in this kind which the earth is instructed
to yield. There is not an emotion however retiring, not a
thought however fine, not an action however skilful, but
may be carried into further and more exquisite perfection
by some helpmate from the social board, when humanity
there enlarges its heart, and brightens its calculating
cheerfulness.
With respect to diet, however, it is as various as days
and moods, and in the largest sense no food is digestible
or indigestible per se, but according to persons, times, and
circumstances. Private judgment, where it exists, has
full rights here ; where it does not exist, the patient comes
under dietetic rules. Fixed habits of diet otherwise are a
prison to changeable man, and curtail his versatility in
every sphere. His body ought to oscillate from the middle
ordinary point to fasting on the one hand, and to convivial-
ity on the other, in order that all his faculties may be
helped by steering the appetites in the direction where
their power lies. Judicious fasting especially is to the
structure of the mind what held breath and expiration is
to its movements ; the abstraction of food corresponds to
the abstraction of thought : without it there are no times
of ascetic intellectual separation, and without these, an
important part of man is unrepresented. Moreover, with-
out times of fasting, the tongue is immersed and lost in its
objects, whereas fasting places the whole of diet at a dis-
tance, sees it clearly and appreciates it sharply, and intro-
FREEDOM AND RANGE OF DIET. 167
duces the criticism of intellect into the gastrosophic sphere.
Cooks therefore require these self-denials for their own
business, as well as other Christians for theirs. In short,
we find that fasting answers to spiritual eating, conviviality
to human eating, and ordinary meals, pleasant and calm,
to the regulated private senses and sensibilities ; which
three spheres contribute to make up the visceral man.
Nothing is more important than society for the useful
pleasures of the table. " Chatted food," the proverb says,
"is half digested." As a rule, the solitary man does not
reap full advantage from his cheer. Setting aside that
single blessedness is opposed to economy and abundance,
it also leaves out convivial mirth, which otherwise pervades
the body, and gives sunshine and activity to its operations.
In the breaking of bread our better eyes are opened, and
the truths of communion are made known to us. We all
know how very much good company enhances the enjoy-
ments of the palate ; this is an open sign of the delightful
influence that it exerts upon the entire work of assimilation.
Ancient habitudes might be imitated in these respects.
The hospitalities of other times enabled the guests to digest
hard things for which their successors have no stomachs :
courage and clanship and bold ambition haunted the boars'
heads and smoking beeves, and horns of mead and of wine.
The revellers were firmer in friendship, brighter in honor,
softer in love, and stronger in battle, for the spirits w T hich
descended upon the hall. We too must dine as our fore-
fathers, only the board should be newly laid to invite
down the later graces of labor, justice, and peace. Our
fight for to-day is not with men, but with the enemies and
difficulties of all men. Our honors are the extensions of
the tone of peace, disarming the world by the dispersion of
offences. It is a new supper of gathered rich and poor
that will refresh us in this second epoch, Nor on grounds
168 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
of mere utility should the song of the bard and the repli-
cation of the jester be absent from a work in which a
merry complacency is the springtide of the season, and the
oil and smoothness of the whole machine.
Let us remember therefore, in passing from the subject,
that this intestine public question implies the dispensation
to all of the due quantity of the proper quality of food,
subject to the law of variety, and under the best circum-
stances, internal and external, or mental and convivial;
and further that precarious modes of life, to many tem-
peraments, are incompatible with a healthy assimilation.
We have postponed to this place the subject of wine as
a part of diet, because the case of stimulants rests on human
life, arid not otherwise on physiological laws. Alcohol in
its various forms acts specifically upon the brain and animal
nature, themselves the stimulants of the other systems of
the body. Teetotalism on this account takes rank with
vegetarianism, as both of them tend to reduce the animal
powers.
What is called " total abstinence" has claims which de-
serve to be admitted. The abstainer on principle is gene-
rally workful to an extraordinary degree ; has his senses
about him, such as they are ; is equally cool and collected
at all parts of the day ; feels little irritability from current
events, but bears and forbears well. This is while health
and strength last. And if he be capable of fanaticism, or
kindly speaking, faith in abstinence, he may be a strong
man through life on cold water. His strength will be in
proportion to his dose of faith. A batch of abstinence
soldiers working in emulation against a batch accustomed
to stimulants, will generally be the conquerors. New sys-
tems, and especially self-denials, have the advantage of
enlisting faith, the wonder-worker. The victories of Ma-
homedanism were due in part to the combination of a reli-
TEETOTALISM. 169
gious faith with a faith in abstinence ; a union of two
powerful springs affecting the soul and the body. Torrents
of passion which had been wont to vent themselves in plea-
sures, were suddenly stopped off, and they burst through
another channel, in faith and energetic fighting. Faiths
however wear out in many cases, and the truth of things is
the ultimate level, unaffected by mortal enthusiasm.
Successful abstinence shews that stimulation is a law of
existence, for an abstinence neither hereditary nor stimu-
lating is not kept up. The most sober people have their
" pocket pistols," and take their own stimulants as neat
as they can get them. For there are two sides of the
cellar, two decanters of spirit, the body and the soul. Take
away the bodily decanter, and life itself must furnish an
excitement that will be equivalent. There are other stimu-
lants besides drink that cheat us of our senses, other
drunkenness than that of the public house. Teetotalism
might be drunk with its own cause, with the additional
indecorum of exhibiting its disgrace in Exeter Hall.
Abstinence excludes temperance or the faculty of balance,
which communicates with reason, the temperance of the
upper degree. For the sake of the evil it bans both the
good and the evil. It is the suicide of choice. Similarly,
vowed celibacy excludes chastity, and is a knot tied in the
will against both cleanness and uncleanness. This is not
healing, but castration. But there are those who require
these extirpations, at least with our present means of cure.
" If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from
thee ; if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off. It is better
for thee to enter into life," &c., &c. ^Thence we note that
total abstinence is a thing commanded, and a means enter
ing into an ultimate plan of fulness of life. But there is
an if in the case, " IF thine eye offend thee I"
Teetotalism reasons without this if, and brandishes its /
i
170 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
surgical vow over temperate and intemperate alike. It
goes to science and morals for corroborations. It says
that intoxication is poisoning, and that poisons are like
themselves in their least doses as in their greatest. There
is a mistake here founded upon an etymology. Poison is
one thing, and stimulus is another. Poisons destroy the
structure, or subvert the functions of the body; stimuli
kindle it into life and exhaust it into repose, or even death
if their action be excessive. The sleep of the night is na-
ture's recovery from the excitement of the day. The sleep
of death is the spirit's recovery from the lifetime. Our
machines are meant to wear out, and stimuli are the wear-
ers. The organs of the body and mind live by stimuli,
which in temperance animate and in excess destroy them.
Light is the stimulus of the eye, but its intensity will ex-
tinguish sight ; yet is it no poison even when its glare is
destructive. We do not " totally abstain" from light,
though a part of our brethren have weak eyes, and are
ordered into dark rooms. Sound, which in voice and music
makes the ear alive, deadens hearing when too loud, and
destroys the sense. In short the sensible world is one
great excitement to carry man beyond his first organic
water. Joy too, the w r ine of the soul, will kill by its abun-
dance and unexpectedness, and yet it is next of kin to the
life that its overmuchness withers. High truth intoxicates
those not fit to drink it ; causing oftentimes madness from
hfc misapprehension and abuse ; causing still more fre-
quently need of rest, to recover from its dazzling revela-
tions. We repeat that man lives by stimuli, any of which,
administered in too great quantity, too often, or too fast,
may cause destruction or suspension of life. Yet none of
them is therefore a poison. Just as little can w r e so deno-
minate alcohol, from the fact of its producing intoxication
or death. For every stimulus carried to excess has the
TEETOTALISM. 171
like effects, and in all the cases the excess is reprehensible,
but the stimulus natural. Our Saxon word Drunkenness
bears no poisonous sense j it is merely the far-gone past
participle of Drink made substantive.
In truth poison differs from stimulus as medicine from
food, for poisons in little doses are medicines, and food in
its greatest concentration is stimulus. The plainest food
will kill in too great quantity. And then again, medicinal
substances, as coffee, tea, &c., come into dietetic use. Yet
we cannot infer that food and medicine are the same thing,
though they touch each other and are not incompatible at
the extremes.
However this may be, the nomenclature of a subject
from its abuses is inadmissible : we might as well name
rich and provocative viands from gluttony as good wine
from drunkenness. We might call fruits after diarrhoea,
plum-pudding after vomiting, or peas after flatulence. But
who would have evil courage enough to go through with
such a dictionary ?
But here the chemists occur, and tell us that alcohol is
never absorbed ; they have smelt the brains of sots, and
the reek of unaltered liquor was manifest in the tissues.
Thence they argue that stimulants are poisons which the
body naturally refuses. We distrust this argument from
drunkards to humanity and from the dead to the living.
Rather let good men's boards be canvassed, where tem-
perance reigns, and let it be seen whether there is no assi-
milation of wine. Surely the flow of soul can drink the
measured cup, and fill its mood better than when the intel-
lectual fire is dry. It is at banquets like Plato's that wine
is vindicated. Their guests shew the scope of human assi-
milation. What this is in extenso may be briefly sketched
in an English fashion. The laborer wants the support of
i 2
172 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
labor in good solid food, which under the magic of assimi-
lation becomes muscle and sinew. The artisan wants nicer
feeding, to support and not overbear the finesse of his
fingers. Intellectual artisans need greater temperance
still. We are now speaking of the hours of work. As
for stimulants, the laborer may moderately mingle them
with his food ; the hayfield and cornfield, especially at cut-
ting and reaping times, are wisely wet with cans of whole-
some harvest ale. But as we rise in the quality of labor,
work and stimulants are more incompatible ; for the edge
of the eye must be sharp and hard to bear the weight of
the soul behind it. So much for work, which thus becomes
ascetic, or shall we say, stimulating in itself, and intolerant
of secondary excitements. The case alters in play hours,
when a new set of faculties and feelings, and a new set of
assimilations begin. The spirit of play mates with the
spirit of wine ; the pleasant emotions and the brilliant
saws and dreams of society, like wine-lilies naturally rock
upon the cup, and dip their spirity roots into the beakers.
The imaginative skies are vinous then ; Valhalla has its
mead, and great Odin never eats, but all sustenance is
liquor to Allfather, who drinks only wine. Elysium too
would be a poor Elysium without nectar and ambrosia.
The case is purely one of assimilation. If the life can
drink the wine, and make life of it, then the wine is food ;
if the life is overtopped by the wine, which lies in pools in
the reeking stomach and above the swampy brains, then
there is excess, sensuality, or spiritual drowning. It is
like the case of the horse and his rider. Many are thrown,
and break their bodies ; many should never get on horse-
back ; some can ride where their animal is not too spirited ;
and some can back any charger even were it Bucephalus.
But it is to be noted that allowance is only to persons in
TEETOTALISM. 173
health, and not to those who have bodily ailments, dis-
eased imaginations or predominant lusts, or other maladies
which want a physician.
It is now therefore obvious that we cannot take the per-
sonal experience of any man as to abstinence, beyond the
limits of his own temperament, business and pleasures,
The different functions to which our employments convert
our organs, require for the organs different stimulation to
put them "into condition" for their work. A Newton
may require to fast and agonize before he can end his fear-
ful mathematics, but that is no reason why our grooms and
gardeners, with no end of the kind, should go through the
like discipline. The adjustment must be left to experience,
but it cannot come from an author's study.
Thus the power of assimilating wine is various in differ-
ent persons, and in the same person at different times, and
a flexible sense is necessary, to adjust the indulgence to
the occasion. Observation proves this, for we can drink
more at some times than at others, and sometimes with im-
punity and great restoration; at other times we feel ill
consequences which shew that we have not judged wisely
at the board.
Above all things it is plain that cutting up dead sots
will not settle the question. On the contrary, we must
dissect all the drinkers, temperate and intemperate, and
the same man at many different times, to elicit the living
law of temperance. And first we must dissect ourselves.
We know already that the habitual abuser of stimulants is
full to the brim, and will run over with each fresh pota-
tion without assimilating it. He has no digestion left for
common food, and therefore in point of assimilation his case
proves nothing. It is the casual use of wine according to
times and seasons, as Solomon says, and according to the
feelings of the hour, which is life-giving, healthy and en-
174 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
joyable. But whatever is good becomes, out of its place,
an evil. Air which sustains us, native and exhilarating in
the chest, is a torment and insurrection in the belly. The
spirit and consciousness of the brain, too much poured forth
upon a spot of skin, are sensitiveness, or agony, according
to the degree. The blood thrown down from its vessels is
a foreign body and black death in the system. Continence
is the case in which forces are safe. And so with wine,
which now and always has unflawed goblets in some men's
brains, from which it is safely drank by their powers, and
these of the very highest. The ideal then is, to emulate
those chaste but intense qualities that enfranchise the
favored guests of nature to dip their cups in the rubies.
And if wine is good to drink, it need not be drank on
pretexts. Men have drunk it from the beginning for that
which is the best and the worst of reasons because they
like it. "Wine maketh glad the heart of man," there
lies the fortress of its usage. To the wise it is the adjunct
of society ; the launch of the mind from the care and hin-
derance of the day ; the wheel of emotion ; the preparator of
inventive idea ; the blandness of every sense obedient to the
best impulses of the hours when labor is done. Its use is
to deepen ease and pleasure on high-tides and at harvest-
homes, when endurance is not required ; for delight has im-
portant functions, and originates life as it were afresh from
a childhood of sportive feeling, which must recur at seasons
for the most of men, or motive itself would stop. A second
use is, to enable us to surmount seasons of physical and
moral depression, and to keep up the life-mark to a constant
level, influenced as little as possible by the circumstances
of the hour. Also to shew to age by occasions, that its
youth lies still within it, and may be found like a spring
in a dry land with the thyrsus for a divining rod. A third
use is, to soften us ; to make us kinder than our reason,
USES OF WINE. 175
and more admissive than our candour, and to enable us to
begin larger sympathies and associations from a state in
which the feelings are warm and plastic. A. fourth use is,
to save the resources of mental excitement by a succeda-
neous excitement of another kind, or to balance the anima-
tion of the soul by the animation of the body, so that life
may be pleasant as well as profitable, and the pleasure be
reckoned among the profits. A fifth use is, to stimulate
thoughts, and to reveal men's powers to themselves and
their fellows, for in vino veritas, and intimacy is born of
the blood of the grape. But is it not unworthy of us to
pour joy's aid from a decanter, or to count upon " circum-
stances " for a delight which the soul alone should furnish?
Oh, no ! for by God's blessing the world is a circumstance;
our friends are circumstances ; our wax-lights and gaieties
likewise ; and all these are stimuli, and touch the being
within us ; and where then is the limit to the application
of art and nature to the soul ? At least, however, our doc-
trine is dangerous ; but then fire is dangerous, and love is
dangerous, and life with its responsibilities is very dan-
gerous. All strong things are perils to one whose honor's
path is over hair-breadth bridges and along giddy precipices.
A sixth use is, to make the body more easily industrious
in work times. This is the test of temperance, and the
proof of the other uses. That wine is good for us which has
no fumes, but which leaves us to sing over our daily labors
with ruddier cheeks, purer feelings and brighter eyes than
water can bestow. The seventh use is, in this highest
form of assimilation, to symbolize the highest form of
communion, according to the Testament which our Saviour
left, and to stand on the altar as the representative of spiri-
tual truth. All foods, as we have shewn before, feed the
soul, and this, on the principles of a universal symbolism :
this then is the highest use of bread and wine, to be
176 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
taken and assimilated in the ever-new spirit of the king-
dom of heaven.
The corollary that we draw, is, that total abstinence
contains no universal argument; that it is an admirable
strait-waistcoat for many of us ; that abstinence is a need-
ful discipline for every one at the most of times, and then
coincident with temperance : but that moroever wine is an
indispensable gift of heaven, and the use of it to the sane
an inalienable matter of private judgment, into which ab-
stinence-leagues, though backed by medicine and chemistry,
will find it impossible to intrude.
Time has not yet perhaps elapsed sufficient to shew the
ultimate results which follow to those who steadily main-
tain the abstinence pledge. We can therefore only conjec-
ture that the effect will be, to dry up somewhat of those
feelings which give the body an extraordinary life when
they enter it well. And as these feelings are the horses of
our greater power, and when skilfully ridden accomplish
times and spaces that are impossible without them, we
suppose that the teetotallers will be somewhat pedestrian
and prosy, excepting in the first vigorous days of their
self-denials. But as human nature contains all wants
represented in particular persons, there are probably born
abstainers from, as well as born requirers of, wine. And
if some of the most ordinary because passionless men are
in the former class, they seem to have with them the men
of peaceful power and supermundane continence, with
whom stimulus is less the law of life than a spiritual tran-
quillity passing common understanding.
The current disadvantages of vowed abstinence, suppos-
ing it not to be natural also, appear to us to lie in a certain
dilution of the powers ; a certain want of sleep in the facul-
ties ; an unending character in the days, or a want of differ-
ence between the evening and the morning : also in a
TEMPERANCE. 177
certain rigidity of reason, and a loss of those spiritual
chances which are a part of the empire of clairvoyance and
Providence in the mind ; and in an undue incessant drift
towards public, utilitarian, and money-making enterprise,
to compensate for the loss of that stimulus of the heart
which to the generality is of festive growth. But we would
speak modestly in a case involving the experience of
others.
As for temperance, it may range in respect of times from
a daily moderation of wine to a single annual glass dropped
into the diet. And as to quantity also, instinct and expe-
rience are its compass. But whatever the natural regime,
the practice of temperance is a divine blessing second only
to the use of reason. For temperance is the whetstone of
our faculty of observation, and the axe of reform, which
is to hew away for ever at one vice after another, is no-
where so well sharpened as on its square and eager sides.
Temperance again is the home of the virtues and powers,
which shelters them in their nonage, and which they en-
large and furnish in their maturity, until it includes the
images, pictures and tastes of them all. Or again it is the
native land of man as different from the beasts. Or to
speak without figure, temperance, including eating as well
as drinking, is the foundation of our refinement, as involv-
ing constant acts of physical judgment or bodily wisdom.
Intemperance is the devil opposite to this angel, tempe-
rance. It dulls every sense, burns out passion prematurely,
and turns the mild light of intelligence, as it flickers toward
extinction, into a horrid reproach against a swinehood
which is reeling down to disciplines of which total absti-
nence is but a shadow. For intemperance fosters and
aggravates nearly every disease that flesh is heir to, and
sharpens the power and sting of every sin, nay, calls out
fresh legions of infernals : the ghastly troops of malady
i 3
178 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
and wickedness deploy before it, and muster, as on a field
day of death, where excess of wine is a prevalent vice
among the people.*
But now to recur to our main subject, the vastness of
the assimilative function may be comprehended from the
great agencies set in motion by the palate and the stomach.
The skin or cloth-making spirit enjoys a considerable realm,
but the spirit of the stomach is the owner of three-fourths
of the world's navies, the ultimate landlord of three-fourths
of the cultivable earth. Every sea is benetted with the
lacteals of the social intestines ; every road is laid down
from men to men, as a vessel for food. Agriculture and
commerce in their staples are an instinctive obedience to
the claims of the belly. Armies are the guardians of its
interests ; and the dynasties of a thousand years are trans-
mitted in security, or rock and dissolve, according to the
dinners of the people. Such is the material force conferred
upon hunger, thirst and assimilation. And in working
out this destiny, whereby the globe is remodelled upon
the basement story of the human body, and converges to
our mouths by trains of produce from every climate, man
grows socially also, and becomes assimilated to his fellows ;
the merchant behest carries him abroad, and informs him
from other races; the aroma of his brother's industry clings
to every stuff that he brings ; forbidding waste as the loss
of humanity and virtue. Thus the organs that assimilate
our food, cover themselves with sensibilities, and assimilate
our fellows. And thus we note that the spade-way or
plough-track of the husbandman, the paths of ships over
4he sea, of caravans over the desert, and the road with its
* To those who wish to know what can be said chemically, medically
and experimentally in favor of total abstinence, we recommend the
perusal of Dr. Carpenter's essay, On the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic
Liquors in Health and Disease ; 8vo., London, 1850.
HIGHER ANALOGUES OF ASSIMILATION. 179
refinements, are only magnified images of that which goes
on with intense smallness in the assimilative organs.
It is not in the lower kingdoms only that assimilation
and digestion are proceeding. The plant, it is true, assi-
milates the mineral, and assimilates the atmosphere, the
fruitful soil being the amalgam of their twofold natures in
the one case, and the active aroma in the other. The
animal again digests all beneath, and fertilizes all. Above
the lowest nature each thing is eater and meat, end and
beginning in succession. The external world in its extent
is progressive assimilation and refinement. Through every
change, by a secret providence, the surface of the planet
is steadily fitting itself to sustain a grander edifice of
society. For this, the primitive forests and their inhabi-
tants have been industriously making, and shedding, their
frames, in unreckoned generations. For this, the little
flowers have been working since the first were self-sown
from the miraculous garden. For this, the earth has rested
uncropped in the balmiest latitudes, and still the sun pours
the tropical spirit on her unexhausted islands. For this,
an aboriginal savage tenantry lease but as hunters the
future corn-lands of a long-deferred civilization. The
human body also, fallow and in great part tenantless as
the planet, shall it not refine its organization century
after century, and become the microcosm of a new mind,
to be connected with it entirely, and to inhabit and culti-
vate it entirely ?
And what is the growth of this mind itself, but renewed
digestion and assimilation ? In this again the creation is
our food, but which enters through the mouths of the
senses. Touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight, carry inwards
their several matters of information to the nutrient reser-
voirs of the memory, where by the active imagination
they are raised to some uniformity of life, and being cast
180 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
into imagery, are extracted by the understanding, and the
upshot is referred to the judgment and the will. The
broadest common sense strikes home the first ; is received
at once without any process, and identified with the life of
the mind ; the details, difficulties and ambiguities of sense,
which seem to suggest no present action, are long and pas-
sively retained in the entrance, and only come back to
mind through other and oblique considerations ; being not
the chief, though the bulkiest sustenance of the human
understanding.
Passing from bare consciousness to practical education,
from the mind to the man, What is education but an
assimilative career ? The full social form is the blood into
which we are to enter; the nature of the child, or the
roughness of the adult, is the material to be admitted or
refined. Delight and curiosity, with tiny gestures and
sparkling eyes, come tripping forth to their lessons' time
in the classes of existence. The cradle and the mother
are one organic school ; the nursery is another ; the school-
proper is another ; the workman's probationary bench, and
the student's table, are another ; the life-calling is another
still ; and there is no finish to education, because there is
no end to the refinement of mutual good works, or to the
closer friendship of the human family. That grand indi-
vidual, mankind, true to the spirit of Him who evokes it,
can it less than reflect what is " infinite in conjunction,
and eternal in perpetuity ?"
Does this throw any light of probability on the dim
hereafter ? Somewhat of a luminous hope seems to over-
shadow and tremble around us, while we follow the ana-
logies that proclaim the oneness of God's laws in nature
and in man. Are these primordial laws so divine that
they govern with their own flexibility even in the future
life ? Are we attracted thither to feed a mightier organi-
HIGHER ANALOGUES OF ASSIMILATION. 181
zation ? Is the good received and welcomed, and the ill
renounced, with a selection more discriminating, a rejection
more total, and a wisdom more unconceived and irresistible,
than even in that human form which comes from the spirit,
and returns to the spirit ? Or rather, is the principle one
and the same in both cases ? Let us lean on nature's arm,
and follow the analogy until we have better lights : the
rather because analogy itself is assimilation.
But to condense and finish. The possibility of assimi-
lation lies in the fact, that the universe runs man-ward
from its source. The means to assimilation are implanted
faculties in the soul, the body and the mind, of imitation,
emulation and order. The use of assimilation consists in
renewing all things upon their highest models, and by
their best examples. Accordingly in the physical man, it
is the bringing together of the ends of the earth, to be
built into the temple of the body. In the mind, it is the
translation of nature into thought, and of matter into spirit.
In the household, it is the grouping of young and old upon
larger affections into consolidated kindreds. In the state,
it is that love and warrant of the commonwealth which
reconstructs our private lives into the elements of an ad-
vancing society. And in the individual and the race, as
the part and the whole of existence, it is that supernal
fire which burns to make us more and more from the dust
of the earth in the image and likeness of the Divinity.
The steps of these assimilations are miracles ; the emula-
tion of every nature to other and better than it is ; the
death of the old, and the emancipation and resurrection of
the new ; the conversion of all brass into gold, of all grubs
into butterflies ; of earth into passions ; of men into spirits ;
we see not the stages here; because they are easier,
smaller, purer and faster than our light ; but neither do
we refuse to credit them, for the result is humanity.
182 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS.
Therefore it is thus : at one end the universe is the
quarry, at the other is the heaven of heavens already
shapen and ever shaping ; and God is the sculptor ; and
between lie all time and form moulded as they emerge into
new heavens and new earths, the likeness of the wisdom
uncreated. And all together rises now, because in the
new covenant no temple made with hands, but immensity
is the mercy- seat.
CHAPTER IV.
THE HUMAN HEART.
THE brains animate the body with intention and purpose,
and the lungs give it corresponding motion, as the active
spirit of the organs, and the basis of the operations of the
will ; the heart, as the blood's executive power, gives cor-
poreal substance to the frame, inasmuch as the body itself
arises from the blood. The existence of the human ma-
chine depends upon the heart, but its usage upon the lungs
and brains. The heart is the source whence the finished
blood descends to the organs throughout the system ; it is
the immediate administrator of the supply of nutrition to
the body. And as the life is in the blood, the heart is the
agent for bestowing that life upon the organization, and
for giving every man a temperament, or peculiarity of
animal being, secondary to and seconding that nervous
life which he receives from the spirit of the brain. In a
word, the heart or blood determines the fleshly tenement.
Let what powers there may act upon us from within, or
from without, we are made of no other stuff, and carry no
other body, than comes from the fountain of our blood.
We put it to what use we please or can, but the body it-
184 THE HUMAN HEART.
self is given, limited, constituted by the life-blood poured
forth by the heart.
We have then to consider the heart as the centre of the
blood- system ; as a vessel suited to the whole composition
of the blood ; as the forceful agent in various motions
whereby the circulation is perpetuated, or whereby the
end of bodily life coincides with the beginning, and the
animal circle is completed : also as the isthmus which,
according to its build, receives the wave and shock of the
passions advancing bodyward on the one side, and trans-
mits them in modified vibrations to the expectant tide of
blood on the other side. In short, we have to regard the
heart in its own peculiar relations to physics, physiology
and psychology.
The anatomical heart is a conical, hollow, muscular
organ, lying obliquely in the chest between the two lungs,
the base of the cone pointing upwards in the direction of
the right shoulder, the apex pointing to the space between
the fifth and sixth ribs. It rests upon the tendinous por-
tion of the diaphragm, which is the partition between the
chest and abdomen ; and it is encased in a peculiar bag or
capsule, the pericardium, which consists of two layers,
the outer fibrous, by which the pericardium is attached fo
the great vessels at the root of the heart ; the inner, a
serous layer, continuous with the serous membrane that
covers the outer surface of the heart. The cavity between
the heart and pericardium, thus lined by a serous covering,
generally contains more or less fluid, whereby the heart is
lubricated on the outside, and its local motions are ren-
dered easy.
The heart comprises four cavities, two auricles and two
ventricles, one auricle and one ventricle being on each
side, and the right pair of cavities being devoted to the
circulation of the venous blood, the left pair, to that of the
DESCRIPTION. 185
arterial blood. The auricles are at the top, constituting
the base of the heart ; the ventricles form the apex ; the
latter are much stronger than the auricles, consisting of
very thick muscular walls, the reason of which we shall
see presently.
The heart is a peculiar muscle, and when any of its four
cavities contract, they have the power of expelling their
contents, the force of the expulsion being the prime mover
of the circulation of the blood. We may begin the circle
where we please, and we shall find that it returns into
itself. Starting for instance from the left ventricle, we
see that the blood is driven by the contraction of that
cavity into the aorta, the highway which leads into all the
arteries of the body ; through these the blood is discharged
into the veins, which unite to form at last only two great
trunks, the vense cavse, which are again the thresholds of
the heart, and debouch into the right auricle. The blood
which has now passed from the left ventricle to the right
auricle, has still a journey to make before it completes its
course. Accordingly from the right auricle it is forced
into the right ventricle, and by the right ventricle into the
pulmonary artery, which conveys it to the lungs, where it
ramifies through the multiple branches of that artery, and
whence it is brought back by the pulmonary veins, form-
ing ultimately four large trunks, which discharge them-
selves into the heart's left auricle, by the contraction of
which the blood is next forced into the left ventricle, to
the place from which we began.
We have sketched out the circulation before treating
more minutely of the structure of the heart, in order that
we may have the blood for a guide, and proceed from the
uses of the organ to the anatomical structure. We shall
however again recur to the circulation in greater detail.
The left ventricle of the heart, a powerful contractile
186 THE HUMAN HEART.
cavity, has the task of projecting the florid or arterial blood
which has just traversed the lungs, through the aorta over
the whole body ; upwards, to the head, downwards to the
feet ; this office it discharges by a quick act of contraction,
or as it is termed, systole, which propels the blood into the
aorta. The aorta, like the other large arteries, is elastic
and muscular, and tends constantly to assume its smallest
calibre, in consequence of which it moves the blood for-
wards wherever a free space is found. But when the heart
again expands or performs diastole, the blood would regur-
gitate from the aortic tube into the ventricle, were there
not a provision against this in the presence of three semi-
lunar valves, little crescents of the lining membrane of the
aorta, which swell out into pouches when the blood regur-
gitates, and close the passage. Their function in this
respect is constantly called for, and the sudden stop of the
blood by the valve gives rise to a click which may be heard
among the other sounds of the heart.
The volume of blood we are considering is now fairly in
the artery, and like a slippery ball it eludes the successive
pressure of the vessels, and flies onwards in its course.
The opening of the artery by the injected wave, and its
contraction upon the same, ensues like a rapid undulation
along the whole line, and constitutes the pulse. Eighty
times per minute the quiver of this stroke permeates the
life tree of the body and its infinite ramifications. The
station, the tram and the passengers are all locomotives on
this railway. First the heart closes, and its out-thrown
blood opens the artery ; then the artery itself successively
closes and opens down the entire extent ; and the result is,
the propagation of the wave from the centres to the circum-
ferences of the system. The heart in successive moments
forces life upon the arteries ; the arteries, by an even pres-
sure, tend to contraction or death, and thereby diffuse the
THE CIRCULATION. 187
life, or make it universal. Organic beings are expanded
ab extra, but contract of themselves. Were it not for
pressure from without, the contractility of all things would
result in general death. But the influx of life opens the
narrow into the wide, and ultimately effects a compromise,
whereby contraction or individuality rules conjointly with
expansion or receptiveness, and the two together perpetuate
the commonwealth. This is the indispensable strife be-
tween progress and conservation, here represented by the
heart and arteries.
The arteries, forming a tree whose stem is the aorta,
terminate by their capillary twigs in the veins, which form
another tree corresponding to the former, but the reverse
of it in motion or function ; for the blood that runs from
the largest to the lesser and least arteries, returns to the
heart through first the least, then the lesser, and then the
largest veins. The arterial pulse is quite lost in the mi-
nute branches and twigs of the arteries, and the blood
passing into the veins presents one continuous flow not ma-
nifestly influenced by the beating of the heart. Neverthe-
less it receives the force of the heart, which is the grand
cause of the venous circulation, there being many secondary
causes promotive of the same effect, and particularly the
respiratory movements. The blood in the veins is pre-
vented from running back, both by the vis a tergo, and
during muscular efforts by a set of valves, something like
those in the aorta, and which are placed at short intervals
in many of the veins, and determine the wavering current
onwards. Arrived in the vena3 cavae, the heads of the
veins, the blood receives a new stroke from the muscular
strength added to the cavse, and presses with all its forces
into the right auricle of the heart, which thus receives the
last of the blood, and in the words of Harvey, " is the first
part of the heart to live, and the last to die." Thus in-
188 THE HUMAN HEART.
traded, it distends the auricle ; which, when it has borne
the distension to the utmost, begins to resist, to react, to
contract ; it does contract, and expels the intruded blood.
Whither does it expel it ? Not of course into the venae
cavse, excepting in the slight proportion between the whole
force of the oncoming venous blood and the contrary force
of the contracting auricle ; for the steady pressure of the
blood in the cavse has already been sufficient to open and
command the auricle. The latter then drives the blood
into the ventricle, and so is relieved and contracts ; and
now the ventricle expands, and the blood which it contains
shuts upwards a triple valve, the tricuspid, which is at-
tached by tendinous cords to the muscular columns of the
heart ; and the ventricle, reacting against its own forcible
expansion, bearing it no longer, throws out the blood, pre-
vented from regurgitating into the auricle by the tricuspid
valve, into the pulmonary artery, which is an artery carry-
ing venous blood. The blood thus injected into the pul-
monary artery, is in its turn prevented from reflux by
three semilunar valves placed at its commencement, and it
circulates through another or second circle of arteries and
veins, which constitute the pulmonic circulation in contra-
distinction to the general circulation upon which we have
already expatiated. By the twigs or ends of the pulmo-
nary arteries it is returned into the twigs or beginnings of
the pulmonary veins ; and we may somewhat appreciate
the reason of an artery in this system carrying venous
blood, and a vein carrying arterial blood, when we learn,
that this system is in an important respect the inverse of
the general system ; inasmuch as the blood becomes de-
arterialized, dark and venous in the capillary vessels of the
general circulation, but becomes re-arterialized and crimson
in the capillaries of the lungs or pulmonary system.
It is not now necessary to consider the circulation of the
OFFICE OF THE PERICARDIUM. 189
lungs, although it may be observed in passing, that the
pulmonary arteries and veins, running through those ener-
getic air-pumps, can hardly beat at any other times than
during inspiration and expiration ; and the pulse or stroke
of the left ventricle can only act to the root of the lungs,
and fill the beginning of the pulmonary artery, as a reser-
voir from which the lungs, at their own intervals, drink in
the accumulated blood. One function of the pericardium
or heart-bag lies in emancipating the heart from the power
of the respiratory motions ; for the heart lies in the midst
of the lungs, grasped by their two arms, the pulmonary
arteries and veins, and were it naked or unprotected, it
would be drawn into the pulmonary vortex, in which case
its involuntary life would cease, it would receive the imme-
diate play of the mind just like the lungs, and the sponta-
neous order of the body would be lost ; in a word, the pulse-
would coincide with the respiration. Even as it is, the
respiration exerts a marked influence upon the pericardium,
though the heart is not further affected thereby than as it
receives the general movements of the lungs and brains,
while at the same time it exerts under them its own move-
ments, or maintains its individuality.
We have now pursued the blood into the trunks of the
pulmonary veins, where it is still impelled by the vis a
tergo, and moreover drawn by the inviting lungs, until it
is poured by the four trunks of those veins into the left
auricle, which it opens and distends. The auricle now
reacts or contracts, and squeezes the blood whither there
is the smallest resistance, that is to say, into the left ven-
tricle, which, when filled, in its turn contracts, and its blood
shutting back the mitral valves placed between it and its
auricle, is driven forwards into the aorta ; again to perform
the same revolutions, and to perpetuate life by incessant
cycles of formation, destruction and reformation.
190 THE HUMAN HEART.
From this second view of the circulation we may follow
the account given by one physiologist, namely, that the
cause of the alternate motion of the heart is the action and
reaction of the blood and the vessels ; that the immediate
cause of the motion of the ventricles is the action of the
blood and the auricles ; and the immediate cause of the mo-
tion of the auricles is the action of the blood and the vense
cava3 ; further that the immediate cause of the motion of
the vena cava is each particular branch of it ; the imme-
diate cause of the motion of the branch is each particular
twig of it, and of each capillary tube thereto appended ; the
immediate cause of the motion of each venous twig is the
action of the little arterial vessel which empties itself into
it ; and the immediate cause of this action is the action of
the branch, of the trunk, and finally of the heart : wherefore
the cause of the heart's motion is continuous, and like the
blood itself runs in a circle from the left ventricle, through-
out the blood-system, to the right ventricle ; shewing that
there is not a point in the system but contributes to the
motion of the heart. We see from this whirl or world of
immediate causes how necessarily a motion once begun in
these living w T heels, rolls onwards, circling round, and how
slight the resistance is, where all the parts contribute in
their places to reciprocation and equilibrium. Under these
provisions the smallest touch awakens the organism into
its beautiful motions, emulous so far as nature can be, of
everlasting existence and immortal life.
But if we delve a little under the human organism, we
shall find that the circulation of the blood by the heart, is
based upon a natural or spontaneous tendency to circulation
in the blood itself, and that as in the case of the nervous
system (p. 9), there is an automatic life at the foundation
in every part, the fluids as well as the solids, to which
higher stories or more measured powers are afterwards
ESSEKTIALNESS OP THE HEART. 191
superadded. Thus the sap circulates in plants, and the
blood in many of the lower animals without any heart to
propel it. The fluid runs by attraction to the spot where
it is wanted, and forms an uninterrupted fibre of supply,
which is continually wound off into the loom of the organs ;
and it is indifferent whether we look upon it as fluid or
solid, for the one end draws the middle and the other end,
as if the current of life were a series of coherent threads ;
while on the other hand the portions wanted for deposit,
drop out of the chain when and whither the want pulls
them ; for want itself, in its phases in this sphere, is their
magnetism and their string.
The heart, nevertheless, though based upon all that is
hearty, magnetic or occultly impulsive in the animate and
inanimate worlds, is itself the essence of the human cir-
culation, just as the supreme or rational brain is the es-
sence of the human nervous system with its animation.
We may indeed say that there are two essences to every
progressive being, the beginning and the end of it, or the
germ and the ideal. The germ gives the body and the
ideal the spirit, which latter is to alter the body, made
already with a capacity to be altered, into its own likeness.
The ideal, or what is the same thing, the uppermost addi-
tion, as in the vascular system, the heart, in the nervous
system, the mind and the cerebrum, become the essence
of their respective orders ; for in a progressive nature, it
is not that which is, but that which becomes, that com-
ports with the moving series, or comes into the view of
ends. Moreover, the essence or peculiar capacity is that
which distinguishes each organization from all others. The
essence of man is that mind which he possesses in discom-
munity with any animal ; the essence of his lungs is their
idealization by that mind, and the peculiar physical struc-
ture which capacitates them for this becoming ; the essen-
192 THE HUMAN HEART.
tialness of his heart is thus likewise. Hence it is unscien-
tific to regard the spine as the essential part of the nervous
system in any animals but those in which the spine is the
highest part ; or the heartless circulation as essential in
any but acardiac systems. Cerebrate organizations are
created for a brain, and long for a brain, and acephalous
monsters, though they may exist, cannot continue ; so
also organizations fitted for a heart, though they may
maintain life for a time with a defective heart, yet cannot
become adult, or travel on the road of ends, for their
essence has failed them. This is not a matter of words,
but a difference of ends and methods, involving the ques-
tion of whether the sciences shall be founded upon distinc-
tions or upon confusion ; of whether they shall walk upon
their feet, or stand upon their heads ; and of whether the
high, the moving and the intelligible shall give the cue to
induction, or the stationary, the occult and the low.
And here we may remark that in organizations it is the
additions db extra that become of all importance in the
long run. Thus nature, at first vertebral and serpentine,
becomes capital and human by the addition of parts which
snakes and tortoises can dispense with. And these extra-
neous organisms, not at first necessary to mere existence,
but necessary to the ends of existence, become the essen-
tials of useful knowledge, because they shew the aims of
facts, or the ends of all developments. On the other hand,
the basis which nature supplies to be built upon, is of no
importance except for the building, just as the vertebral
column is insignificant excepting for and to the head.
Precisely in the same manner, the magnetic, sap-like, and
even animal forces of the circulation, are of no importance
in our bodies excepting as the ground upon which the last
essence, the human heart, is to be built and chambered.
Man at any rate is a distinct subject, and that which is
ESSENTIALNESS OF THE HEART. 193
manly in his heart is all that belongs to its human physi-
ology. The rest is animality, vegetable physiology or
general physics, and had better be sought after in its
purity among the beasts, the plants, or the loadstones.
This theme requires to be dwelt upon from the current
misapprehensions respecting it. For at present it is held,
that that which is essential in the human body is that
which the body possesses in common with hydatids and
zoophytes, that a digestive sac or cell is the essence of
mankind. And the reason given is, that all but stomach
and nutrition can be dispensed with, and that these can go
on for a time on their own account without the brain and
nerves. It is perfectly true that these foundations are as
independent as they can be, and that they are automatic.
The very flesh is alive per se, and carnally ensouled, be-
fore the better life is added to it by the brain. But in
developments the development becomes everything, and
covers and gradually buries the matrix out of which it
sprang. And if the development does not come, the barren
matrix cannot last or work. No one ever heard of an
acephalous monster going to church or taking a hand at
whist ; on the other hand, it is walked out of the ranks
sexlessly and shabbily into the unconsecrated piece of the
next churchyard. And all headless things which come up
among those which have heads, must take the same fate ;
headless sciences among the rest. Moral headlessness is
in the same category ; those who make the belly and the
flesh essential because they are the last things that can be
done without, and throw away the higher parts because
they are merely additions, and some function continues
without them, go to the worms by their own claims. For
just that which is first and easiest lost and lived without,
is the pearl of the human mind.
To return from this digression. At one end of the cir-
194 THE HUMAN HEART.
dilatory system is the heart ; at the other, a class of
vessels termed, from their hair-like fineness, the capillaries.
The heart, as we before observed, sends from its left ven-
tricle a grand arterial arch, the aorta, which in its turn
produces stems, branches and twigs, and these last, the
capillary tubes, an intermediate field, which is the end of
the arteries and the beginning of the veins. In these
almost invisible capillaries, nature, " greatest in the least
things," carries on some of her most wonderful operations.
The blood which in the larger arteries is a medley volume
of red globules floating in serum, and only comes into in-
discriminate contact with the sides of the vessels, as it runs
down from the larger into the lesser tubes, becomes more
and more distinctly divided, and in the capillaries the red
globules are in the highest state of discrimination, fit for
supplying from their bosoms living nutriment and warmth,
and whatever depends upon the most individual endow-
ments. In the great vessels the blood is in public, exer-
cising general offices, and thronging the body to keep it
wide and open ; in the capillaries it is at home, its freedom,
power and fluidity raised to the greatest pitch, and subject
to the still influences of a higher spirit than its own.
Accordingly the capillaries are more plainly under the
direction of the brain, than the larger vessels ; their exqui-
site nervous coats undergo greater proportional changes in
calibre, and enjoy more individuality in different parts
than the Herculean aorta and its tubes ; the emotions of
the nerves being almost omnipotent in their influence over
these kindred and subtle disciples. For the most part the
blood-globules march in single file through the capillaries ;
but under the influence of cold, stimulants, or inflamma-
tion, the latter will either close, so as apparently to admit
no red particles, or will enlarge considerably enough to
give passage to several rows abreast. A familiar instance
THE CAPILLARY SYSTEM. 195
of the power of the mind or nerves upon this system, is
seen in the phenomenon of blushing, in which the modest
emotions, giving all place to the pressure about them, in-
stantaneously relax an outspread field of capillaries, which
lose their strait-laced dignity, and red blood is injected
into vessels that before carried only colorless fluid, or in
which the amount of red blood is now so greatly increased
as to glow through the skin of the face and neck, and tinge
them with apparent crimson. If we generalize this com-
mon fact, we observe what a prodigious sway the brain
must exercise over these blood-vessels. The capillary sys-
tem is coextensive with the body, for looking from the
heart as a centre, the frame- work of every organ and part
consists of capillaries. These, the brain and nerves have
the power of expanding and constringing in any place, or
any number of places, in a moment ; of producing secre-
tions or stopping secretions at will ; of varying the life that
comes from without to any particle of the frame. In short,
the circulation in its active and flexible part, is held in the
leashes of the brain, and the accommodation of the blood
system to the existing state of the body and mind depends
mainly on the nerves acting on the capillaries. Nay, the
texture of the heart itself is capillary, and by consequence
that private force and freedom which belong to these quick
vessels, lies in the very core of the heart as the general
force. In view of this, we might begin with these ambi-
dextrous and complaisant parts, and derive the power of
the heart itself from the array of their combined indivi -
dualities. And if there exists even in the cold life of plants
a natural attraction of particled fluids to their destination,
and an answerable force which creates the vegetable cur-
rent, much more in the human frame with its powerful
lungs and brains, is there an attraction of the particles of
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196 THE HUMAN HEART.
the blood towards the capillaries, an attraction which
draws them at an accelerated ratio the nearer they ap-
proach those original conduits older than the heart, where
their uses and sacrifices are to be accomplished. It has
indeed been supposed by some that the blood is freest in
the great vessels, but that its globules scrape against the
sides of the capillaries, and lose their power by friction ;
and this has been supported by microscopic views; but
then on the other hand it is impossible to place any living
sheet of membrane, e.g., the web of a frog's foot, under the
microscope, without changing the conditions, setting dis-
turbing emotions at work upon the circulation, and destroy-
ing the equilibrium between the globules and their homes.
And even if this be done during the insensibility of the
animal, the case is not normal still ; the anaesthesia itself
is a new element ; and moreover there are organic emotions
as well as conscious ones, which go on under inflictions
just as though the pained animal were at the back of them
(p. 8). Even dead leather crinkles and writhes over the
fire as though it were full of burning agony. Rational
induction alone can then decide the question. And this
ignores the idea that our blood experiences new physical
difficulties when it nears the goal of its existence, or is
hindered more and more by material clogs as it comes
within hail of the spirit of the brain. It is true that the
blood dies in the capillaries, and its ruddy frame turns
blue, but it is never so tenderly alive as on its death-bed,
never so near to its real ends, and in its ascent from the
earthy heart it wings itself with speed, until at the last, in
its final place and secret hour, it is all spontaneity and
calmness. It is wrong then to speculate upon any rigidity
of the tubes in the balance of healthy life : if the globule
tends to impinge, the tube will tend to yield before it, and
THE USES OF THE CIRCULATION. 197
the contact will be nothing more than the support and
maintenance by both sides of any inclination which may
exist on either.
Let us now proceed to the use of the circulation. The
first use is, the formation or determination of the body.
The second is, the nutrition, maintenance or reformation of
the body. The third is its prolonged vitality, or perpetual
stimulation. These three purposes mutually suppose each
other. The formation of the body is effected by the ger-
minal fluids, determined into membranes, canals, and ulti-
mately into vessels with coats ; and as the blood-vessels
are the last expression of these, we speak of them as the
framers of the body ; for the solid comes out of the fluid at
first, and the substantial body grows from the blood even
in the adult state ; the capillaries moulding the organs ;
which, however, when they are built, work on their own
account, and govern their blood, calling into existence the
second use of the circulation, or the nutrition and reforma-
tion of the body. The progress of discovery upon this
point, tends to establish the individuality not only of every
organ, but of the elements or smallest impersonations of
the organs. The deposition of the solids from the blood
does not take place immediately or by intrusion, but the
organs put forth fine cells or stomachs from their several
absorbing surfaces, which take what they want from the
capillary circulation, and make it over to the organ through
a fresh similar organization. In short, the body grows
from the vital blood by its own vitality, as a plant grows
from the sappy meltings of the ground ; its development is
due inside, and in every part, to its own attractions, and
not to the rush or thrust of the blood. The increment is
not like placing brick upon brick from without, each with
no peculiar relation to the building, but every brick is a
198 THE HUMAN HEART.
cellule or little building of itself, similar to the edifice of
which it forms part.
This is a higher idea of nutrition than that which it
supplanted, and deserves to be called a vegetable idea, in
distinction from the other, which was a mineral idea. We
must however remember, that in the human body we are
on the stair of endless ends, and that no fixed idea will
last out of its place and time. We must also note, that
we are reasoning in a sphere where the fluids are next to
all ; where the toughness of vegetation is a disease, and
where fresh formations are extemporized with mushroom
rapidity, and dissolutions take place with equal speed.
Cells in this case melt like mist into their original currents,
and the only set of analogues which do not fail us, are the
changes of the mind itself, whose velocity belongs by
transference to the body in its higher and healthier moods.
Thus the organs are nourished as well and rapidly as though
the blood was forced into them by the pulses, but in those
moments of moments they have deliberated, judged, chosen,
and lastly acted, by shooting forth a cellular gauze, wise to
let in the exact quantity and quality that they require.
The rule then is, that the heart and its powers act only
to the door of the organs, and no further, after which the
organs take from the proffered blood their own demand.
This is true, as we shewed in speaking of the lungs (p.
99), of the largest tissues of the body : it is true, as
observation shews, of the smallest parts of the tissues.
In a word, attraction is the law ; and it exists between
all the fluids and their respective destinations and uses ; it
is a true animal magnetism ; and in this high form there
is a manifest propulsion or heart to second it on the one
side, and a manifest invitation or lungs to create it on the
other : to which we may add, that the fluid itself is so
THE USES OF THE CIRCULATION. 199
natured as to run of its own accord away from the parts
which do not want it, and away to those which do. Thus
in this system of divine convenience, where every tendency
is trebly gratified, the blood propelled to any organ is no
longer the heart's, or to be denominated from the heart,
but it belongs to the organ, part, or particle, wherever it
may be ; it is always sailing upwards and inwards to deeper
purposes, and taking new names and new liberties ; just
as sensation rises from the eye into the brain, is adopted
into intellect and faculty, and walks at last, unknown to
the lower scene, in the breadth and color of the sky. It
is thus that the red blood from the heart mounts into the
region of the capillaries and organs, that new world where
the nervous system hangs its ethereal expanse over the
vascular.
The third use of the circulation consists in giving life
or nervous fluid to the tissues. This presupposes that such
a fluid proceeds from the brain through the nerves, and is
shed perpetually into the body, and especially into the
blood. The red globules of the latter are its most living
parts, and may be likened to little caskets in which this
nervous fluid is carried about, and dispensed as life to the
tissues, to which it gives a natural though engrafted capa-
city to be acted upon by the brains and lungs, and to react
on their own account. The freeing of this nervous fluid
in the capillaries is as a millionfold torch that kindles the
decompounded elements of the globules, and produces a
graduated scale of heats, of which the first or living fire
is the nervous fluid itself, instinct with its organic emo-
tion, and the excrement, residue or caput mortuum is the
oxygen and carbon which the blood and tissues yield to
the curious chemist ; the difference between which two is
greater than that between the smoking ashes of a burnt
house and heaven's lightning.
200 THE HUMAN HEART.
Were it not for this inspiration by the brain, the blood
could not be humanly alive, or in other words, the soul
could not associate with it. "With respect to the change
that takes place at the ends of the arteries, or in the capil-
lary circulation, where the blood loses its arterial color,
and purples or becomes Tenons, the manner of it is suffi-
ciently obscure, and has only been investigated at present
from chemical grounds. But looking at the blood itself
as organic, or vitally compounded and mechanical, it is
easy to see that in the place where it has to yield up any
of its constituent parts that the successive organisms re-
quire, it must lose its principle of combination in order to
allow it to pass into other forms. In short, it must undergo
a vital decomposition for the purposes of the body ; and if
its arterial glitter depends upon the spirit shining through
it as through an organic face, then when this spirit escapes
and comes out, and the subordination of parts is lost, the
comparatively lifeless hue of venous blood will be assumed.
Furthermore we may infer that the nerve spirit, which is
the charioteer of the globule, and its principle of organi-
zation (p. 39), when its heat or desire of blood-organiza-
tion is ended, and when it comes down among the other
elements, will kindle with that sensible heat which is expe-
rienced in the lowest sphere ; in other words, that in the
body, the intellectual or organific heat is in a lower degree
the parent of true animal heat. This we find to be the
case on a large scale by the glow of zeal, passion and
affection in the cheeks and the body ; and these large in-
stances, in which the whole body displays itself as one
globule of impassioned blood, give the only analogues we
can use consistently with our purpose of reasoning not upon
the dead but upon the living blood (p. 198). The differ-
ence then between the arterial and the venous blood is, in
the first place, that the arterial is organized, spirited or
THE ARTERIAL AND VENOUS CURRENTS. 201
impassioned, and just like ourselves in such a case, is ruddy
with the fervor of a soul, while the venous blood is disor-
ganized, chaotic and aimless, and like ourselves again
under these circumstances, is murky in its hue and leaden
in its gait. In the second place, the arterial is full blood,
but the venous has yielded up many of its elements, and
has no spirit or nerve fire, but the residue of this is taken
up by the lymphatics, while the apathetic body of the
blood is derived into the tardy veins. Such is an approxi-
mative organic account of the change.
We have now treated of the use of the heart to the
general circulation, and if this were all, the heart would
be a simple forcing pump, as Chambers 's Journal declared
it to be ; " a good heart," in their words, would be " a
good forcing pump," and "good heartedness" would either
mean " good force-pumpishness," or nothing at all. But
when we glance at what is taking place around us ; at the
subjects which are extending their limits ; at the old things
that are again brought forward by our growing love of
fairness, because they have been previously disii
without a hearing, which says nothing against them, and
much against their judges ; at the new thingg which are
thronging into notice in shapes that cannot be neglected,
when we glance at this we may be expected, in the face
of any shabby idea of nature or her Author, to propound
the question, Is that all ? and to cut short the men who
say to us, It is only this, and It is only that, by a deci-
sion that no finite mind has a right to palm one such only
anywhere upon nature. For our part, when we look at
the human frame, we are always impelled to put this ques-
tion, and in the same breath to answer, that there is more
and ever more to be known about it, not in the way of
niggling additions and grains of scientific sand, but in
great principles, in new tracts of knowledge, underlying,
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202 THE HUMAN HEART.
overspreading and surrounding that tiny edifice of books
and cards where we are so comfortably at home. Yes, at
this very hour methinks there is a good and guiding genius
standing just beyond the range of every conception that
has entered the world, and beckoning us forwards in words
familiar from childhood :
" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy ;"
and then as we pitter out, "Tis strange, 'tis wondrous
strange," the same apostle to the Saxons speaks yet again
in mother English :
" And therefore as a stranger give it welcome."
There are points in the structure of the heart of which
we have said nothing hitherto, but we must now describe
what are called the coronary vessels, which are supposed
to nourish the heart with blood. They are called coronary
from corona, a crown, because they run in crowns or coro-
nal circles around the heart. They arise from the aorta
close beside the semilunar valves, and running around the
base of the heart, and sending branches down the lines of
partition between its fourfold chambers, they form a kind
of vascular cagework in which it is contained. The coro-
nary veins, said to begin from the minutest twigs of the
coronary arteries, by their considerable branches for the
most part accompany those of the arteries, and discharge
themselves by one, two, or three orifices into the right
auricle.
The interior of the four cavities of the heart is not a
smooth even surface, but is rendered extremely irregular
by muscular columns, projections and partitions ; it is
scooped, channelled and caverned ; besides which, on the
walls of the cavities there are minute openings, the fora-
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE HEART. 203
mina of Thebesius, which are supposed to be the mouths
of little veins.
Everything in nature, and especially the cardinal move-
ments of living systems, are designed for more than one
use ; for unlike rest, motion is a steed which can have in-
numerable riders. We are therefore certain that the move-
ments of the heart are of other uses besides the propulsion
of the general blood, unless it could be shewn that the pro-
visions of the heart are exhausted in this propulsion;
which cannot be done. On looking further at the heart
itself, we find that its working is also employed to ensure
the commixture of the elements of the blood, especially in
the right ventricle, which receives all the venous or disin-
tegrated blood coming from the most divers organs ; all
the chyle arriving from the food ; moreover all the lymph ;
and lastly, the nerve-spirit streaming in from the jugular
veins, which contain a far greater proportion of this than
the rest of the venous blood. This triple scale of elements,
the blood, the chyle and the nervous fluid, are worked,
kneaded and commingled by the right auricle and ven-
tricle : is it too much to grant that the motion of those
cavities is intended to do that which it plainly does ; or
that there is an end answered by the commixtion. There
are not two answers to the question. The right ventricle
then, we will say, after a quaint authority, is the great vat
of the blood- system, in which the fluids are mingled to
form the ingredients of the red blood ; after which the
mixture is sent through the lungs, to be skimmed of what-
ever comes forth into the air, and to be subsequently passed
into the left auricle and ventricle.
We are aware that views derived from the forms and
powers of the organs, are out of fashion, yet in the living
body they are logical and physiological, which the che-
mical notions are not. There are two ways of looking
204 THE HUMAN HEART.
at organic subjects, which should be carefully distinguished
by the mind, and carefully united in the sciences. First
there is the investigation of the form or structure, at rest,
or in a dead state ; and this gives an osseous basis to our
knowledge: but as permanently resting subjects are on
the road to death, and dead things are on the road to de-
composition, this method leads in process of time, and in
continuity of doctrine, through the land of bad smells to
sheer mineral chemistry. The second method is the in-
vestigation of the movements, functions and deeds of
organic subjects; the examination of what they do, and
their judgment by their fruits ; and the facts which this
supplies are as flesh upon the dry bones of the former
knowledge. Let us apply these two methods to the blood,
both to illustrate what they are, and at the same time to
pursue our inductions respecting the offices of the heart.
In the first method, the examination of the dead, dying
or abnormally affected blood (p. 196) by the eye or micro-
scope, shews that it consists of red globules in a transpa-
rent serum ; and as the blood finally dies, it undergoes a
series of changes, forming a clot or coagulum in which
most of the red particles are entangled. Thereafter purely
chemical effects succeed, and we have a disengagement of
gases, and a further alteration of the clot. Such is the
first method and its chronicle. We observe that it is most
perfect when the examination begins, and at that time
holds on the subject under the eye ; but gradually and not
slowly the subject changes, and a set of phenomena pre-
sent themselves, which if taken for living appearances are
mere delusion, for they belong strictly to disorganization.
The second method with the blood observes it in motion,
in order to gain the hint and image of thought, and after-
wards and especially learns what it accomplishes in the
body, in order to gain the scope and details of the thought
THE BLOOD. 205
again. It is as when you first see a man, and take his
impress on your memory, and afterwards from his observed
actions you put his character into him, and find what his
person is and means. For it is the deeds of men and
things which by time's benefit range themselves into their
intelligible vitals. Who can care whether the blood con-
tains minnikin particle within particle ad infinitum, with-
out these can be tallied off against something that the
whole blood achieves for the human body? Otherwise
they are the decomposition of our observing powers, and
rot the organic sciences. At best such microscopic obser-
vations are the visions of the underworld, the empire of the
dwarfs. But what then is the motion of the blood ? It is,
so far as we see, the streaming of an incessant population
of globules through the vessels ; the body is a city of
active life-bloods, moving like the nations and peoples of a
whole planetary system at once, through every atom of
space and time which the system allows it. And what
are the offices of the blood ? We answer that it deposits
the elements for every organ ; that it perpetually deals out
the parts into their respective places ; that it is the body
itself in a fluid state. Thus everything in the body con-
tributes to our notion of the blood, and the man is a repre-
sentation of its powers and tendencies as well as of its
substance. We may define it as a compound of all the
simple elements of the organization, and as the globules
are its most living portion, this is preeminently true of
them. The eye sees nothing of this its character, as nei-
ther does the eye see in the brain the faculties by which
men invent the arts ; but that such a wealth lies in the
blood the mind's eye knows, for how could the body come
out of the blood if it were not first involved within it ?
We have now then arrived at a certain knowledge of this
manlike globule, as being a group of the principles of the
solid organs and tissues, resolvable by disintegration as it
206 THE HUMAN HEART.
circulates, through the attractive peculiar doors of the
organs* (p. 198), into each part to which it passes. For on
its unwearied round it gives heart to heart, lungs to lungs,
liver to liver, kidney to kidney, and like to like every-
where ; and what is left in each case, forms the venous
blood, the lymph, the deader heat, and the several excre-
tions. Moreover one set of glands compounds the blood
while the other destroys it, and in its perpetual life, death
and resurrection, it images the destiny of him whose bodily
existence it constitutes.
With such views of the blood, added to what we derive
from the eye and the microscope, we require a vast ma-
chinery adequate to produce this composition, and we are
driven to look to every organ, and first to those where the
blood is contained, for its contribution to the result. Shall
the heart be excluded from the privilege of blood-making ?
Though a large it is a highly complex structure, full of
special cavities and conduits, edged and jagged machinery
of tendons, and fine muscular limbs and fingers. Its two
sides contain different kinds and qualities of blood : is
there no communication between them, no intermediate
compounds to edify the little temple of the globule ? Why
is there an association of the sides of the heart, and a com-
munity in their substance, if there is no society in their
functions, and no reciprocation of their goods ? Are the
two sides of this channel also, natural enemies ? In the
right ventricle there is the chyle, the venous blood of the
body, the venous blood and spirit of the brain : is it not
rational to infer that the left side of the heart furnishes
* We must take care not to let the vegetable idea of cells grow to
any woodenness, or interfere with the animal idea of freedom and
instant fluidity. The cells in life are mere instant refrigerations of
the steam, liable to be vapor again in a moment between the strokes
of the life-engine.
THE BLOOD. 207
model globules and middle essences to unite these hetero-
geneous parts ?
We must touch this matter slightly, and perhaps there-
fore obscurely; however, the main guidance is, that the
blood consists of an orderly involution of the elements of
the bodily organs : this will give light upon what would
otherwise be dark. We now recur for a few moments to
the coronary vessels, or to the circulation in the walls of
the heart.
It is a curious fact that nearly all the old anatomists,
and some also of the moderns, have suspected a puzzle in
these coronary vessels. They come from the aorta and
run backwards to the heart. In a certain proportion of
cases estimated at 5 in 20, one or more of their orifices lies
behind the semilunar valves, and such orifices it is clear
cannot receive the stream propelled from the heart, because
it lays down the valve flat upon them, and effectually
closes them. As therefore nature's law must be constant,
it was argued, that what holds of one orifice must hold of
all ; and that the blood runs back into the coronaries from
the aorta when the heart's contraction ceases. This was
Boerhaave's opinion. Morgagni, a more practical ana-
tomist, was more cautious, and requested others to decide
the too difficult problem. Another view was now pro-
pounded by the celebrated Swedeiiborg. He argued that
the raising up of the semilunar valves during the contrac-
tion of the heart, when the blood is expelled into the aorta,
precludes its passage then into the coronaries ; and that
the stretching of the coronaries, and their pressure by the
full aorta, contributes to the same preclusion. Moreover,
that to suppose the heart supplied with blood by regurgi-
tation from the aorta, would be to ascribe to the latter a
new action different from what it exerts upon the other
bloodvessels ; nay to claim for it, after the discharge of its
208 THE HUMAN HEART.
functions, a stronger, inverted and retrograde action upon
a body the most muscular of any. These considerations
led him to infer, that the coronary arteries do not arise
from, but terminate in the aorta ; that they are veins rela-
tively to the heart, although running into the beginning of
the arteries of the body. The doctrine in brief is this :
that the heart as the head of the vessels and the fountain
of the blood, itself requires the firstling blood for the exer-
cise of its noble offices, and cannot hold its life by tenure
from one of its own arteries, which would be to invert all
ideas of the order of nature. The heart is already full of
blood, and if fluids, or fluid persons, like solid persons,
move with greater velocity in proportion to their life, the
best blood in this race will continually outrun the rest, and
always first in the heart, will skirt along its porous walls.
Now what structures do we find upon those walls, but
caverns , jagged cavities, and at the bottom of these a
number of little holes, the foramina of Thebesius. Into
these caverns then, miniature ventricles in the great ven-
tricle, hearts of the heart, the quickest blood is received,
and the pores open with all their hearts to take it in. And
when the heart contracts, it drives out the general blood of
the body into the grand aorta, but its own particular blood,
detained in the cavernous lacunae, it squeezes, slippery
with spirit, through its walls into its muscular substance,
and thence onwards and outwards to the surface, into the
coronary arteries and the coronary veins, from which there
is a reflux, when necessary, into the auricles and ventricles.
It was also held that various currents of blood exist in
the heart, and in short a multiple communion, one object of
which is, the production of a successive order or series of
stages in the blood itself, fitting it for its manifold opera-
tions. This was brought to bear upon another subject,
namely, the influence of the mind upon the heart. We
THE COMMUNION OF THE HEART. 209
must here spend a few lines in considering this well-known
circumstance, on which we shall have much to say presently.
From the oldest times the sympathy between the mind
and the heart has been acknowledged. The records of
disease likewise shew, that the heart is affected and altered
by the state of the mind, and vice versa ; and that powerful
feelings will cause palpitation, fainting, and even sudden
death from their influence upon the heart. Now the heart
is the centre of the sanguineous system, the organ from
which the motions of the blood begin, and the bed in which
its pressure terminates. And the reader will recollect
(p. 195) that the brain, the organ of the mind, carries the
influences of the mind along the nerves to every part of
the capillary circulation, and produces in the capillary
body, for it is the body, throughout the day, a motion rest-
less and ever-changing like the fluctuations of the atmo-
sphere. This is the nature of our human mind. If we
recur to the instance of blushing and universalize it, we
easily understand what is meant (p. 195). But in this
continuous fluid system, every inconstancy in the circula-
ting current produces its effect upon the centre upon the
heart ; and in this way the whole play of the mind becomes
transferred to this wonderful organ. Again, every muscle
that moves, whether in breathing, standing, walking,
manual labor, eating, or in whatever other way, throws
the venous blood forcibly and newly upon the heart, and
affects its condition. Of this we have evidence in the ope-
ration of bleeding, in which, when the arm is tied to pre-
vent the blood from returning through the veins to the
heart, and the fist is rapidly doubled, or even the fingers
worked about, the current squirts in forcible jets from the
opened vein. What then must be the squirt of the venous
blood heartward, in a wrestle of the whole body, or during
a rapid run ? Moreover, where the frame is enfeebled by
210 THE HUMAN HEART.
long disease, and the patient is bed-ridden, the motion of
rising into the erect position sends dangerous jets to the
heart, in many cases oppressing it beyond recovery, and
leading to swoon and death. And where there is dis-
order of the heart, the muscular exertion of undressing and
stepping into bed, will cause prolonged anguish, until the
heart's circulation is equilibrated. These are proofs that
the state of the circulation affects that of the heart, and
that the movements of the body affect the circulation ; and
we have already seen that the mind is continually playing
upon the capillaries, and the capillaries referring their dis-
turbances to the heart. The question arises, Is there any
provision in the heart to enable it to maintain its own con-
stancy in the midst of the fluctuations of the blood, and to
make it the head, ratio or balance, as well as the heart of
the too mobile circulation ?
This problem has not been unnoticed by physiologists,
and Mr. Abernethy in particular endeavored to connect the
solution of one part of it with the foramina of Thebesius.
It is here that Swedenborg's doctrine of these foramina and
the coronaries, finds its strongest present attestations.
According to this view, the varying quantities of blood re-
turned upon the heart find an outlet through the walls of
the heart itself, and equilibrium is thus maintained by the
coronary vessels ; so that the heart plus the coronaries
equals all the forces of the circulation ; while the heart
minus the coronaries is a comparatively regular force unin-
fluenced by the general state of the system. Were it not
for such provision, the heart would be at the mercy of
extraneous influences ; the most important organ of the
trunk would have no stability, but would in the end yield,
and be distended into a bladder or membrane, incapable of
anything but the most passive recipiency.
It is contended on this view that there is a representation
THE COMMUNION OF THE HEART. 211
of the mind by the heart in the manner in which the latter
equilibrates the blood by the channels of the coronaries ;
for the passages may vary in different hearts. Thus in
case the blood has a tendency to run out of the heart
through these avenues into the aorta, it represents a want
of firmness and courage ; and universally during fear the
systemic arteries empty themselves, and the blood runs
away into the veins. On the other hand, when the blood
tends to keep in the heart, and to press back into the right
auricle, it indicates a firmness and strength of the nervous,
arterial and venous systems. And in this way these ani-
mal qualities are based upon the construction, tendencies
or habitual channelling of the heart. Now we know from
our sensations that different feelings cause different actions
in our breasts ; for example, that in hard and firm resolve,
the heart seems to stand its ground, and not to let one
soldier -globule ooze away ; that in moments of timidity the
pit-a-pat of flight and disarray seizes, and the ear-drum
beats the inglorious tune of " devil take the hindmost :"
also that in melting moods the heart goes with the eyes
and lips, slipping and trickling away from its station as it
were a tear. Further, we know that courage and fear are
constitutional to certain persons. And can we doubt that
their constant action upon the heart, implies in the first
place a corresponding fabric in that organ, and in the
second, a continual alteration of the fabric, as the mental
state and circumstances vary. For it is to be said that
the principles of the mind will govern even the heart, and
make cowards brave in the second nature and strength of
conscience, or abash the lion-hearted when that higher
spirit of courage is gone.
While we are upon this theme we will take the oppor-
tunity to digress for a moment, to dwell again upon the
consistency of the body as exemplified in this passion of
212 THE HUMAN 'HEART.
fear 5 a consistency which we have already shewn to some
extent while treating of the lungs (pp. 106 120). Now in
fear the heart is bloodless, for the blood, as we said before,
has run away from it ; the lungs are aghast or ghostless ;
the brain is mindless, and consciousness gives place to
fainting ; and the man embodies all this by himself either .
sinking down, or running away. The fact that we avoid
what threatens us, often with an instinctive passion called
fear, formulizes the action of all our parts in this state.
The spirit or mind running away from the brain in mortal
chilly streams down the back bone ; sight deserting the
swoony eye ; hearing leaving the ear ; spirit running off
also by the hair, and the hair standing from the head ;
the head and all parts horribly wide out and erect for a
moment ; the tendency to universal displacement seen in
head, eyes, tongue, arms, and legs flying out and away
from each other ; the wind shrieking wildly forth from
the lungs ; the blood rushing pellmell from the heart ; the
excretions running from the bowels and the bladder ; heat
falling through abysms of cold, and life, which is courage,
perspiring from the skin in big drops of cowardice ; these
are all the same passion in different parts and appearances.
In all, the man and the organs run, or tend to run, from
the place of terror, which is not only the particular loca-
lity, but the body itself; wherefore death, or running
away from the body, is not an infrequent effect of fear.
Our knowledge, that fright produces running away, carries
us through the effects of fear upon all the organs, and we
need no other principle, but only the details of this, to
explain the state of the blood in the case, or indeed of any
of the parts, whether solid, fluid, or mental. We may
now generalize further, and affirm that the broadest con-
sequences of every passion and living state march through
sphere after sphere of the body, and deposit themselves
FEAR. 213
in fresh but consistent shapes as they visit fresh provinces.
Thus love, which clasps its objects to its own bosom, draws
closer the parts of the loving brain, and makes harmony
of thought ; it knits the blood into new relations, and as
the newly-kinned globules touch each other, the heart
becomes its body's delight. And so each state of man is
a human frame complete. The unlearned world may follow
this knowledge, deep and depth -seeking, using broad sights
as an organon, and never becoming microscopic, or resting
in anything less than limb, trunk and head. Common life
is the college to teach live physiology.
Returning now to our immediate subject, we observe
that the theory that the heart alters and amplifies the
blood, is supported by the analogies of the principal organs.
For example, the brain is not the mere centre of the nerves ;
it is not a simple turn of fibres in which sensations are-
converted into motions, but new faculties are there piled
upon the summit of sensation, and the brain is a com-
manding head to the nervous system. So the larynx is
not a simple enlargement of the windpipe, but a super-
addition of gifts, by which plain air becomes discourse,
and is cast into words of meaning, the vocal symbols of
intelligence. So the tongue is not a mere thickening of
the unconscious gullet and stomach, but a capital organ in
which sensation is added to the other functions of the intes-
tinal canal. And so man is not merely an eclectic centre
of the world, but he is a spiritual world also, and a set of
miracles, if he chooses, playing their will with animalities.
In fine, wherever there is a head, it does not differ from
its subordinate parts in size and situation alone, but also
has a freer life than they, and exercises supreme functions
additional to theirs, functions both more in quantity and
novel in quality. Therefore, to recapitulate, the heart
itself both commixes the elements of the blood ; builds
214 THE HUMAN HEART.
them up in a regular series ; and levels and balances the
general circulation ; and all this, in addition to the func-
tions which it performs for the arterial system below it, of
propelling the blood through the body ; and for the nervous
system above it, of receiving and representing the fluxions
and passions of the mind. In this way we have a first
draught of a beginning, a middle and an end, to some
purposes of the human heart.
Here we conclude our first view of the heart, which we
have found to be more than a cross road, or convergence
of vessels ; in fact, to be the metropolitan city of the blood,
the interests and business of whose home-inhabitants are
of primary importance in the system. We have then now
three great divisions of this subject, viz., the current
through the lungs, the current through the body, and the
inhabitation and uses of the most privileged blood in the
heart itself. In other words, we have the doctrine of the
circulation from the moderns, and a justification, more
modern still, of the flux and reflux of the blood, heart-felt
and intuitively seen by the genius of the ancients.
As to the doctrine of the circulation which was demon-
strated by our great countryman, Harvey, it newly teaches
us the import of the circle, by life and substance added to
the strictness of mathematics. It is also a cardinal instance
in a line of universal truths. For there is a circle of all
things, as there is a circulation in the human body. Not
a fluid is contained in our frames, but according to its per-
fection aspires to circulate on the model of the circulation
of the blood. There is a grand current from the fluid to
the solid, and from the solid back into the fluid ; a cir-
culation of perpetual life, "formation, destruction, and
reformation." (p. 189.) There is a circulation from the
universe into the body, through the food, the skin, the
lungs, the senses, the brain ; a circulation back again
CONCLUSION ON THE CIRCULATION. 215
from the food, the skin, the lungs, the actions, and the
mind itself. And the world is an everlasting circulation.
The mineral ascends into the vegetable, and both into the
animal, and all into man; and man's body descends into
the dust, and completes its circle there. In short, wher-
ever we go, we meet this old emblem of eternity : the
Midgard- serpent with his tail in his mouth hoops the
whole world round ; ends and beginnings meet, and nature
is bending round from her first issues towards her source ;
like the weapon of the Australian, she comes back into the
hand that flings her, and the human body is a permanence
of her cycles, which are the pulses of our hearts.
The heart, in common with the other organs, is the
subject of a twofold discourse, and has two sets of books
and votaries appropriated to its consideration. Indeed we
may say that the present world has two hearts, which
have very little to do with each other. There is the one-
heart of which Shakespeare is an interpreter, and the other
where Harvey reigns. Two Englishmen have been high
priests in the service of these two organs, and it would
seem to belong to the same race, to mix the flames of the
altars into one common pyre and ascension. Shall Cupid
then learn anatomy, and the ace of hearts, transfixed with
his ancient dart, stand for something in Carpenter's Phy-
siology, or in the dissecting room ? The one heart, it is
to be observed, is much older than the other ; the heart of
love beat through human tongues before sciences were
born ; its aifirmers are that great cloud of men now above
and beyond us, who lost to individual ken, make the cope
of the past blue and immense; mythology, poetry, and
language itself are the bright points in this firmament,
216 THE HUMAN HEART.
which still ray down to us the same message about this
primitive and perennial heart. Every man is still valued
in this sense by his heart. Every feeling comes from it
and goes to it. Resolve stands in it, or melts away from
it ; hope deferred makes it sick ; fortune sits upon the
wheel of its capacities ; it makes the breast by which man
touches man, or comes fairly forth from its cage on great
occasions, when heart touches heart. The most touching
thing in the world, it is the most tangible too ; it feels
before the fingers, and pulls the words from the speaker's
tongue by an anticipated hearing. We should rather say,
that all this is attributed to it since the beginning of time.
Nor is the attribution lessened to-day, but the air of the
nineteenth century vibrates with this heart and its proper-
ties wherever free or common speech endures. But we
cannot overlook the fact, that another heart has come upon
the carpet.
The scientific heart is that hollow muscle of which we
have spoken in the foregoing pages ; four rooms with no-
body living in them ; and the hollow muscle has not been
slow to suggest, that the ancient heart is a figure of speech,
and only exists metaphorically. Meantime, however, the
latter cedes nothing of its prevalence, but the words which
express it are guarded by the whole atmosphere of life,
and keep their places under a weight of forty-five passion-
ate pounds to the square inch. Heavy dictates of sense
will not allow them to be evaporated.
Hence arises imperfection and struggle. For an animal
with two hearts is lower in the scale than an animal with
one, or in which the two are twined cordially into a single
organ. And then for struggle, science, which has so much
to learn by heart, makes a continual enemy by setting up
another heart beside that which has to learn it. But if
the two could come together, science would rise into warm-
THE WORLD ON THE HEART, 217
blooded life, and memory, its register, would enlist a new
set of feelings in its service, and would become long and
tenacious like the heart itself in the higher sense. To
say nothing at present of other advantages.
It is, however, a fair question, notwithstanding the
tyranny of common speech, whether we be justified, and
to what extent, in assigning feelings to the heart, and
making a heart of the feelings ? Whether the quickness
of words be according to a method that the structural
heart has known and sanctioned? In short, whether com-
mon sense is a great instinctive anatomist, or not ? Cer-
tainly, if it could be shewn that the passions belong to
the heart, with all their vocabulary with the heat they
receive from heaven, or summon from the abyss ; with the
power they shoot through limb and brain ; with their play
and balance at the core of society ; with their issues, cir-
cuitous and direct ; with their countless insinuations, suc-
cessions and intermixtures ; with their lava that lies at
some depth under the coldest action, and sustains the
vaulted breast of man upon an oven of flames ; if they
and their progeny, we say, could be charged upon the
heart, the scalpel would have new artifices to employ, to
get a sight of these wonderful natives, and the professors
of death might well be startled to see the children of fire
walking among the sciences. The question, therefore,
becomes the more pregnant from the new labors which an
affirmative answer would enjoin, and from the alarm which
proof itself would cause to all but common people.
What then is the nature of the evidence that the feelings
live in the heart ? The evidence itself, we reply, if con-
sidered apart from language, is a mere matter of feeling.
Herein lies the strength and weakness of the case, so far.
The evidence, true to the organ, is circular : the heart is
a self- supplying knot of affirmations. Stat pro ratione
218 THE HUMAN HEART.
voluntaSj is the heavy hammer of this logician. It is because
t z's, is childish and hearty a ring of wilful fire ; there is
no reason in it any more than in the heart, which is a YEA,
YEA, of everlasting man, approving himself by living and
by feeling.
Feeling, however, thus affirmative and infinitely irrita-
ble, and inviolable in its circle, gives no knowledge of the
subject, and where knowledge is in question, though feel-
ing will not yield, yet of itself it cannot conquer. If the
case rested here, we could not infer, except remotely, a
constant connexion between the heart and the emotions.
We might, or might not, remember the pulses of our own
passions ; w r e might notice our acquaintances beating and
striking their breasts when the furies were at them ; and
so a few violent instances might fix themselves, in which
feeling and the heart were together. But feelings have,
moreover, tongues, and are the best of talkers ; they are
notorious for hitting the nail upon the head ; they make
all men into their poets, and are the authors and founders
of languages. The words which convey and assign the
feelings are masterpieces of justice and felicity, and hold
the sheer perceptions of our brightest moments. They
shine with suggestion from age to age. In language,
therefore, feeling becomes a staid and intelligible substance,
and when the feeling is past, we note what it was by the
hearty w r ords that it uttered. Moreover language is a
common product, and chronicles the feelings of the world ;
for the soul talks to be heard, and therefore speaks by a
vocal compact. It is therefore no solitary sound, but the
voice of mankind to which we now listen, and which iden-
tifies the heart with the feelings.
There is no point on which language is more trustworthy ;
for the heart itself is physically as well as feelingly at the
bottom of the wells of language. So near is it to the lungs,
THE WORLD ON THE HEART. 219
that the words in which it signalizes itself are like the
bubblings of its own blood. If the heart were wrong in
every other synthesis, we should still expect it to be
right here. And so when a chorus of nations and tongues
chimes forth that their hearts have feelings, we believe
from a triple persuasion that those hearts knew best about
it, and have made them say it j and we take them at their
word.
So far, therefore, the case proceeds upon the joint testi-
mony of feeling and speech, and we may now say, upon
the witness of the heart and lungs themselves speaking
from the life. They were not summoned to give their
testimony, but it was extant in their existence. Gesture
and speech, which are heart and lungs marched into the
world, without hesitation identify heart and feeling.
It is on the same grounds that we aver the whole of
what we know best respecting the living body ; as that
the body contains the soul ; that the mind is in the head,
and then in the brain ; and that the senses are in their
organs. And in truth, to doubt of these inhabitations or
connexions would depopulate the physical frame of its
lives, and striking out common sense from the scientific
faculties, would float the body away from its cables, with-
out a crew, a pilot, or a destination.
Pathology also, or the science of disease, is equally
clear upon the point we are maintaining ; for violent feel-
ings not only agitate, but may kill the heart in a moment ;
in short, broken hearts are medical facts, and the tearing
of the organ is often coincident with agonized feelings.
But why insist upon a fact which nobody denies ? Our
answer is, that truths are not well treated when they are
only not denied : we desire that these greatest truths of
the heart should not simply be assented to, and then passed
over, but used as keys to its organization. We desire that
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220 THE HUMAN HEART.
every feeling which warms the bosom, should find a place
in the scientific heart, and give it the same life which it
gives to its human prototype. We desire to conciliate
Shakespeare and Harvey, that the genius of the one may
cohabit with the genius of the other ; that man's real life-
may not be missing from his blood ; and on the other hand,
that the doctrine of the circulation may make a prouder
orbit, and gain its rightful swoop through life and history.
For ever the world is a chaos of truths, but fluctuating
and inapprehensible ; but when they are fixed, the dry
land appears, and habitable ground or proper creation
begins , a centre is struck whence order flows ; and now
we essay to fix this floating allegation of the heart to the
feelings, that it may become moored to a solid bottom, and
gathering up all its parts and particles, present a sward to
the sun of knowledge, whose light and heat dwell with
man alone.
What then is the voice of common experience as to the
feelings which are assigned to the heart ? Evidently the
heart stands for the affections, and the man devoid of natural
affection is said to be " without a heart." Our first busi-
ness is, to dissect the verdict of language ; and the result
may be stated as follows. The friend is a man with a
heart ; friendship is one of the affections commonly deno-
minated by the organ. The good mother has a heart which
beats towards her offspring. The lover has a heart, and
is a heart, towards his love. The citizen's heart is for his
birth-place and his country : he has a public affection or
love; a sense that he, and a certain space with its contents,
are warm and related to each other. These are the chief
natural feelings, to be short of which is to be morally dis-
graced or diseased, and cut off from the bonds of healthy
mankind. We are also commanded to love God "with
our whole heart," but this is no part of the mere nature of
THE HEART OF FEELING. 221
which we are now speaking. There are innumerable other
attributions of feelings to the heart, but they are either
subordinate, or may be classified under the foregoing.
Each of these feelings is a warmth or fire peculiar to
itself; each gives a different glow in the breast; each
shines with its own life in its going forth. Yet they are
one inseparably twisted ray, which seen from its end is the
quadrine star of human nature. They are the withes and
band-makers of our societies ; and they not only draw their
own kind about them, but are grappled each to each in the
fibrous motives of a mutual self-preservation; kin and kind,
parents and partners, they are one man, clasping, and
clasped by, his fellows in the fourfold magnetism of nature.
Let us see then whether these feelings have any corre-
spondence with the fleshly organ ; in other words, whether
the flesh be intelligibly alive, and whether their signatures
be legibly written upon the muscular tables.
We stated in the foregoing pages that the heart, by the
blood-vessels, is everywhere present in the body, and that
the frame, in one point of view, is a double tree of arteries
and veins. Assuming that feeling and heart are syno-
nymous, each arterial space is of course a part of the ex-
tended firmament of feeling. The organs of the senses,
for example, are a fivefold feeling of the external world,
receiving its impressions of five kinds through these chan-
nels. The sensories, however, are neither more nor less
than so many blood- works, constructed and maintained by
the circulating streams. Sensations are received, not in
dead organs, galvanized by the brain, but in a bed of
structural desire, where the mind meets and marries them,
and carries them to the head. The heart then produces,
by continuity, and at a distance, these animal tendencies to
five classes of external objects.
We do not deny the empire and influence of the brain.
222 THE HUMAN HEART.
Each part of the body, however, is alive, and each, so far
as possible, is independent. The heart, and all the feel-
ings, live from the brain at last, but the brain has sunk its
capital in building them, and they are no longer converti-
ble ; they are not brain, but heart and feelings. They are
alive, as their architect is alive ; and we cannot too often
repeat, that there is nothing but life in the body, and no
life without feeling, or quasi-feeling. We say quasi-
feeling to express, that even where the feeling is inscru-
table and unconscious, we dare not, in reason's interest,
give it up as feeling. Where all seems not only dead to
us, but contradictory to our life, we still know that we are
at work with the same versatile tools ; we know by our
brains that we are feeling in our very bones, although we
never feel our bones but when the nail-prints of pain or
inflammation are shewn to us. So far as we carry this
feeling into our studies, so far we are exploring the living
body ; so far as we do not, we are groping in dead flesh,
and making a science of corpses.
We do not now investigate the problems of embryology.
The order in which the body is formed, is one thing ; the
order in which it subsists and acts, is another. The king
is not less a king because he was once elected out of his
own subjects ; and the history of his elevation is a distinct
subject from that of his functions. Let us cut off questions,
and take limited fields to cultivate. In these pages we
treat of the adult heart, and what it is, leaving a thou-
sand problems to be treated at other times, and by other
persons.
To proceed from one expanse of feelings to another, the
blood- space which we call the lungs is the bodily affection
for those two ends which we term air and thought, whence
the synonymous expression of both by the word spirit.
The coincidence of thinking and breathing, the representa-
THE HEART OF FEELING. 223
tion of what goes on in the mind by what is proceeding in
the respiration, is conclusive as to the fact here set forth.
The lungs therefore are the love of air on the one hand ;
the bodily love of intellect on the other ; the processes by
which they inspire the atmosphere being the same as those
by which they rouse and inspire the mind; thus deep
breath will produce deep attention ; at all events, a careful
minding of the air as it is drawn in, if no more intellectual
object be present to the brain. It is here to be remarked,
that whether we say that organs have feelings, likings, or
loves, it amounts to the same thing : for feelings are agree-
able or disagreeable ; and an agreeable feeling once expe-
rienced, leads to a desire to obtain it again at another time,
which desire, the child of love, henceforth becomes the ac-
tive point in the feeling. Therefore the eye is impregnated
with the love of the visible world, and the skin, of the tan-
gible world, from the first sensations onwards; and to
gratify these eye-loves and touch-loves, the body is set in
motion in the service of their organs. It will here be re-
marked again that we are speaking of full-grown senses
and sensations, and that we by no means enter upon any
question connected with the growth and genesis of these
feelings.
We have now therefore located sense, bodily-felt intelli-
gence, and the feelings, respectively in the organs of the
senses, in the lungs, and in the heart itself, and we have
seen that the organic system of thought is parallel in the
three cases, and that the same reason, namely, feeling and
speech, which has caught light in the eye, and hearing in
the ear, has also surprised spirit in the lungs, and love in
the heart.* This short analysis suffices to mark out cer-
* Let it be borne in mind that we use the term love in no limited
or sexual sense, but as embracing those active central impulsions that
connect mankind everywhere to their human objects.
224 THE HUMAN HEART.
tain distinct continents in the psychological map, and to
shew that the living body, though all compacted of feeling,
yet distributes it countrywise ; the heart being the central
land, where accordingly the feelings proper inhabit, whilst
the term feeling in the other parts is changed for that of
sense, respiration, &c. Terms however shift according to
the occasion when our course lies through new contexts
and expediences.
We now then assume it as indisputable that the feelings
dwell in some sense in the heart, for experience dictates
this conclusion : we feel their correspondence with a cer-
tain glow, beating and sense in the breast, and this unfail-
ing correspondence it is, that forces us to say that the
cause is present and agent where the effect is felt. Lan-
guage, to which we have referred, is the voice of this well-
known fact. Let us now adopt this law of correspondence
as an instrument, and proceed to apply it further.
The physical heart, we will presume, lies before us, and
as we have now exhausted the present information to be
derived from our feelings, we can only regard the heart in
its physiological functions. The question is, whether these
exhibit any correspondence with the emotions; whether
auricle and ventricle, and their bloods, are expressive of
passion, somewhat as the face is expressive ; whether, in
short, the structures of the heart in action are not a coun-
tenance in which the play of the feelings may be detected ?
If so, we shall make matters of feeling into fresh objects of
sight and sense. Let us try. The attempt is one of
synthesis, or the putting together of the pieces of language
and passion on the one hand, and of the pieces of heart or
blood on the other, in one doctrinal machine. In such a
composition, it is manifest that fittingness will be the test
of truth ; and that if the love-heart interlocks with the
fleshly heart by the dovetails of a just analogy, what we
THE HEART'S PASSION FOR THE BLOOD. 225
at present propose will be accomplished. We shall see
the veritable clasps by which the two are grappled in word
and in fact.
Certainly the heart shews all the signs of loving the
blood, which is the fearful and recognized symbol and
casket of human life, for it grasps at the blood eighty times
every minute. With quadrumanous hands it clutches the
passing life-stream. If the life is indeed the blood, and is
in the blood, as the Bible says, then the heart grasping
the blood, is the very love of life, and in our case, of
human life. Its eagerness is apparent from its work, as
the busy hands of men shew that they also are con amore
in their occupations. And if we love the blood of our race
and kindred, and embrace it through the skin and outworks
of their bodies, much more does the heart love its own
blood, which it squeezes hot and naked with its ruddy
fingers. Our own affections, which we interpret from their
actions, are far-off types of this affection in the heart ;
which moreover shews an answerableness to love's common
signs, such as no other organ testifies. There is a fiery
and as it were abstract purity in this passion of our bosom's
lord. If we love ourselves, the heart loves the life which
is the self of self; and this love it shews by grasp after
grasp, by a zeal which never sleeps, by fresh manipula-
tions of the blood with every varying feeling ; in short, by
all the signs which shew that we ourselves are in active
and impassioned pursuit of our objects ; but these signs,
raised to a constancy that belongs to no will, but only to
nature, or the fatal will of will ; and exempted from that
fatigue which makes night and day into the blessing of
mankind ; for the heart is its own day, and works in the
fire-factories whether the outward man be turned from it,
as in sleeping, or revolve round to consciousness of its in-
fluences, when his morning feelings seem to rise. The
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226 THE HUMAN HEART.
heart then corresponds to the love of human life by its
everlasting grasps and embracings of human blood. By
its deeds we know it.
It may however be said of this reason, that when we
see other persons acting, we infer that they have feelings
of a particular kind, because in similar actions of our own
we experience these feelings ourselves : but that the works
of our hearts are not a parallel case, and therefore we can-
not argue that hearts have feelings. To this we answer,
first, that hearts, as we proved before, have feelings, and
we will not be dispossessed of a truth which we have got.
Moreover we are not arguing that question, but are inves-
tigating how hearts shew their feelings ; and we have now
found that they do this as we ourselves do. But secondly,
we do not say that the case between our feelings and theirs
is parallel, but correspondent and like ; and of the attribu-
tion of feelings and life in this way, common sense gives
many examples. Why do we attribute passions to the
tiger or the dog, or gentle feelings to the lamb, but be-
cause we know that passion and feeling may descend many
stages beneath our consciousness, and alter so that we can
never experience them, and yet be passion and feeling
still? All we contend for is, that the heart is similarly
circumstanced ; that it is in no sense dead, but as the old
anatomists said, "the animal in the animal;" in which
case we treat it as we treat the animal kingdom, and infer
life, feeling, instinct, ends, as the account of its operations.
Our own experience and faculties are therefore as fair an
organon for our study of the heart and the other viscera,
as for the investigation of natural history, to all whose
subjects, feeling and thought give their own lives, in the
certainty that they will fit, and more than fit, the case.
And in proportion as the feeling is broad and common, and
the thought scientific, the better does this method succeed
THE FAMILY AURICLE. 227
in exploring the actions and habits of the lower creatures.
We design then here at first to shew, that we may safely,
and must inevitably, transplant that life which we under-
stand, into the heart, as we have already carried it into
zoology.
Dismissing this general sign, of the heart's eagerness,
passion or love for the blood, and noticing that it is com-
mon to all the four chambers, we have now to come to
details, or to the specific auricles and ventricles.
Let us commence from the right auricle, which is " the
first part of the heart to live, and the last to die ;" the
primordial feeling and the latest passion of our bodies.
And first we have to ask, what it is that this hand would
seize ? For the hand has many objects, but wherever it
closes, it has a desire of possession, and the grasp is pro-
portioned to the object. And so of the heart, which is the
visceral will, or the inmost hand of the body. Now vessels
and their contents signify one and the same thing under
active and passive conditions, and as each part desires to
perpetuate its life, each grasps at its alter ego in the fluid
form. The fluid therefore is the index of the solid which
holds it ; the organic cup answers to the cordial ; the ruby
of the chalice is the wine in a mineral metamorphosis.
We have therefore to interpret the desires of this auricle
by noticing their objects. What are they ? The old blood
of the body, the elderly blood of the brain, itself wise or
cerebrated by its visit to those upper regions, the return
blood of the heart, and the white young blood, or the con-
joint chyle and lymph, meet together in one common
chamber. The end and beginning of life are there repre-
sented ; at the point of completion of the circle the ex-
tremes of existence touch. It is the house of the heart
where the elders behold their posterity about them. All
that could die of the old blood during its last generation or
228 THE HUMAN HEART.
circulation, has been put aside through the medium of
many secretions, and the activity of numerous organs, and
in the heart again it is a mere abstract or passion, immor-
tal for at least another circle : hence the old blood is but
the old in the young, about to continue the gyre through
another curriculum of ages. Father-love and mother-love,
or the love of race, naturally exists in such a group ; the
bond which seizes the inmates is that which makes families
out of individuals. The tide of feelings sets in from this
first grasp of the heart, whose contents in the right auricle
are embraced by the family tie. The free blood receives
the impression, and is a patriarchal clan. The right auri-
cle, the first parent of the blood, sends down parental love,
as the first river of life, through all its generations, and
also recruits itself every moment from its latest offspring.
On opening this chamber, then, we see the perspective of
race in its various phases ; processions of parents and chil-
dren, the everlasting progeny of the heart : man has met
man by his first points of contact ; the old are as gods and
influences to the young, and the blood of our hearts is no
longer vague and venous, but it is housed, and feels in the
home the powers of time descending from behind and from
above, and giving it the first force of past and future in
the attachment of race. We gather therefore from the
correspondence, that this fire of natural affection plays upon
this home and its inhabitants, and teaches them to be pos-
terity. We call this the hereditary auricle, into which the
blood flows by the pressure of fate, in the same way as
generations descend from the sources of parentage.
The blood is now no longer indeterminate, but has re-
ceived the contagion of one life ; the first cord of love or
union has been passed around it, and it is full of the house-
hold warmth ; the right auricle, the ancestor of all, has
laid hands upon its generations. But what in the mean-
THE VENTRICLE OF FRIENDSHIP. 229
time has happened ? The solid has grasped at the fluid,
the love at its object ; but as between solid and fluid, where
the solid is an open circular channel, it is plain that the
total object can never be caught ; the attempt at seizure
forces it into progress : the maid pursued by the urgent
lover is turned into a stream by the friendly gods, just as
he seems about to overtake her. The right ventricle re-
ceives the one -lived blood, and fills with it. What is the
character of this new object of the heart, at which it is
next to grasp ?
Into the right auricle several streams of blood distinctly
emptied themselves, old from the body and the brain,
middle-aged from the heart itself though this in small
quantity compared with the rest in the hereditary cavity
and infantile blood or chyle in the current of the rest. It
was family which the heart desired, and the family tie
which its contraction took and gave. The feelings which
we have in our breasts were there at work, and are always
there at work, in minimis, upon our blood, making us na-
turally into parents from our first drops upwards. In the
right ventricles we have another stage. All the life or
blood which is not permanently familiar, eludes the grasp
of the auricle, and belongs to another chamber. In the
right ventricle there are no distinct streams from different
sources, but its blood enters it by a single great orifice, in
one uniform gush. The right ventricle has been aptly
termed the mixing-vessel or chaos of the heart. Parentage
and non-age have both disappeared, and the area is equality
and fraternity. The common feelings of man to man,
philanthropy or the friendly affections, are at work here ;
those feelings which know of no distinctions, but only of
brotherhood, toleration, and even-handed intercourse. In
the family loves the tie is unequal, descending from parents
to children, but in no similar proportion reciprocated ; this
230 THE HUMAN HEART.
being necessary in the beginning of the circulation, in
which progress as a spring of pressure is the wheel that
sets the rest in motion. In the philanthropic passions,
however, the tie is double, coming from both sides ; hand
grasps hand ; the muscular contraction of the organ is
closer ; the ventricle of our friendship is of twofold strength.
Here then we have the blood-population in the fiery palace
of the heart, themselves all feeling, with no distinction of
high or low, old or young, father or child, and what direc-
tion can the feelings take but that of universal community,
of friendship in its various phases ? The mere apposition
of lives in such a place, and under these circumstances of
unrestraint, is sufficient to produce the relation that throws
down the walls of other distinctions between man and man.
We augur then that the friendly emotions play especially
upon the right ventricle ; that it is there they are felt, and
there they live, and enter the blood, giving it this tie mo-
mentaneously, as a needful element in the constitution of
the bodily society.
In these investigations let us never lose sight of the
keeping of the subject ; of the fluid which we are pursuing,
and which is both blood and life ; and of the organ, which is
both heart and feeling, that is to say, heart in both senses.
Blood in the heart is different from blood in the head or
the belly ; in the former case it is alive with passion ; in
the latter, it hungers and thirsts ; while in the head it is
subordinated to spirit. Each organ has its genius loci,
which possesses everything, even the most transient guest,
in the organ. To come then within the sphere of the heart,
is to feel and to be all that the heart is and means ; for
the heart is haunted ground, and there is no escaping its
influences. So it is that when youth and maiden come
under the grasp of the heart, or when life carries them
into the sexual auricle, they are not the same people, nor
THE BLOOD ENTERING PUBLIC LIFE. 231
have they the same names, as when under the parental
roof, or in the friendly conclave ; but love has located them
afresh, and gives them its own new names. This is a
needful memorandum in the laws of the heart and the
blood. We have feeling, the fire of life, already given by
fact in this organ ; we need not endeavour to import it ;
the business is, to see it in its place.
The grasp of the right ventricle, by which it gratifies its
friendship, throws the life upon the lungs, where the blood
and the larger world first meet, and here the humane chaos,
which is at its height in the pulmonary artery, begins to
be discriminated into a new order. The spirit of consider-
ation comes in the spaces of the lungs. In these reservoirs
of the voice, the blood hears and takes part in the public
murmur expressed by the breathing. It speaks forth its
obstacles, and puts them off, telling its mind, and regu-
lating its attachments. Thought and breath, as we have
already seen, are the united spirit of the lungs ; thought
and breath only subsisting by virtue of supplies from the
world. The blood raised to the height of breathing, is full
of public imaginations ; it has thrown aside childish things,
and is polar to a new and vast ideal ; the private robes and
windy latitudes of its childhood are put aside in expirations,
and the virile or public toga is put on, with the new airs,
imaginations or liberties that belong to adolescence. It is
inspired with the service of the corporate body. The tran-
sition from the veins to the arteries is an incarnation of the
passing over of life or feeling from the private to the pub-
lic stage ; of mankind meeting the world, and flaming with
a new lustre of eye when the great objects are recognized.
The public air is thenceforth inserted into the feelings,
whereof each goes round with an oxygen mirror that shews
it the universal in the individual, and makes it shape its
232 THE HUMAN HEART.
face and gestures into historic parallels. Every globule of
blood thence conceits itself that it is a man-maker and a
world-maker, and it is braced with the girdle of the public
strength. The feeling in the lungs accordingly is one of
inspiration and erection, in which the heart's proper feel-
ings swim as in a new atmosphere of power.
The change of the blood, from venous to arterial, takes
place in the lungs ; a change which is ably represented in
the countenance under the influence of enlarging or enliven-
ing passions. The glow of the cheeks when life is in force,
is due to the same cause as the glow of the arterial blood
(p. 200). Powerful healthy feeling is red and burning ;
and is the true blood and the only animal or living heat,
to which nature, with deep architecture (p. 82), adds
mineral or dead heat, itself also red, as we see in the fire.
Cheeks and fires are the reasons why blood is red ; inani-
mate countenances and cinders are the reasons why it is
dark and venous. Why do we glow but because we are
alive with some public spirit or motive ? and why does the
blood glow, but because it is alive with that public spirit
the air, and bound thenceforth to act according to the pres-
sure, and to assume the mission of the universe ? We are
not insensible to the pleasant weakness of this theory, but
we are treating of the circulation and twisting reasons into
circles. To exhibit it let us say, that the arterial blood is
red because the passions are red, as witness the face while
they inflame it ; and on the other hand that the face is red
because the impassioned blood is red. Truly a circular
logic, and dear to the heart therefore. We should despair
of understanding any organ if we could not feel with it and
follow it ; and to follow the heart, drives us into self-sup-
porting axioms. For the heart is a proposition that never
goes beyond a bare statement, but pumps through us the
THE REDNESS OF PASSION. 233
substance of self-evidence, which is the body of our body.
The truths of blood and feeling are the ipse dixits of the
heart.
We have now left the private or venous passions, whereof
the first, the family life, ancestral house or right auricle,
represents the impetus of time, causing all the movement
of man and blood by the descent and tradition of genera-
tions ; while the second venous passion, the friendly and
philanthropic home, or right ventricle, represents the in-
discriminate brotherhood of man, which gathers up the
race in the second and highest of the private bonds. Both
of these, as we say, are private or venous ; domestic in
the narrow or the wide sense : in their largest cases it is
the private sphere expanding itself; for a whole clan is
private and immiscible still with the rest of the community,
and the largest friendly reunion still contemplates privacy
or intimacy, and would cease as such the moment it were
touched by the laws of another love, or of social rank.
Both these loves are hot black-hot, or red-hot ; but neither
of them can flame, because they have not met the air,
which is the public in contradistinction to the private.
Public feelings are therefore the arterial blood of the heart,
while private feelings are the venous. A complete turn of
objects exists between the two ; the right side of the blood
becomes the left and weak side seen in the airy mirror,
and the left side becomes the right, and sits at the right
hand of power. Every public object proceeds from the
public to the individual from the common air into the
blood j whereas the private objects run from the individual
to the public, or from the blood towards the air. The
meeting-point of these two efforts, and of the feelings
which run with them, is in the capillaries of the lungs,
where the air converts the one into the other, and where
consequently the man becomes, and feels himself, inspired.
234 THE HUMAN HEART.
The lungs pour the blood into the left auricle, and the
first moment of arterial life is spent here ; the first feel-
ing that blushes and runs over from the redundant passion.
The beginning of virility is sexual knowledge 5 the mirage
of Eve at the fountain is a vision of rosy flesh seen as her
own, and yet felt as other than her own. Love stands at
the gate of the larger life, and revels in its flower. The
f"arterial lungs are the puberty of the blood, coming from
the dreams or imaginations, with whose hints and incentives
the air is full. The left auricle is the marriage-bed where
the tension of this bursting life is continually taken down,
and renewed continually. Accordingly this auricle or bed
is the most hidden of the chambers, decently curtained
away by the rest, and least to be felt from the outside.
It supports, and is supported by, the family auricle, with
which it moves in step ; the synchronism of parts with
different functions shewing the harmony of different ends,
and their ultimate working for each other. The first ar-
terial life of man is then sexual love, whose early stage,
preceding conjunction, is incarnated or ensanguined in the
arterial circulation of the lungs, and its consummation is
in the left auricle, which grasps at the paired and mated
blood, to realize sex and marriage as one of the four corner
stones on which all flesh is to be founded. The amorous
feelings therefore play upon the left auricle, where nature
is always doing their work.
We have drawn a distinction between the private or
venous, and the public or arterial sides of the heart, but
it might seem as if this left auricle and the passion that
lives in it were both of them of an intensely private cha-
racter. Let there be a great distinction noted then between
private and secret functions. A friendship that is noticed
by all the world is not the less a private friendship, whilst
a marriage consummated in the most secret bower, and in
THE MARRIAGE AURICLE. 235
the bosom of midnight, is public and regular notwithstand-
ing. The council-chambers of nations are most secret,
and yet most public in their relations ; they resume the
state in a concentrated form. Hence the public chambers,
or left side of the heart, retire from view to transact the
public business of the feelings ; the private business is
comparatively open and forward, and is not meddled with
because it is known.
But is the sexual relation arterial, aerial, or public?
Philosophers discuss at great length the me and the not
me, and the relation between them. There is no such
instance of this as sex, which is me and not me recipro-
cally ; each incommunicable to the other, and each fitting
and enjoying the other. Man's most external world (for
he has several) is woman, the living mould of himself and
his faculties. In her he first knows that there must be
real size in the feelings, or two beings, who may be con-
joined, but cannot be identified, could not be together
there. In short, sex or distinction is the beginning of
breadth and body, of resisting spaces which can never
sink into each other, but must lie side by side. Moreover
the sexual distinction is the most manifest between human
beings, and the dress which makes it secret makes it
public also.
We repeat then that the left auricle is that in which
the analogue of love proper is introduced into the blood,
and where, by the laws of harmony, that love is physi-
cally felt in the blood which is doing its work infinitesi-
mally. The reasons of this in brief are, that the first
adolescence of the blood is passed here, and love crops
existence in its bloom ; that it moves with the right or
family auricle, there being a co- existence of the conjugal
and parental ties ; that it leads into the patriotic heart or
left ventricle ; the state being the congregate of all the
236 THE HUMAN HEART.
broad or spacious relations, of which marriage is the unit
and the beginning ; finally, though at the top of the public
impulses, it is the most secret of the chambers, and is not
merely the house, but the bed of the organ. Whatever
difficulty there be in exploring it may be assigned to its
own crimson modesty, and will furnish a fresh proof of its
chaste or sexual signification.
The grasp of the auricle, which consummates this life
in the blood, drives it onwards, as before, into the next
chamber, or the left ventricle. The signification of this
fourth heart cannot be doubtful. It is the accumulated
power of the passions. The blood that it throws forth is
scarlet with force it is the systemic circulation. It is
synchronous with the friendly heart, but fourfold stronger.
It forms the apex of the cordial pyramid, which beats
against the ribs, and aims at the world through its dearest
flesh. It is public feeling in all its forms, and we have
already anticipated its name, and called it the patriotic
heart. Rule and empire throb for ever here, founded in
the purple of the blood. The body corporeal streams from
the height of the left ventricle, as the body politic from
the heart of dominion, which is the instinctive architect
of the state. If vicegerency of functions establishes con-
nection between life and organism, then the love of country
or empire must sit upon the throne of this ventricle, whose
lordly stroke reaches the confines of the body, and seizes
the central blood itself with a conqueror's grasp.
In the successive consideration of the blood or feelings
in the heart, the life of the blood is an ultimate fact, which
we need not endeavor to account for. It is a given truth,
that the heart or blood has the feelings, and it is no part
of our business now to speculate upon it. As it is with
the child, so it is with the young blood it has the capa-
city of going through human life, and of being and doing
THE PATRIOTIC HEART. 237
whatever lies in, or issues from, the heart. Our enquiry
then is, mainly as to the incentives or circumstances that
call forth its faculties ; in short, we have chiefly to chro-
nicle the play of its human games. These once depicted,
will answer the question of the reasons of life more deeply
than that question can now be asked.
But let us notice in this place that the life which the
blood feels in the heart is cumulative. Each cavity seizes
it with a feeling whose effects it does not lose. The family
bond is assumed in the right auricle, and though rendered
latent in the right ventricle, where it gives place to the
friendly tie, yet throughout, the blood is the child of the
heart, and remembers the household fire. Hence life is
added to life, and the four " vital principles" of the heart
are simultaneously in the adult blood. It is amusing to
consider how any philosophers can have sought for the
vital principle in so many-lived a creature as man. The
vulgar, in assigning to the cat "nine lives," have shewn
an example of common sense, which might well have been
applied towards a being whose vital principle is as organic
as his body, and has its very parts over again, or how
could the body be alive ? Hence in the right auricle, the
blood-child is one-lived, or is in the parental leash ; in the
right ventricle, the blood-youth is double-lived, has re-
ceived a second squeeze of passion, or represents friend-
ship's hand in hand ; in the left auricle, the blood-lover is
treble-lived, or is lover, friend and parent in one, the three
being inseparable ; in the left ventricle, the blood-man is
in the service of the state, which is the public ordination
of all the feelings, or the carrying them out into the body.
Hence the left ventricle does not so much alter the blood
as receive it all, and give it high public fire. We now
then see what it is that the heart confers on the body, and
that it is the same set of endowments, only organic and
238 THE HUMAN HEART.
infinitesimal, that the same heart gives to the man, and to
the society.
Such is our equation between the heart of feeling and
the heart of flesh, which are the same heart, only in differ-
ent powers. The blood-heart = \/ heart ; the love-heart
= heart 2 ; the heart itself being that invisible pulser which
we feel under our ribs, and the knowledge of which can
only be filled by a conjoint corporeal and social anatomy,
or a hearty exploration of all death and life. We have
indeed drawn out the parallel on only the most general
grounds, and know far too little of the feelings on the one
side, and of the heart on the other, to enter into details.
But if the learned will bring dead hearts, and the simple
their living ones, to a fair comparison, we can now no
longer doubt that each will adopt the other with most
specific joy and claspings.
Our hearts, we have said, grasp at their objects, and we
have tacitly assumed that they get what they grasp. But.
how is this, if they simply drive the blood away, and pump
it into circulation ? In this case life would be not a sub-
stance but a mere stimulus, a perpetual alcohol of illusions.
Let us remember that we are treating of body, and of a
realm where everything is bodily. Does the heart then
obtain nothing of that which it clutches ? Is the ox muz-
zled that treads out the corn ? And is all the real blood
thrown outwards from the monarch of the feelings ? Ana-
logy forbids. If the heart is a hand that grasps, it is also
a person that gets ; it is a very lord of its own objects.
The caverns with which it is sculptured, are so many
means for retaining the blood ; the little mouths with
which these are studded, are eagerly absorbent and reten-
tive ; and as the heart contracts, it fills its substance with
immediate blood, by the same act with which it drives the
mass of the blood into circulation (p. 208). The heart,
THE DIVERS SPEEDS AND OBJECTS OF THE BLOOD. 239
we aver, takes the central and most living blood. This it
does by the love-laws and justice of physics. The best
blood is the fleetest, and enters the cavities first, skirting
along the walls (p. 208) ; the next living is another layer
which comes up afterwards ; and lastly, into the middle,
comes up the slowest blood in the rear. The assembled
blood in each cavity is grouped in a peculiar form, and
contraction works upon it according to the form. The
first part of the contraction is stimulated by the fastest and
most feeling blood proper to that cavity, which is driven
by the dead pressure of the central blood, and the counter-
pressure of the solid walls, into the substance of the heart
itself, where it constitutes the realized life of that one
feeling or heart -beat. The racers however are different
for the different cavities ; the family-blood is fastest, and
wins the cup, in the right auricle ; the amorous blood, in
the left auricle ; and so forth ; and centre and circumfer-
ence vary as the goal is changed. We see all this well
enough in life or in the play of the great heart. Each
being is prompt and rapid in the working of his own rela-
tions ; he who is a laggard in friendship, comes to the sur-
face, and shines with vigor and promptitude when love
catches him ; shewing that each man belongs to a centre,
and lives eminently in and from its fires. And for the
parallel of the first point, we know that the heart is not
satisfied with grasping at its objects, and feeling their slip-
periness and flux, but that it must have possession, or the
hollowness of perpetual mockery makes it cease to grasp.
Although then the blood of the right side of the heart
is private or venous, yet it is its most spirited portion that
enters the living solid of the heart, and feeds the home-
fires that blaze on this side of our nature. Thus this blood
is more than arterial in any ordinary sense. We will here
also note another point in the doctrine of the heart, viz.,
240 THE HUMAN HEART.
that the flesh is prior in dignity to the cavity ; the flesh
being the substance of the heart itself, while the cavity is
only the general high-road of the circulation. Harvey's
great discovery has had the effect of throwing this obvious
truth into the back- ground for a season, but by the love
we bear to whatever is solid and central in our hearts, it
must be replaced, and the doctrine of the circulation
subordinated to it. The body will be but a hollow shell,
so long as the heart is regarded from its hollows, and not
from its substances. But in order to investigate these, a
new course of observations and injections will be necessary,
undertaken expressly under the light which the corre-
spondence of the feelings casts upon the physical organ.
Here we begin to see how profound is the reason for
that doctrine that the heart absorbs its own blood through
its walls, and does not depend upon the coronary rills for
its supply, which would beggar it of what it grasps, and
put an end to its motives for contraction. We must never
suppose that the heart's wisdom lies in doing that which
we should be fools to do in similar circumstances. If all
the stores of the earth passed through our hands, should
we transship them, and then get our own sustenance back
in a little skiff from a foreign country ? Should we not
open a retail on the spot, to secure ourselves against diffi-
culties, winds and tides ; and come as near to the whole-
sale stores as possible, avoiding the dearness and losses of
trade? And if it were the monarch's palace through which
all the goods were carried, as in the case of the sovereign
heart, would he not take the pick of every object on the spot,
without trusting to any honesty less than that of his own
eyes ? Our hearts feed more at the fountain-head than our
societies ; what is wise in our conscious arrangements is
but the broken meat of the organic wisdom : the passions
browse upon the mountains of the heart, and lap the blood
THE COMMUNION OF THE FEELINGS. 241
of the life-covenant at first hand. We feel that they are
our bodily life that they are our blood, and that if any-
thing in the world goes direct to its objects, it is they.
For they are the exemplars of all-grasping, all-possessing,
and all-holding man ; and the heart is they.
But we have to notice further a point touched on in the
preceding pages, viz., the mixture by emissary rills of the
blood in the various cavities (p. 208). On our principles,
it is a psychological necessity, and must suggest long trains
of experiments. Nothing, we know, can be more mixed
or miscible than the great primordial feelings, and the
mixtures can never take place without mixtures between
the blood of the contiguous chambers. To instance only
the case of the conjugal and parental relations, how could
these subsist unless by the most liberal communications ?
The parental love generally contains the conjugal, and
vice versti. The feelings, as four pure atoms, would be as
barren as nature's chemistry if it consisted only of simple
substances. In fact we may say that the main office of
the heart consists in blendings ; in the intertwinement of
private and public life ; in making countless binary, ter-
tiary and other compounds of the feelings. In proportion
to the combination, life arises rich, delicate and lovely from
the ground of a few simple elements, and fair kingdoms
adorn what would otherwise be a stony level. On the
purely moral side, the object of all existence and circum-
stance, is to produce single-heartedness throughout the
relations ; to universalize every feeling by tincturing it
with the rest ; to absorb the egotism and correct the weak-
ness of each through something of a wider love inserted
into each from the others ; in short, to give the heart its
last unity, by impregnating the private with the public,
and carrying the former into developments, and the latter
into exactitudes, that neither could attain on its own
242 THE HUMAN HEART.
account. Therefore in the feeling heart, which is the true
.fleshly heart in contradistinction to the stony, mixture or
communion are the law of life ; and we arrive at the deduc-
tion that the heart is a high forum of intercommunication.
The chambers are exclusive enough to constitute separate
ends, but not to realize that fancied independence and un-
neighborliness which nature abhors. For nothing is so
fluid as feeling ; nothing knows so little of walls as love ;
of barriers as ambition; of difficulties, whether fire or
water, as friendship ; or of time's weary limits, as family
joy. And thus we conclude on this side that the truths of
communion are those which are proper to the heart ; and
that they are greater than the truths of trade or circula-
tion, which are proper to the arteries.
But how are we to see this in the anatomical heart ? It
is true, the heart itself tells us that it is there, but how
shall we make it visible ? In the first place, by holding it
as among "the greatest of facts, and not losing heart in it.
In the second place, by investigations and injections with
an end and a purpose. In any case, the beginning of
success must lie in the belief that the physical heart is the
centre of blood communion, as the feeling heart is the
centre of human communion ; a fact which is very certain,
though how. the case stands has yet to be worked out.
Something however has been probably contributed to this
by Swedenborg, in his deductions respecting the intercom-
munications of the cavities. In the meantime we affirm,
that the heart, which unites all the feelings and their
blood-streams, is the bodily blood-maker ; that its blood
contained in its own flesh is so transcendent, that it keeps
gyrating through the centres many times before it is
fatigued or exhausted ; that it is more constant to its ob-
jects than any of the blood of the body ; thus that the
circulation of the heart is not to be termed circulation but
THE COMMUNION OF THE FEELINGS. 243
community ; or if circulation, that it is many times cir-
cular a knot of living rings ; that the left side flows into
the right, and vice versa, without the intervention of the
systemic or pulmonary circulations ; the heart being a
spheral thing of cycle and epicycle, a globe of golden
girdles suspended in the central life. Through this passes
the great arterial curve which attaches it to the earth,
and the pulmonic ring by which it is hooked to the air ;
but the heart, so far as it is true to its place, does not
swerve from its own roundness, but remains in every
respect central, in its feelings alike as in its blood.
If this be so, it would appear that the ancients were
engaged upon this higher problem of the circulation, but
were unable to solve it, when Harvey came, and took us
down to a lower field, where truth could become more defi-
nite at the time. They felt the fluctuations of nature in
their bosoms, and argued that the blood went to and fro in
its channels. There was a manliness and mutuality in the
thought beyond the science of the time ; for certainly the
immediate relations of the heart are of a more spiritual
power, than that large and roundabout intercourse which
makes the tour of the world before it touches the centre.
But the incompleteness of the latter theory, its leanness in
moral significance, its comparative heartlessness, had to be
seen, before the former could touch upon physics. More-
over the harmony and union between the body and com-
mon life, required to be known and stated, before ever an eye
that could see the heart of man could come into the world.
But a time has arrived when the feelings of the ancients
can be vindicated, or when the communion, or goings and
returnings, of the heart itself, can be added to the doctrine
of the circulation.
It may be urged that we are reasoning all along upon
preconceived opinions, which is not the method in vogue,
M 2
244 THE HUMAN HEART.
and that we are expecting nature to conform to our ideas.
We reply, that we are investigating the heart of man, in
which the main evidence is the feelings. From the height
and in the compass of these we would observe and experi-
ment. The relation between them and the heart is of
mathematical power, and makes prediction into a duty.
We see that they cannot live in harmony with the heart,
imless it be so and so; we argue therefore towards the
fact ; but leave science to find it out. That the present
notions cannot be the last, is clear as day ; for there is not
a common feeling of mankind that attests them ; not a
thought of human life that connects itself with them ; not
a good or a brave heart among us that sees itself in their
glass; and not a moral truth which reposes upon their
basis, in the same way as moral relations are founded upon
the human heart. They are no better than tricks of hy-
draulics, which are dead mummeries in our spiritual city.
The living body disowns them with horror as having no
souls.
But what a series of moral parallels the current physical
doctrine would suggest ! Hearts that grasp at their ob-
jects for lifetimes, but never catch a drop : disappoint-
ment made into an organic principle ! The soul and body
founded upon illusions ! Hearts that are as dead as flesh
can make them when sundered from our well-known
life ! Hearts only cognizable post mortem, and without a
spark of outspokenness or candour ; not to be trusted till
they are stiff and cold ! Hearts without individuality, and
which throw everything away upon other organs ! Hearts
that are fourfold prisons, each a solitary cell, where the
felon-neighbors feel each other thumping, but have no
intercourse! Hearts whose food consists in their own
regurgitations I Hearts in short which are bloodless, life-
less, sympathyless, the fools of peddling rills of circum-
MORAL PARALLELS. 2-45
stance, purveyors of blood to the troughs of the senses !
Carbon and oxygen carriers, or coal-porters and scullions
to the body at large ! Truly materialism is never so lu-
dicrous as when we see its upshot translated into the terms
of life.
Our aim is the very contrary. We desire to see in the
body a heart that gains its object every moment, and in so
doing, ministers to the body at large. In the man, a heart
that throbs with the enjoyment of his own life. We desire
to take the doctrine of the heart from our noblest breasts,
and to have the kingdom of the living body come over
again in the sciences of the physical body. We desire to
see the heart central in its relations, unspent in its opera-
tions, a communal sun, giving life, but keeping life for
itself. We desire to see its separate affections open as
day to the warmth or streams of their neighbor's lives and
fires. We desire to see the heart built up before all things
from its own immediate objects, and provoked to life by
no coronary squirts, by no circuitous after- thoughts. In
short, we desire that the heart should be alive and loving;
that the blood should be the life ; very much in physics
after the same fashion that the Bible commands for our
hearts in that which in these days of divorce is thought to
be a different sphere. But whether or not the present
doctrines of the heart may not be equivalent to the treat-
ment of man's heart by the world, we leave to others to
follow out.
In this place we will take occasion to illustrate to the
reader the nature of abstract ideas, taking our instance
from the feelings, which are so vital to us, and generally
considered to be of an abstract nature when thought about.
What are human feelings ? In the concrete, i. e., as sub-
stantial things, they are clearly the man himself alive to
certain relations. Thus, a friendly feeling is no other
246 THE HUMAN HEART.
than a particular friend through whom is passing that
motion or emotion which produces certain results when
occasion serves. So too friendship is the gathered maniple
of all friends, quick with these emotions, and gravitating
like an 'atmosphere to satisfy them. What then are the
feelings in the abstract? They are the hearts of these
same people with attention inwardly directed to them ; the
skin and ribs of the manly image are peeled away, and
the naked heart is contemplated. The true process of
abstraction here consists in taking away everything but
the heart or centre, and regarding it alone. The philoso-
phers have made it lie in removing everything, in which
case it consists of words unattached to objects. Whereas
its essence is, to find the core of the thing in hand, in
order to see its relations centrally. Thus again in the
case of the mind : in the concrete, the mind is the man ;
in the abstract, the mind is the brain ; the difference be-
tween the two lying no whit in bodily substance, but in
clothing or development. For "pure mind" is a living
brain ; and mind, as commonly used, is a living person.
It is necessary to carry this ballast about, lest words
should fly away with us. It is especially necessary in
treating of the heart, and of the incarnation of the popular
heart in the scientific one. But by no process of abstrac-
tion can we decompose the heart, unless indeed we find
out a deeper bodily centre, which is the heart of heart :
which organism will then be a more pure abstraction.
We have indicated this, because the philosophical belief
that feelings are not incarnate, has been a principal reason
why the scientific world, duped by metaphysical terms,
has never thought for .a moment of seeking the feelings in
the heart.
A living anatomy then gives us the abstractions of which
human life presents the concrete substances ; and the sci
WHAT ABSTRACTIONS ARE. 247
ence of the present inner man consists in tallying the world
le monde with the organic frame, as it were checking
the one by the other, and translating the one into the other.
It does not, however, consist in reasoning upon language,
but in treating language as one among organic things, dip-
ping it in the blood-streams, and setting it piece for piece
against flesh.
Another point to be noted is, that as our plan is one of
conciliation, we by no means wish to set up the heart
against the head, or to deny feelings of all descriptions to
our minds. We grant, on the contrary, that the whole
frame or soul-house is made of nothing else, but in various
degrees. The man radiates from the central parts, but
reposes on the way at several stations, where he is refreshed
with new names and characters. That part where the
grosser consciousness begins, takes the credit of being the
prime habitation, whereas the feeling is a line with several
nodes, which runs down from tip to toe. Language, which
proceeds upon feeling, does not attribute to the brain what
is felt there only mentally, when there is another place
where the same thing is felt bodily. The affections are
the mind's as matters of thought, but not as matters of
speech. They belong by bodily or natural correspondence
to the heart, and are felt beating there, but their physical
motion is not felt in the brain. In short, but for the heart,
they would not be carnally felt at all, but only thought
about, and it is their carnal feeling which belongs to the
body. On account of this they are passions, for we bond
fide suffer them in the -heart, but command, or ought to
command, them in the head.
We are now then prepared for attributing in the same
bodily sense other things to the heart, without prejudice
to the mind, which in truth is built upon the heart. Each
feeling, let us remark, is surrounded by its own film of
248 THE HUMAN HEART.
imaginations, which body forth what it is, in a quasi-intel-
lectual glass. "The imagination of the heart" is the light
of which feeling is the fire, and causes every emotion to
shine with its own peculiar ray. Where are these imagi-
nations localized ? On the inner membrane of the organ,
we reply ; for the inward skin of the heart is its blood-face,
in which it expresses its desires. Skins are always facial
structures, and express what lies beneath them. By this
membrane, the blood and the heart understand each other,
or look in each other's eyes, which amounts to the same
thing. Imagination then is localized all over the cavities,
which are indeed the express moulds of the thoughts of
the heart, or as the Scripture phrases it, the chambers of
imagery. If we desire to know what these bodily imagi-
nations are, their shape is given in the fine membranes
which transmit the emotions of the blood, and the motions
of the heart, reciprocally to each other, and make them
acquainted.
Imagination, however, in this case the heart-house, con-
sists of a common chamber with two doors, and here we
remark that everywhere, in the mind and the body, desire
opens us by means of imaginations, and thus is the dilat-
ing, opening, or cavity-making faculty. We open our
mouths for food under the influence of hunger working
through and shaped by the imagination of a supply : we
make ourselves hollow, to take in what supports and en-
larges us. We open our hearts to receive new emotions ;
our minds, to receive new ideas. Every desire expands
us, and each is accompanied by an imagination of the
object, which limits the opening to something like the
proper size, or constitutes its walls. And so again we are
presented with the fact, that imagination is depicted upon
the inner walls or front face of the heart. We noticed in
the lungs the expansive correspondence of imagination,
THE IMAGINATION OF THE HEART. 249
where it is manifestly want (p. 135), or an elaborate
vacuum produced in the man by nature every moment, to
incite him to new infillings. Imagination then is the limit
to which the walls stand off, the horizon of present life, or
the arch of the caverns of desire. It is different for every
cavity, according to its shape, objects, colors, &c. ; but
wherever there is a cavity it lives, and peoples the hollow
with its teeming forms. It is here to be noted, that desire
and imagination are one and the same thing from two
points of view : the desire being the hollow or void that
we feel, per se, while the imagination is the same regarded
from the walls of the void, which imagine it full of what
it wants to occupy it. Thus the heart- desires dilate its
cavities before the blood is given them, and in the momen-
taneous void the imagination anticipates the tide which is
to come ; and the heart is in every stroke prepared, both
by roominess and welcome, for the new life. Thus again,
supply db extra is the law of existence, and preparation
for the supply a part of the same law.
In the heart we notice valves, which prevent the life
current from running back ; in the feeling heart there are
states, or spiritual valves, which hinder the life-loves from
regurgitation. To make this clear let us use an instance.
The present time has its own fixed point, from which we
regard the past. Manhood can only look at childhood
through manhood : the experience and circumstances of
the latter are the present state that flies up before our
eyes in all attempts to reach the past : in short, we cannot
go but only picture backwards. If the imagination is
very transparent, or not greatly colored by the present,
then we call it memory; if opaque, and full of existing
passions, then it is merely imagination, which cannot con-
ceive anything beyond the hour. In both cases, however,
it is properly termed a state, a film detached from the pre-
M3
250 THE HUMAN HEART.
sent, which is applied back against the past, and constitutes
a genuine valve in the feelings. Most of us are so full of
these valves, that we cannot attend to anything but the
present, or believe that we ever were little children, except
in the sense of time, but not of state. The present in
that case is made of iron, and the imagination of the past
is a hatchway that shuts up, and transmits no beam from
the infantine days. There are then valves in life, which
prevent it from going back. And indeed this valve-function
is universal. The flaming sword that turned every way
was none other than the valve of Paradise. Death also
is a valve, which nature keeps up during all moments of
investigation, or regurgitation, and only opens from the
other side when birth is to take place, and when nobody is
thinking that it is the same door through which the old
citizens have departed, and the new ones arrive. Yet the
same it is, only shut, contracted or earthy in the one case,
and open, alive, fleshly and maternal in the other.
Valves then in the feeling heart are the present by its
activities shutting away the past ; memories are the states
of the present in which it endeavors to image the past ;
and they live especially upon the roofs of the cavities, or
upon the outspread valves.
The heart desire causes it to grasp at the object with
which it is now filled, i. e., the blood, and because life can-
not go backwards, (for the present stands at its back, and
keeps it from the past,) it must go forward into the un-
known, where no imagination can hinder ; for imagination
is our limit, but of the future we have no imagination that
can dare to bound us. To-morrow is therefore always an
open door, and time streams onwards. And yet there is
an imagination of the future, which we term hope. Hope
however is not a wall, but a hole in our advancing lives
through which the firmament is seen. Its sky has an arch
THE HOPES OF THE HEART. 251
of definite blue, but this is, we know, not the end of things,
but mercy's color for the weary point of all our sight-rays.
Hope is that hole- work in our nature through which we
see the heaven, and to which we stream by propulsion from
behind, not less than by the unresistingness of the orifice,
and the attraction of the greater space, so immense and so
lovely. These hopes lead us on into the lungs or the
universe of the brain, and into the system, or the universe
of the body. As the past becomes impossible, the future
opens, or as the blood cannot regurgitate, it is driven into
circulation. Hopes then are the doors by which the little
cavities of desire and imagination communicate with the
great cavity where light shines in a superior degree, and
into which life courses, upon the principle of all fluids,
which run where there is the least resistance. This it is
that gives its uniform direction to the current of time ; to
the little rivers of our heart's blood; to the stream of experi-
ences from infancy onwards, and to the career of humanity
from Eden until to day ; the heart being the fleshly atom that
is involved or evolved in all these courses. The law is the
same for them all. Wherever time or blood is to run, a pre-
sent is constituted, a valvular state runs back, and hope be-
comes doubly open from the impossibility of retrogression.
Desire then is the heart- void or cavity, imagination is
the heart-wall, our present state is the heart-valve, and
our hopes of the future are the heart-orifices. Thus the
heart of feeling and the heart of flesh are identical in their
parts, and each is the other's.
It would be useless at present to carry the analysis and
synthesis further, for the subject would run into subtleties
if it were approached prematurely. Let us be content
with the above generalities, and bide our time for further
localization ; for the soul, long estranged, will not come to
live in the body all at once.
252 THE HUMAN HEART.
We may however here obviate an objection, viz., that in
the above views, we have taken no account of the anato-
mical elements of the heart ; but have attributed consci-
ousness and feeling to mere flesh, when yet it is known
that these are the attributes of nerves and nerve substance.
We do not deny it. But we observe in reply, that although
anatomically animals live in their nerves, yet the common
view is deeply right, that the animals themselves, with
their skin, bone, and flesh, are alive also. And we are
now looking upon the heart's four bodies as four entire
animals, each animated by its own life. In obedience to
this point of view, we study the natural history of the
heart-animals, in their habits, functions, actions, and not in
their nerves ; we study them alive, and know of no dis-
tinction into structures, but only into forms, as it were
faces, limbs, head, and the like. This study does not deny
the other, but postpones it so long as we are making a
separate object of the natural history of the heart.
Nor is our attribution of consciousness to the heart with-
out the most vast suffrages in its favour ; indeed we may
state broadly, that every organ is conscious, as the whole
animal kingdom is conscious ; and that the human con-
sciousness is nothing more than the collective consciousness
of all parts of the body. In general the whole field of
consciousness is cast into the shade by the solar or central
consciousness of the brain, which we call our mind ; yet at
all times our human form as an outline full of life, is more
or less present to us, and makes us embodied men. And
in particular conditions, the consciousness of any part may
be raised, and as it were detached from the rest ; the vis-
cera may take on humane proportions, and open their eyes
upon the scene ; the magnetic animals of which we are
made up, may be separately excited, and powers of an ani-
mality co-extensive with nature may spring to light in the
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OP THE HEART. 253
dark chambers of the flesh. This is because life is like
itself in every part, and the body is all heart, or all eye,
when the proportions are varied in which ordinary wake-
fulness and sleep are mixed ; thus when the sun of the
brain goes down, the other organs may come forth, and
shew their ruddy lustres. For we cannot too often repeat,
that the human body consists of nothing but expanses of
life, all of which are ensouled, conscious or alive.
Upon the circulation itself, as contradistinguished from
the communion of the heart, it only remains to repeat, that
it stands in analogy with the five senses, and that its pas-
sage through the heart represents the active touch which
rolls the wheel onwards. The arterial blood is the life
going forth to work ; the venous blood is the return cir-
cuit ; and the difference between them can be best likened
to the man full of resolve and affairs going forth to his
calling in the morning, and to the same man who has laid
care and tension aside, and is returning to his own fireside,
to enjoy relaxation in the evening. The difference is in
the bodily vigor and the mental polarity. Everything is
distributed into arterial and venous in something of the
same way ; into arterial on the active side, venous on the
passive : the day itself and all which it includes, is arterial
from the morning to the evening, and venous from the
evening to the morning again.
It is now time that we should speak of the visceral sys-
tem as it is connected with life and feeling, and explain
the principles upon which such connexions proceed.
For the latter point we have assumed as our organon,
that the physical and mental are not dissimilar, though
different things ; on the contrary, that they are so similar
254 THE HUMAN HEART.
that their likeness or congeniality is their bond of coherence.
This similarity we express by the term, Correspondence.
We find that the body and the soul do the same errands in
different spheres ; that the man respires objects and the
mind thoughts, while the brain respires spirits and the
lung, airs ; which two latter are objects and thoughts, in-
animate in various degrees 5 also that the will circulates
affection and feeling, while the heart circulates blood,
which is bodily affection and feeling. Again, that the
areas thus equated influence each other by correspondence
or similarity ; the parts of each, touching and associating
with the parts of the other which are likest to them. Thus
respiration draws thought, and blood invites life,- to incar-
nation. We shall recur to this law in the sequel, where
it will be better understood.
In the meantime we anticipate further, that correspon-
dence always implies some point of likeness or ground of
association between things or persons ; and communication
to the same extent. Correspondence by letter implies a
common interest of some kind, and communication within
that interest. In assuming correspondence between the
soul and the body, we assume intercourse also. The simi-
larity between the two terms is the principle that we take,
and the details of the similarity are the science which we
desire. We see two persons the inner and outer man
associated together ; and when we find the objects that they
have in common, we know the ground of their intercourse ;
but if they have all objects in common, though different
fields to work in, we are certain that they were recipro-
cally made for each other, and will explain as well as sup-
ply each other's wants. We take Correspondence for
granted ; for the more of truth we take for granted, the
more we gain ; the inherited fortune of common sense sets
us up in business in the sciences. Otherwise we must take
POWERS OF CORRESPONDENCE. 255
for granted the dissimilarity between the body and the
soul ; and the non-correspondence ; and then reason will
not hear of intercourse between two things that have no
objects in common. Success or failure, but not preliminary
arguing, will be the test between the two principles, both
equally assumed.
The heart is one of many viscera connected in a living
chain. As the supreme organ of the body, it has a com-
plete orbit of its own ; the rest, as inferior orbits, gyrating
around it, and forming an ascending stair of entrails. The
brains and nerves are the mental organ ; and the lungs,
an intermediate field, lie between the mental and the
bodily regions. But every part contains the rest ; the
brains are omnipresent both by substance and influences ;
the individuality of no part excludes them, for the nerves
of an organ are its peculiar brains. So also the heart is
everywhere ; the bloodvessels of an organ are its private
heart. The liver is everywhere ; the bilious fluids are a
current liver wherever they run. No feeling then is more
than central in any organ ; it has circumferences co-exten-
sive with the body ; for the principle on which its incarna-
tion depends is universal. In attributing feelings to the
heart, we imply that they are cordially there, but second-
arily, by dilution of correspondence, they are everywhere
else. The body is telegraphic with various stations ; the
messages are different according to the organs, but one at
the fountain head.
If the heart is the centre of the bodily feelings or vis-
ceral sensibility, then on the same evidence (p. 217) the
stomach and intestines have feelings of their own. The
glow of content and satisfaction is incomplete until its
quietude is poured over these contorting parts. The
warmth of wine influences the mind by removing uneasi-
ness from this tube. The bowels yearn with audible ten-
256 THE HUMAN HEART.
derness when the softer emotions fill them. What is the
visceral inhabitant that touches their strings and feels in
their quivering expanses ? Common sensibility is its name,
as inferior to the definite sentiments or feelings of the heart,
and as internal to those other feelings that possess the five
senses. This susceptibility is a well known phenomenon ;
some have it in a greater and some in a lesser degree ;
but it is always a magnetic or sympathetic contact with
things, not on their outsides, but in their tender inward
parts. Those who are most apprehensive, feel the tube in
constant live motions : women especially have svich expe-
riences, and must know more than men the depth of the
Scriptural phrase, " bowels of mercy," and of the saying,
that those who are devoid of pity " have no bowels." The
reason or ratio of these common words is clear. For the
good services of the intestinal tube are the materiality of
mercy. It stands at the bottom of the vitals, where lowly
mercy also stands, for mercy must be at the bottom, or it
could not have the poor and needy for its objects. It is at
the top also, but beginning from the bottom ; for it is the
glory of the crown above the head, and the beauty of the
feet of those who preach glad tidings. This mercy-tube
satisfies hunger and thirst, clothes naked ribs with fatness,
and lifts the starveling into the company of full men.
Furthermore, it is microscopically true to its charities ;
it raises the food from below, taking the infant chyle from
the earth, and lifting it towards the blood ; and searches
the unclean masses to redeem any parts that can be saved.
It yearn^ over the new offspring of the blood as a mother
over her children. Its gifts are unexpected and unde-
served, for the life and spirit of man are bestowed upon
fruit, flesh and herb. Long suffering is among its offices,
for it makes the best of whatever is put into it, and pro-
motes our worst meals, forgiving the abuses of our appe-
BOWELS OF MERCY". 257
tites seventy times seven. Granting that mercy were
enclosed for a time in a prison of bowels, what could it do
but what these entrails do ? This is the reason why mercy,
the full name for sensibilities, associates with the intestinal
functions. It matters not whether the work takes place in
a city, in a man, in an organ, or in a molecule. Wherever
the hungry is fed, the low raised up, the prisoner let out,
the erring forgiven, or desert exceeded in blessings, there
Mercy lives.* But these works are everywhere, in every
assimilative act (p. 179), and hence, wherever ground
extends, there are processions of chyle-white sisters of
mercy, carrying the world up their ladders, and passing
from the dust to God. Man feels the influences of the
hierarchy as it passes through his vitals 5 and intellect is
smelted and raised, when it admits the meaning of the
better longings which its own experience knows.
Hence a reason for the pleasures connected with the
assimilative function. For it is a law that pleasure is
given to organism according to the uses performed, and
especially according to the ulterior uses associated with
the material organs. Thus the parts whose functions are
mercy-like, have bodily pleasures conferred upon them as
like as corporeal feeling can be, to the satisfaction and
blessedness of mercy. Hence we do right to thank God
before and after meals for all His mercies. The organs,
however, thus furnished with rivers of pleasure from this
source, are capable of abuse, or stimulation without a true
* We observed before (p. 200), that intellectual heat mates human
heat ; and now we observe that mercy, or the assimilation of the low
to the high, makes human assimilation, or the conversion of food
into man's blood. The latter can go on apart for a time, even for
generations, but not for the long run, and it is the long run, or the
end, that contradistinguishes man from the beasts, or separates human
from animal assimilation.
258 THE HUMAN HEART.
end. For if pleasures are assigned them for mercy's sake
or for just purposes, and man finds the pleasures out, he
may choose to enjoy the latter apart from the purposes ; as
is sufficiently well known : but in that case the first con-
ditions are absent, and the pleasures are verging to retri-
butions. The case of the generative organs is parallel ;
for the sake of the heart's love which has intercourse with
them, and the rich end that they carry, they are en-
dowed with supreme incentives of bodily delights. And
in general every part is gifted with these, first according
to the necessity of its functions in the body, and secondly
according to its privilege of representing, or being similar
to, functions of the soul which are delightful self-evidently,
or in the order and justice of God.
The body itself is a group of sensories. As the eye is a
bodily sensorium of light, and has intercourse with intelli-
gence ; and as the heart is a bodily sensorium of blood,
and has intercourse with the hearty sentiments felt for our
greater blood, which is human kind ; and as the bowels
are a sensory of our wants from below, and of nature's
longings to be raised into blood, and as they have inter-
course with gracious sensibilities, so every other part is a
feeling of its own objects ; and if we knew those objects
in common sense, would be found to have intercourse with
some principles in the soul that would explain its plea-
sures, and give the veriest motive of its functions. The
liver, for example, the gruff king of the belly, as the
stomach is the queen, is the seat and sensory of a severer
process of assimilation, as of judgment added to mercy, or
justice to sensibility ; whence the passion of anger in ex-
treme cases is attributed by the deep vulgar to the liver,
and a bilious man by choice exercises upon his society
critical and denunciatory functions, disturbing their good
natures, and digesting their easy admissions with terrible
THE WHOLE BODY SENSORIAL. 259
stringency and power. The words of such a prepared in-
strument are gall to his age. These are metaphors, because
the body itself is a metaphor a flesh that " carries with
it" spirit, because of the likeness it bears to the spirit.
The creation is the body and pressure of all metaphors ;
and seen actions are done because they carry out the un-
seen in everlasting resemblances. Nature is a force willed
from the first to -sculpture the images and paint the por-
traits of God's attributes, in earth, plant, beast and bird,
nations and peoples, wherever the one problem works, or
the one end predominates. The sensorial nature of the
body during emotions leads us experimentally into these
realms of metaphors ; for we feel that anger lies in bile,
and that bile publishes anger ; and out of this double mar-
riage we cannot but infer a natural intercourse, illustrating
itself by metaphors of language, and proceeding from a
real ground of similarity or correspondence.
The sensory nature of the body is plain, from the fact
that any part may be the seat of pain, and thus become an
object of consciousness. In disease we have an indication
of what also happens in the higher stages of order and
content. This sign is used indeed by the sick to disprove
the better condition ; those labouring under indigestion
long for the intervals in which they do not know that they
have stomachs ; and the nervous, in like manner, wish
that they had no nerves. But then, on the other hand,
the pleasures of the body are as much facts as the pains,
but with this difference, that pain enthrals the body to
self-considerations, whereas healthy pleasure either soothes
to slumber, or else excites to activities and a keen relish
of objects ; for peace and joy are straight aims and ener-
getic powers.
But if the body be sensorial, it is evidently capable of a
liveliness of which at present we have no instances. For
260 THE HUMAN HEART.
if the presence of objects causes so vast a rousing of the
five external senses ; if the eye gladdened by the light of
day, stands so prominently forth, and opens our little halls
of light so wide, what will be the state of the heart when
it has its objects, as the eye has the range of the mighty
universe of nature ? And what the joy of the assimilative
organs, when the communion of man plays upon them, as
the warmth of the sun upon the skin, when the pleased
sense opens out every wrinkle of inaction into which the
cold had thrown it down ? And what will be the state of
the brain when it lives in the truth, and opens its sentient
intellectual urns to the light that lighteth every man who
comes into the world ? The difference between that state
and ours will be at least equal to the difference between
waking and sleep ; between life with and without an ob-
ject ; between the vigor of the hero-angels, and the drawl
of history, slimy with the torpor of our own hybernation
three thousand years long. Yet great as this difference is,
we are bound to believe that the Christian trains for long
ages have been crossing its deserts, and that a time will
come when the pleasures of the head and the heart will be
as sensible in the body as those of the belly ; and when in
consequence the body will be inwardly alive and active in
its nervous and visceral depths, more than now in its limbs,
or its senses.
We have further to note that the fulness of life depends
upon just intercourse between the steps in the sensory
ladder. Pleasure or bodily life is incomplete while its
materialism only is felt, and the heart untouched by the
travelling joy, which as it comes down from on high, longs
to strike every cord where its music can be made. But if
the heart is incontinent, or has destroyed its delicious sen-
sorialness, the joy is spilt from it, and not felt excepting
in the lower regions. First love, the comedians say, is
THE WHOLE BODY SENSORIAL. 261
" all-overishness ;" the whole body feels it ; the house is
lighted and the lutes are playing from attic to kitchen,
and the old neighbourhood is amazed. Last love is often
another thing ; life in holes and corners, but the former
halls dark and cold. So also the pleasures of the sensory
of taste have a similar wholeness in their design. With-
out the conviviality which is the incentive of taste, and
which supplies its heart touches, these pleasures are poor
and half dead, and savors themselves are rinds with dust
inside them. For as we said before, pleasure is given
upon conditions and for purposes, and the fullness of the
pleasures of the soul are the objects of those of the body.
But the soul is all over the body, and when it is conciliated,
the sensation of its approval is as it were the whole man,
a choice anatomy of senses in a body of delight.
The sensories of the body form a key-board played upon
by numerous hands. The body plays upon itself through
their means, and parts of it become present to other parts
according to the variations of the correspondence. If the
womb, in catering for the embryo, finds the existing larder
insufficient, its want is present that moment to the tender-
hearted intestinal tube, which uneasily yearns for the food
that the nascent nature claims, making as though it were
assimilating it, as we by dumbshow of eating at our mouths,
shew our hunger to those who do not understand our lan-
guage. This sign-work is next suggested in idea to the
mouth and palate, which set muscle and artifice in motion
to procure the viands that the blood demands. Thus the
hen, in correspondence with her eggs, picks up their shells
in bits of lime that will cement and protect her unborn
brood. In fact the vitals are the conductors of instincts from
the depth of our nature, and the body turns first to them
for whatever it wants from their respective fields. Each
part is applied to in this manner as occasion requires, for
262 THE HUMAN HEART.
every part knows the rest, and relies upon them. For
want of knowing that the body is sensorial, instinct is a
mystery ; whereas instinct is the sight, voice and action of
faculties as broad as our faces, and as luminous as thought ;
but these faculties happen to lie under our skins, and in
our entrails, of which they are the wants, the knowledge,
and the ways. The communication of each want from its
starting place, through the course of organisms that lead
it to its objects, takes place, as we have said, by no other
means than correspondence ; as supply and demand take
place in human affairs. The line of sympathy thrills and
trembles with the want, which becomes, as in the case cited,
yearning in the bowels, expectancy in the mouth, longing
in the person, suggestion in the mind, which completes
the circle of the womb, gives the want both sight and voice,
and then the will is stirred to pursue and grasp the object.
And by the line that the want ascended as a protean in-
stinct, the supply descends, putting off husk after husk
and hardness after hardness, until the pure milk suppli-
cated, is squeezed into the little mouth that made the cry,
too tender for the mother to hear, excepting by the minis-
tration and enlarging trumpet tones of part after part, as it
were successive choirs of faery-footed, guardian organs.
It may further be remarked, that all substances inside
the body, propagate their state as interpreted by their feel,
to the body at large. See p. 141. This we illustrated in
that place by certain considerations touching the feel of
oil and other objects in the mouth, as affording sensations
of an agreeable kind, apart from the sense of taste, and
which seem to be a kind of structural taste that travels
beyond the tongue, and soothes the frame at large. The
action of demulcents, gums and mucilages, and of cold
water, are in part of this kind. And medicines act also
in this double way, propagating themselves, and working
BLOOD-DOLLS. 263
out their specific problems, both by quality or taste, and
by quantity or vibration. If this be true of inanimate
substances, a fortiori the living fluids propagate their vi-
brations in the same way ; the organic feel of what goes
on in the heart, for example, the groupings, marriages
and thrills of the blood, are propagated per sensum in like
manner, and influence the general state. Nay more, by
incessantly jogging the body, and giving it these atomic
hints, the impassioned blood-populations insert into man
the beginnings of an impulsion that comes out at last in
full actions of a correspondent order ; the still small voices
whispering year after year, grow louder as the audience of
vibrating organs enlarges, and ultimately play their tunes
in concert with the whole world of man. The largest
wheels begin to stir, to start, to move slowly, and finally
to revolve, after the least ; and the speed encreasing, the
revolution is swift enough in time to make one drop of
passion into a great ring of fire, as consistent as our fate.
The " biting of the maggot" that sets impulse in motion,
is an ugly metaphor for these words of command that issue
from our eager blood. A fairer saying is, that " all men
have their hobbies," and these begin in little toys of glo-
bules, or blood-dolls, which the heart dandles, dresses, and
nurses, intending that the big body shall one day do the
same, when the vibration has grown up, and can be the
mother of bodily action. The primordial affections of our
blood, are our nature's hobbies, but after they become
disanimalized or humanized, they change this name, and
become good ends.
External nature also plays upon the sensorial body, and
we sympathize with weather, moons and tides, because
our vitals feel them as our skins feel the objects of tyuch.
Hence come innumerable moods that vibrate towards the
will, and instigate states of consciousness, and correspond-
264 THE HUMAN HEART.
ing colors in our trains of action. The instincts of the
day and the hour are so many, that ever-shifting nature
only can produce, and God alone can regulate and know
them. Sunshine and shade, moist and dry, the east wind
and Zephyrus, thunder and frost, and the influences of cli-
mate, play upon us thus ; some through the mind, some
direct through the strings of the vitals ; and hence the re-
actions by which we add to nature, give a new beam to her
beams, or deepen her gloom by our brows. Man in this
way inhabits his circumstances by a thousandfold cunning
of sensories : he palpates vapors, winds, magnetisms, and
climates, with fingers finer than tact, and himself is a di-
vining rod which points to everything, whether in earth,
ocean, or air, or in the inward streams that build the
crystals, and carry the messages of nature between her
poles.
Man acts upon man by the same way, and the presence
of persons is felt viscerally even before intercourse com-
mences. Thus a sympathy grows up, by which those
whom we meet, act upon our special organs. Do not our
hearts burn within us when some men look and speak ?
The presence of others again is choking and oppressive.
The piteous and sentimental, if we be not too steely, act
upon our intestine tenderness, and call it into yearnings.
The unhappy give us indigestions, and the mad confuse
us, and tend to make their keepers mad. We do not often
perceive these influences viscerally, unless the mind be
excited and call the sensibilities into play. But from a
few plain cases we may argue, that our fellows, according
to their predominant character, affect us in all ways, or-
ganically as well as mentally, by their vibrating substance
and stuff as well as by their actions and words and that
every man is ranged for us in a peculiar organic classifica-
tion. The brain-men play upon our brains, and the heart-
THE VISCERAL SYMPATHIES. 265
men on our hearts ; the men of pity touch our strings, and
so forth.
The influence of the mind upon the visceral man is very
well known. There is not a state of mind however pro-
duced, but the body feels it, and responds to it. Our
conscious pleasures, or pains, are objects of touch to the
whole of the viscera ; anxiety exists in the mind as a
trouble and a knot, which the consistent stomach makes a
knot in itself in order to feel. The viscera shape them-
selves upon the mental models that they may sensate the
mental states, as the hand makes itself into a cube or a
sphere, to feel a cube or a sphere. Thus the body is a set
of sensories constantly palpating the mind, by assuming
forms which answer to the mental states. It feels the
ghosts of thought and passion, not by trying to grasp
them, but by making itself like them, and thus experienc-
ing the immaterial by representing it in a correspondent
form.
Providence also uses the sensorialness of the body as a
means to guide and shape our lives. For much arises in
us without apparent cause ; dictates, suggestions, feelings,
calm, seeming to come from afar, and influencing us in
important respects. Such vibrations arise from within,
and are the passions of passions and the motions of mo-
tions. But motions in the organs, however produced, be-
come our own, whether their causes are internal or external
to our being. Within our being work Providence and his
ministers, and fate, instinct, and succession of thought,
are the play of the supreme agencies, not unaccountable
since we are all made of sensories, which in their veriest
ground are in contact with a higher life than our own.
The harp of a thousand strings is a good metaphor for
this human frame touched into melody by such divers
hands, and especially by Him named of David, the Chief
266 THE HUMAN HEART.
Musician. And as the viscera are so constructed as to
hear for us the whispers of the wisdom of Providence, it
is not surprizing that their feelings also are the source of
many presentiments, or that coming events cast their
shadows before, through these trembling fleshly groves ;
for the main actors in life are already beyond time and
history, and put their fatal forethought into the piece,
which then speaks, sometimes audibly, of the future as
present, and of the distant as here. It was therefore by
a remote application, that the augurs consulted entrails as
the voices of the gods, and interpreted oracles from the
sacrificial quiverings. For the intestine parts are tele-
graphic of what is and was and shall be, as it were wires
for the electricity of ends, which runs by wisdom's way,
from the future "to the present. These deeply-buried na-
tures are even as the Vala awakened by Odin for responses
which daylight cannot give, and the opening of them as
sensories introduces us to magnetisms and communications
that the five senses will not know. The unseen world of
the body of man is indeed a grave-land of innumerable
prophetesses, each to be compelled to speak when the
powerful enchanters come.
This sensory nature of the viscera is the complement,
and the antecedent, of the motory nature which we claimed
for them in our Chapter on the Lungs. It is because they
so keenly feel their objects, that they breathe them, or
move towards them. To enable them to do this, the re-
spiration itself varies as the objects vary, and the parts of
the machine, trebly consistent, move all together. To
promote the sensory nature to a still larger correspondence
with objects, the muscular system is given, which has two
beginnings of ends, one external, by which it produces
all human actions, properly so called ; and one internal,
by which it engenders all human visceral actions. As we
THE VISCERAL SYMPATHIES. 267
may not have another occasion to speak of the muscular
man, we shall now dwell upon him briefly, to give a little
more completeness to our views.
The human body, besides containing in potency all or-
ganic sensations and motions, from visceral sensibility to
intellectual perception, has moreover a will, which decides
upon the objects to be sought, and muscles as servants of
the will, to bring up the motories to their fields of opera-
tion, and the sensories to their stations of feeling. Apart
from the will, action is molecular, and feeling, like a
dream. But under the force of the will and muscles, the
smallest impulses (p. 263) become translated into personal
actions, and the minutest senses lead to gratifications of
which the whole man is the sensorium. For the will is
our sovereign pleasure with a soul added to it, and in the
muscles it forms our own motions, in contradistinction to
the motions of our blood and fluids. It is our continued
human life, and each volition is a tick of our proper clock,
without which we are not " going." We may call it the
organ of progress, as the muscles are the organs of loco-
motion or bodily progress. It takes up the helpless viscera
in its arms, and runs with them where it chooses, or where
they choose, setting them in pleasant places which they
could not have reached without a strong will equally sup-
ported by numerous muscular servants.
The viscera are meant in the nature of things for the
will and the muscles ; they are meant to be present and
serviceable for every action that man performs ; and vice
versa, all action is meant to act upon them and to modify
them. By means of the muscles they are girded into
one body ; each has the benefit of pressure from without,
and is forced to do its work in an exact space, or what is
the same thing, to refine nature into skill ; and all are
set upright, or have their own portion of man's erectness
N2
268. THE HUMAN HEART.
or heaven-sightedness conferred upon them, Thus the
liver, the spleen, the stomach become parallel with the
eyes and hands, and action runs consistently from the soul
through the skin, as well as from the will through the fin-
gers. By means of the muscles also they receive the powers
of the volitions : industry and skill are stricken into their
phlegmatic tempers, and they are forced to take part in
deeds, and to make blood and humors, not for molecular
domestic circulation, but for human aims. The stomach,
thrashed by the rods of the voluntary fibres of the abdo-
men, is allowed to make no sleepy chyle, but a quick and
stirring milk of support, worthy to feed a workman's
blood. And the liver, under the same task-masters, is
not permitted to make soapy infantine bile, but sharp de-
cisive stuff, ready in a moment to cut the maudlin of the
animal secretions. By means of the muscles also the
viscera have the benefit of locomotion and change of air ;
the will, and these his servants, are the carriage that
takes the liver and its companions from London to Paris,
or where we please ; the muscles also walk them out, and
give them exercise, which they require just as much as
ourselves. The muscular system furthermore lends hard-
ness to the tender viscera, and contains and corrects their
sensibilities, just as the will makes the mind firm : thus
it enables the vitals, poor jellies without it, to bear what
is to be borne, and do what must be done. Where this
strength is not given, liver and bowels are as it were out-
lying in the world, exaggerated in size, shrinking from
healthy sounds and vigorous contacts, and trodden under
foot of circumstances that are the playmates of the body
in its well-braced powers. In short the viscera are created
to receive and appropriate the actions of our muscles, and
to be humanized (p. 20), or lose their laziness and animality,
by this among other means. It is a fact that they do receive
THE MUSCULAR MAN. 269
these actions, and being a necessity also, we state it as a
law. We therefore look upon muscularity and volition as
just as much a part of the liver, as though the liver was
itself muscular, which it is not, for in an indissoluble
society, all things exist for each. And we notice that
human inaction robs every viscus of its endowments, or
leaves it forlorn among animal sensibilities and molecular
movements. Under these circumstances the man and the
viscera are all doing nothing : true, they breathe, but this
is nothing for waking man ; industry and skill, in the
liver as in the person, begin the human reckoning.
The muscular system, therefore, as the organ of the
progress of the rest of the body, carries the body into
action, and by its backstroke carries action into the body,
making us like ourselves in our tiniest humors, as well as
in our works. Could we see a globule of our blood with
a fine-enough eye for character, we should find that it
was a chip of the old block, because it has been under
the dominion of our will since it was born ; aye, and in-
herited our will in its conception. The muscles themselves
however are a sensory, or they could not have a human
motory life. They are the seat of the sense of power ;
the verb / can, added to good pleasure, or the verb, I will.
The power is possessed of an instinctive sense of the com-
pass of power, by which the muscles know what they can
do, according to the dose of will that they receive. This
sense is a meter of the will on the one hand, and a meter
of the commanded action on the other : if a leap is pre-
scribed, the muscular man feels exactly whether he is
wilful enough to attempt it, and powerful enough to carry
it through. It is from this sense of power that our bodies
become responsible agents, and flesh, a moral humanity ;
therefore we justly punish human bodies for the sins of
human souls ; for by sense bodies become souls whilst they
270 THE HUMAN HEART.
are awake and here. The way in which we manage our
muscles is by ideal actions shewn to this sense of power ;
the plan of the action is held up to the moving army of
the flesh, and with it a command is given to execute the
action, if it be easy or known ; whereas the cautious mind
puts in the query, Is it possible ? if the action be serious,
or untried. The ideas thus exhibited are wonderful things ;
they are not only surface-pictures of the thing done, or
of the arm at the end of the task, but organisms ana-
tomically full of the means that lead to the end ; mental
skins hard with mental muscles or volitions upon the
model, or rather in the archetype, of the whole muscular
frame. This is of a piece with that common sense, that
he who wills the end, wills the means ; or physiologically
speaking, when we will an action, the structural will,
through the sense of power or muscular soul, wills every
muscle and every fibre to take its part in the action, be-
cause the structural will is the muscle of muscle and the
limb of limb. A serious view of these ends, as every one
of them a human body ! and yet no new view, but only
a fresh mention of " the inner man." In short, the will
stretches forth the arm because it is the arm of the arm,
and the inner man commands the outer, because he is the
man of the man. In proportion to the number of ends,
ideas of action or senses of power, that are in the muscular
faith and memory, is the quick vitality or presence of
mind with which we move and work in the world : the
weights that we lift and the tunnels that we bore ; the
forlorn hopes that we lead and outlive ; the number of evils
and errors slain that we count after the battle ; the list of
impossibilities flouted; is not according to the thickness
or thinness of our arms, but is measured by the will first,
and secondly by the sense of power which is its servant
in the muscular array. Will knows nothing of the present
THE SENSE OF POWER. 271
arm, but it extemporizes muscle, building it upon its own
mould, for as we said before, it is essential muscle. Fur-
thermore, it does not wait for this, but it makes smallness
do the work of largeness, a feat at which all life aims.
On the other hand, the loss of these ends or senses of
power is paralysis of the will and muscles, after which
the flesh becomes so brittle that the consistent intellect
sometimes is impressed to dictate, that the sufferer is made
of glass, and will break if he is moved ; for when ends
become mere pictures without touchingness, nothing can
stir the muscles without hurting them. These muscular
senses then are the proper powers of man, or the genii of
action ; the maids in golden helms that attend us in the
field, and bear us harmless through the hurtling showers.
The contents of the marvellous ideas which thus use our
muscles and shape our purposes, lead us to another consi-
deration respecting the external world; for these ideas
take the world for granted, and assume its concurrence.
It is not fair to argue, that as they govern the body, so
they are designed to govern the world ; and that locomo-
tion, for example, as an end, knows no end but the utmost
velocity of nature ; in other words, that the little world of
man is the will of which the great world of nature is the
muscles. In this way, when the child says, " I want to
go to that hill top," he expresses an end of which railroads
are but proximate means ; an end which is successively to
enter upon horseflesh, steam, magnetism, and whatever other
ways there are ; an end which is not a picture only, but a
spiritual world working upon this kosmos, and claiming it
as a highroad and avenue of man. By this rule, every art
is as possible as every muscular action, and the goodness
and power of human wishes are the only limit of the ob-
sequiousness of nature. The grander ends of a single
head have light and magnetism for their muscles, and the
272 THE HUMAN HEART.
stars fight for them in their courses. For observe, it is
not necessary to know the order of things in order to
govern or produce them ; the conscious will in command-
ing a dance has no knowledge of the muscles of the limbs,
or of the fibres in the muscles; yet it stirs them accurately,
because the end that it proposes, contains the means, or is
anatomical by nature. And again observe that the size of
the agent has nothing to do with the power, for a little
nerve puts a large muscle in motion, and the will is of no
size, relatively to the mortal body. In spiritual leverage,
every good action attests the Archimedean power,* and
standing on the higher world, actually moves the lower.
For the laws of nature, are the laws of the inner man ; as
witness Jesus Christ, whose disciples said, "What manner
of man is this that the winds and the waves obey him ?"
We cannot quit the muscular system without noticing
also that the heart itself is a muscle, and that the powers
of formation in the viscera, depend upon it (p. 93). All
muscular action also depends for its continuance upon the
supply of arterial blood. And as the heart is pervaded by
the feelings, and the muscles are governed by the same
feelings under their decisive name of wills, the correspond-
ence between the two is regular and exact. The firmness
that plants its steel in the heart, has already given iron to
the muscles ; and a stream of blood magnetized by the
unbending life, runs as a bridge between the two, over
which the spirit- soldiers pass and repass. The sympa-
thies founded upon this correspondence or human mag-
netism, are of all force in man. We have already noted
how the muscular system is set in action by sympathy
with its higher parts (p. 117) ; how the muscles of that high
* Archimedes used to say, that given a place to stand on (Sos TTOV
ffTv), he could move the world by his mechanism.
THE COMPASS OP THE SENSE OF POWER. 273
round limb, the eye, which rolls upon the beams of light,
command actions in the muscles of the trunk and legs.
Similarly, the instinctive muscular actions tend to be pro-
duced by the special movements of the heart. In this
respect the whole of the muscular battalions, proceeding
downwards in ranks from the eye muscles on the one hand,
and outwards in fraternities from the heart muscle on the
other, may be likened to the ends of both series, or the five
fingers, which are so coordinated in action, that if one, and
especially the middle finger be bent, the others instinc-
tively bend with it, and training is needed to isolate the
action of any one of the fingers. This is the motor half of
that propagation of events from the heart, of which we
treated in the foregoing pages, where the sensory part of
the question was stated (p. 263).
We may now attempt a slight recapitulation of the
psychology, as it runs parallel with the bodily parts. In
the brain and nervous system we have found the mental
and moral consciousness embodied ; a consciousness of the
whole of what goes on in the other and lower spheres, and
added to this a sense of mind, or reason and will in all
their forms, which through this sense strike their attri-
butes into the body. The sense of mind, and the motion,
is therefore the humanity or peculiarity of the cerebral
spheres. Below this we find the body, which in the com-
plex is the sense of feeling, or of mind, not acting, but acted
upon. In the heart we have the natural feelings which
connect us with other hearts ; the central relations of man
present by a sense in the central parts of the body of man.
It is the sense of human love which is here perceived. In
the lungs we have the sense of thought, whereby we feel
bodily the fluctuations and shapings of our minds. Below
the heart again, we have another but more general firma-
ment of feeling, which lives in the bowels, and is termed
N3
274 THE HUMAN HEART.
sensibility, or by a privileged name, the sense of mercy.
This forms a compacter power in the liver and chylopoietic
glands, the spleen being the reverse of the liver, and
testing the blood by laxity and banter, as it were by
giving it its own way, and reductio ad dbsurdum ; as the
liver by bilious ferment and sharp examination. " Splen
ridere facit, cogit amare hepar." Then the skin and ex-
ternal sensories are the abodes of the proper senses, which
besides entertaining their own objects, are liable to become
the fields of the other visceral and mental powers ; for not
only does the skin feel the objects of touch, but it feels the.
touch of the passions, and is a sensory of their bloods : and
not only does the eye see outward objects, but it is also
liable when opened to the second degree, to see mental and
spiritual objects projected through its tubes. These ex-
ternals give the sense of self. Again, between the inside
and outside, or between the mind and the senses, lies the
sense of power and the organ of progress in the muscles,
with the bones, or the sense of stability in progress, as
their fulcrum and necessary complement. Thus man is
not only sense but motion ; motion in sense, and sense in
motion, applied to every object in existence.
The body is simplicity itself when looked at in this
living light. And now we recognize that the divine attri-
butes, and not man's faculties, are the key of the human
frame. The simple truth of God is the kingdom which
has to come into the science of that structure which is
meant in God's image. Only by this means do the last
terms that we use, become reliable. In man we talk of
sensibility, but with no surety, of mercy. In man we
find feelings, lusts, or loves, but not love itself. In man
we speak of various powers, but not of power itself. In
man we have many senses, but no omnipresent sense;
many faculties wise in their generation and kind, but not
THE INCARNATE PSYCHOLOGY. 275
wisdom in the full. Did we confine reasons to present
human nature, we should find our ideals terminated far
below reason's wants, in a mythological maze ; good and
evil demons would inhabit our fountains, and whisper in
our groves ; we should build a Babel of mesmeric oracles,
each violent against the other, and stand comically aghast
at our own shadows seen in the ink-pools of our palms.
God is the intelligible being in these higher sciences and
common senses : man is in such snaky knots, his heart is
so deceitful and desperately wicked, that there is neither
scientific nor other dependence to be placed on it. To rea-
son from it, would introduce all ungodliness and unreason
by rote and rule into the sciences. And a fuddle of feti-
schism would then arise, compared to which the present
materialism, happily dead as it is, would be but a slight
evil. From this we are saved by Revelation, which gives
the loadstars of every science ; not indeed bestowing know-
ledge, but opening our eyes and speeding our aims to the
ends of knowledge, wisdom, love, mercy, life, power, the
Word, which are with God, and which are God.
Thus much of the visceral psychology, which as it pro-
ceeds upon sensation or experience, and the sensation is
but faint and glimmering as yet, must needs be of feeble
growth. Yet we have made a beginning, because the
body of the mind must be added to the head of the mind,*
and the arms and legs to the body, in order that the mind
may be as good as the body in its own sphere, and that
materialism may receive the full tilt of a personality as
weighty as its own. Our views aim ultimately at a piece
for piece proof that the soul is the man, and in the human
* The present philosophies are decapitations, and their doctrine of
immortality reminds us of Danton's consolation to his companion on
the scaffold : " Our heads will meet in that sack."
276 THE HUMAN HEART.
form. For if the soul-doctrine has two auricles and two
ventricles, and a heart ; if it has stomach, guts and liver ;
if it has limbs, and if it has any brains, then it is in manly
guise, like ourselves. And if the soul be the true body,
and the only thing material to us, then it is no estranged
essence, but a person with whom we can have affairs, and
keep intelligible relations. Of how great moment this is
in society, moral life, and religion, we leave to others to
say : being ourselves but a backwoodsman eager to clear
away swamps and forests, and to open sane ground upon
which far other workmen than we can base the truth, and
carry up the spires of the pious in the impregnable cities
of the just.
We now recur to our canon (p. 254), to illustrate the
ground of organization, and its connection with life. And
we say, that given an organic structure that will lift the
juices of fruit and flesh towards human blood, choosing
what is best in the world of food, and making it better by
new shapes and constant reformations, then sensibility,
or in the full sense, mercy, will and can associate with this
material sister, increase her tenderness, and make her
alive. Thus given the bowels of man, and the sensibilities
are in them. Again, given a structure that will censure
the former process, and elect or reject the elements ad-
mitted by a firm afterthought and severer examination,
then judgment, or just and executive anger will and can
cohabit with this material judge; in other words, the
bilious liver will have this vital passion with it by the
necessity of the case. Again, given a structure that
receives the races of our blood with open attractions,
blends them into groups,* unites them in new bonds,
* In the foregoing pages we designated the chambers of the heart
by new names, as " the family auricle," " the patriotic heart/' c. ;
THE LINKING OF ORGANS TO LIFE. 277
spaces their infinitesimal lifetimes, and in their great aor-
tic emigration pours them forth to make of one blood all
the families of the body, then every sentiment of human
nature will and can associate with this royal, generous and
grand materialist ; thus, given the heart, and love, life,
will and affection must clasp it in their arms. Again, given
for living terms are the proper expressions for the parts and functions
of living bodies. Such terms must be borrowed by analogy from life.
Already some anatomical terms are founded upon analogy. The word
auricle, signifying " the little ear," is an analogy from the likeness of
the part to the external ear. The ventricle means " the little belly."
Such nomenclature is a precedent in favor of the use of analogies ; and
the roots of language, by which it assimilates things to thoughts, are
analogical. But the analogies hitherto made use of in the body, pro-
ceed from the low to the high, or from the outside to the inside, and
require to be corrected, and set upon their feet, by the addition of
terms taken from intelligible affairs. Moreover, the dead languages
have ruled our nomenclatures in this country. But if truths be
living, to call them dead names is unscientific. So long as this is
done, universal instruction is impossible ; the democracy, whose edu-
cation is so vital to modern states, cannot sympathize with unknown
tongues, or with sciences scaly with crusts of Latin and Greek. The
body must be written out in downright English, before the horny
hands can feel its beautiful weight. We inveigh against Popery, for
celebrating masses in Latin services, and perhaps think it a mark of a
dead church that it enshrouds it voice in the word-garments of deceased
nations. Alas, in this respect we are Papists to the very ground. We
put the scientific truths of God in these old clothes, as our brothers,
the Roman Catholics, the religious truths. Though we are unlike
them, in that our science has no fine music in it, no art or beauty,
to touch the heart when common sense is away, and by a certain
warmth of feeling to compensate for the misfortune of intellectual
rags. But providential time, which has buried the old nations, will,
we foresee, exorcise their ghosts, and free the sciences from that spec-
trum of dead languages by which they scare the vulgar, who, we must
remember, are not always to be vulgar, but are the sons of God in
potency, like the kings and queens.
278 THE HUMAN HEART.
a structure that admits nothing but the first and last
essences of every nature ; that knows not of the vine
but through the grape, or of the grape but through the
wine ; that balances masses of earth by an imponderable
weight ; that expresses tiny illustrations of light from
continents of matter, and maintains bodily heat by a solar
glow that costs no fuel ; that is in the parallelism of the
miracles of the universe, and related to the farthest stars ;
that is naturally autocratic in the body, and possessed of
forces that blood and humors dare not disobey, given
such a structure, and in its own interest it will cease to
itself, and live to the mind; in other words, given the
brain, and the presence of the mind in the brain, is, and
is to be. Again, given the mind with its better faculties,
which live with other minds, and the Divine Spirit is with
it; as He himself said: "Where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them :"
observe not, there " I will be," but there " I am." So
again : given a structure disparted into limbs to ensure
material motions, or the operancy and progress of the
human body ; and brains and volitions, which are the loves
of work and progress, will at once order it into play :
whence the muscles being gathered together in the name
of the will, have the will in the midst of them. Lastly,
given a structure, as the human body, designed for har-
mony, for contiguity of parts, for opening to enlarge its
harmonies, for closing to keep them secure, then pleasure
and pain, or ordinary sense will live upon its self-defending
plains. So much at present in explanation of our canon,
which is this, that wherever in the body any organ does
anything that is like the mind or the mind's doings, there,
in proportion to the likeness, and according thereto, the
mind, and its special deeds are present. But in the human
THE LINKING OF ORGANS TO LIFE. 279
body everything done is like the mind, nay, like wisdom
working ; w r herefore the whole of it has the mind or the
man present to it. Q. E. D.
We began with the heart, and to the heart w r e circulate
back after this long episode, to complete the present chap-
ter. And first we would say a few words upon the different
signification of heart and lungs, or pulsation and respira-
tion. The difference here is, that the lungs ponder and
weigh the existing state, and slowly commit it to the
body, or breathe it in by measured stages (pp. 106 128) ;
whereas the heart domineers, beats with quick impatient
messages at the doors of every organ, and terminates its
problems by the immediacy and hot pressure of its blood.
The lungs are the motives which draw us from without,
but the heart is the force that actuates us from within ; or
in other words the lungs are the sense of understanding
(p. 134), but the heart is the sense of will. Translating
the organs into these known figures, and abolishing the
algebraic x y z of matter and physics, it is easy to see the
reason of the diverse rhythm between the heart and the
lungs. If the breath could coincide with the pulse, the
body would act out every purpose of the heart, without
individuality, pondering or consideration on its own part ;
the man would be shot to his ends with faster than tiger
pants ; his eyes would gleam and glitter in the dark-
ness of his faculties ; he would become like the vision of
the bloody child which rose from the cauldron before Mac-
beth, and would enter into the golden age of hell, and
speedily into that terrible foetal state which is called the
second death. On the other hand, if the pulse coincided
with the breath, caution and the slowest life would become
the standards of the movements of the inner will ; the can-
dles of life would be made of ice, and burn frore ; slugs of'
280 THE HUMAN HEART.
blood would crawl up and down in our veins j we should
learn to walk by the science of anatomy, demonstrate the
existence of God by mathematics, postpone making love
until the knowledge of magnetism was complete ; and in
short be as hoary as Stonehenge before our first down had
grown. To guard against this preponderance of either
heart or lungs, will or understanding, the movements of
either are different, limited, and inviolable; the heart
strokes play one tune, and the breathing lungs another ;
the tough pericardium isolates the heart from the pulmonary
engine, and on the other hand the pulse is broken by the
angles of the vessels where they enter the organs : thus
the heart closes its circle, and lays down its sceptre, at
the cool feet of the lungs ; and the lungs terminate their
deliberations at the outside of the fiery palace of the heart.
For will is meant to rush through us in its own way, to
give life and zeal, but slow understanding is to limit the
will, to adopt the part of it which consideration approves,
and to let the rest go elsewhere, or back to the will, with
the intelligence that it has not been received. And how-
ever harmonious the two become, still will is wilful and
understanding deliberative, or to speak by nature's algebra,
the heart still strikes or pulses, and the lungs still breathe,
because their difference is safety and friendship for both.
Thus we may say politically, that the white monarchy of
the brain through the lungs is founded for ever upon the
red republic of the heart.
Hitherto, we have treated of the heart from the analogies
of the individual feelings, but it is plain that nothing less
than a human race is the prophecy of the blood. For in
every two beats, less than two of our seconds, the heart
runs through an entire life, and constructs relations that
deployed in a line are seventy years long. It marries and
has children in setting one foot down ; it binds all into
LAST RATIO OF HEART AND LUNGS. 281
intimacy, and establishes the state, as the other is put
forward. The broad sheets of Society write out but a
fraction of the momentary news of a single heart. Of all
the human lives, the heart's are the least in duration and
the greatest in intensity ; the smallest answering to the
largest sphere. The social man here is a mote and an
ephemeris, most wonderful of all, since a click of time and
a grain of space contain him full-limbed and perfect-lived.
The heart then may justly be termed human nature, which
is true to itself in its smallest parts : and it stands in the
grove among the beginnings of things, in the place where
the stem of the world-tree grows fine towards God. The
nature of all things is their very heart. This it is that
comes into the world a new essence with every mind and
man, and works in restless agitations, aiming to govern
the whole earth from that spring of power. The spirit
from above, and the universe from without, environ, chas-
tise and endow it, but still it remains, for ever inviolate,
the fated well-head of human life. And as with individuals,
so with nations. Nature is at the bottom there also ; in-
evitable nationality is there ; character improvable but
indestructible ; destined to endure, but free for better or
for worse ; substantial as granite, though fluid fire of the
passions ; a rough and tough material, but fit to be hewn
or twisted into the humanities.
The powers or issues of the heart are homogeneous
throughout. Feeling upon feeling arises out of its bosom,
and humanity is built up like coral continents into the red
light of the suns. The ceaseless pulse which is the invisi-
ble architect, makes higher and broader dominions, and
conceals itself in its works. But from its waves emerge
relations and societies by the unerring laws imprinted on
itself. Blood knocks against nature's ribs, and seeming
never to come out, yet issues by avenues the widest, for
282 THE HUMAN HEART.
man comes hereditary out of man, and the heart fires its
progeny by a life that glows through every work, and
streams through every pore of feeling. The bonds of this
second heart are another coil of loves, firmer than that
which begot them ; more feeling and impenetrable than
flesh ; wound tighter around their objects ; with a more
terrible grasp at passing circumstance ; an easier and more
fiery communion of passions ; fortune's greater wheel and
Providence's handle ; the second life of fear and of courage,
of good or of evil.
But we must not tarry in this Vulcanian or Plutonic
centre, which throws us forth from the mighty forge where
the archetypal powers are working. It is enough to look
from the safe outside at the ovens where God's slaves, the
Fates, are hammering the natural sinews of the children of
Adam. Everything in those dusky ruddy halls looks
monstrous and delusive, and the steel of passion, lither
than Volund's sword, bends in white-hot waters round
ur ankles. The glare also of living blood is an illumina-
tion past our bearing. The angel of the Lord must be
with us in the burning fiery furnace of the passions, and
even of their science, or we shall not fare forth unhurt
like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
We conclude the subject of the heart by tracing its
principle in other spheres, for the vitals of man run through
the world by permission from all the natures, and the
human body, as method and light, is the Novum Organum
of the sciences.
That which is communion and circulation in the body, is
roundness and unity in the world, and the latter are the
produce of an inanimate, as the former of a living, heart.
The dead heart is fire, which beats in the centre of things,
and is the primitive out- throw of space. Suns and systems
THE UNIVERSAL HEARTS. 283
arise like bubbles from an ocean of glowing ether that
repels them into being. Fire is the love of spheres ; first
it makes all things round, and afterwards gives them revo-
lution or moving roundness, or makes circular orbs into
circulations. All things are of one color in its glow ; all
things, too, become tender as they touch it ; the metals
are plastic to its thumbs, and granite is a gristly baby and
has its melting moods in those thin, dreadful arms. This
chaotic love of softness and roundness is the rudest circle
of the ancestry of mothers in the heart of the world, where
the eldest crones of flame move purring and whirring round
" first matter" in its cradles ; a giant preparation for finer
future tenderness in never ending circles. All force lies
here in its seed ; for fire is dead love, or natura naturans.
Its pulse is the quickness of substance whereby it_is self-
similar in all property and action ; the urgency of gravi-
tations, chemicals, gases and stones from world's end to
world's end; that gesticulation by which each thing thumps
the board of existence, and lays down the law ; as it were
the blood of time bounding uniformly in his mundane body,
and if felt at his wrist on this earth, then felt for his whole
system, whether in Arcturus, Pleiades, or Aldebaran.
At the crust where earth cools, lo! a green creeping
glow projecting a new earth on the ruins of the former. The
first pipes of flame are its models, and the crystals, veins
and rockshafts its prophecies, as they branch through the
strata, or stiffen upwards in the vaporous air. Seed, plant
and tree have come, full of cool, calculating sap, revolving
organization ; the vegetable heart, or the love of organism,
is beating. The steaming of the terrene crater issues now
through a skin of temperature, in musical flutes of a second
fire, through roots into new flames, which are trees, each
the candle of a milder light in which nature is seen. Brute
heat ceases, and fire is cultivated. The roundness has a
284 THE HUMAN HEART.
beginning, a middle and an end ; the seed is current, and
runs in gyres to other seeds ; growth is the purpose of this
heart, and, like a fiamboo-cane, every joint puts forth a
new joint, till the ground is covered with the green and
gay chain- armour of the vegetable soul.
At the top of the love of growth, and running in its
grooves, there is already the love of pleasure, or the animal
fire. The round earth or tomb of the primitive heat is the
ground, and organism is the scaffolding, but pleasure is
the heart, of the beasts. Hence a new communion and a
new- circulation. This heart beats for the alliances of the
animal nature ; the roundness comes closer ; the birds are
mated and the beasts are paired ; gregarious herds cluster
into globes on prairie and in forest places ; the community
feels the thrill of its parts, and with open sensories creeps,
flies or gallops under its pressure of delights. The stroke
of the love of pleasure throws each creature round its world,
through the length and breadth of its own climatic organs,
and causes it to seek its mesmerism and shampooing from
every soil, animal, fruit and circumstance, whose friction
is good for food, or whose look is pleasant to the sight :
grasping the lion globule, it shoots him like a meteor
through a night of cruelties and destructions j softly knead-
ing the lamb- globules, it coaxes them about over meads
where dew is bright and innocence is in the grass.* The
* On the above principles we may offer a fresh rationale of the make
of the blood and the offices of the heart. If the heart-principle be
love in its genera and species, the known effects of love will answer
to those of the heart. Let us take an instance to try the equation.
The love of science shall be the heart that we choose to grasp us.
This love lies in germ in the affinity between intellect and nature ; the
mind can be assimilated to natural laws ; the assimilation being the
stomach process preceding that of the heart. It consists in throwing
down the mind before the new object as it were into a fluid state. But
THE UNIVERSAL HEARTS. 285
instincts are the brightness of this love, flames in which,
by the creative love, the animal has visions of ways and
means ; for instincts are animal revelations.
The love of sphere, the love of organism, and the love
of pleasure or harmonic sensation, the triple hearts of na-
ture, are included in a new heart, which circulates man
through the former places, and through others that exist
for man alone. The heart whose grasp is now upon us is
the love of happiness, which carries us as men through our
every science is round, or a little world in itself, and the heart func-
tions commence by raising up our vague liquid willingness into spheri-
cal states. Thereby we turn a side to every portion of our subject,
make ourselves in its image, or become soft and impressible to it.
The first point in entering into any sphere is, to become ourselves
that sphere : the first point in the blood life lies in making previous
fluids into globules or little bodies answering to the body. This done,
the next object comes, and the round mind can go the round of the
field, and as it is alive and universal, can give living universality away.
The equilibrium and plasticity of the spherical form enable it to pass
everywhere, for one sphere is applicable to every other, without regard
to difference of dimension. Moreover the love is a force, energetic
upon these round forms, and forces them to visit the parts whose
affinities they feel. The blood globule is the love of the whole body,
round according to its mathematics, and in the centre of the whole ;
hence it represents the radii of the body, and necessarily travels along
each, to deposit in the circumference the virtues of the centre. The
correspondence of physiological love or heart love with other love is
therefore plain. For love makes its subject alive, spheral, soft, im-
pressible, facile, cosmopolitan or universal ; in short, makes it into
circles, and carries it into circulations. Love is to the heart what
the falling apple of Newton was to the moon ; it brings self-evidence
to the seemingly inaccessible half of the equation ; and with self-evi-
dence science is content.
Corollary. There is no subject or thing that we may not explore,
if we love it, and where we fail, it is that we are not loving or spheri-
cal ; for if we were, we should gyrate through it as necessarily as our
blood courses through our bodies.
286 THE HUMAN HEART.
various day. The love of happiness must walk through
the laws of happiness, and hence pleasure is bored by the
augurs of duty, and the happy take the course which that
iron leaves free.
At the top of this, as it were a vane or guide, a heart
seizes the mind, and this is, the love of truth, which clasps
the faculties in the exactest unity, and commands them
out on the most far-reaching circulations. As all that is
real, is an effluence of the truth, this heart determines us
everywhere ; for the love of truth impels the lover of truth
wherever truth lies. This ensures the ubiquity of the
mind, according to the declaration of the Psalmist : "If
I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there : if I make my
bed in hell, behold Thou art there : if I take the wings
of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the
sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right
hand shall hold me.'* But in loving the truth, we love
what we do not know, and hence this heart is faith, the
force and fountain of knowledge, the muscle that com-
mands and sends forth the true intellect since our world
began.
But a new heart is upon us, not made but created, not
invented but here ; and this is, the love of life. Thereby
the soul is determined to visit the avenues of the ever-
lasting constructions ; to take its architecture from all fir-
maments, and rear forth the body out of the marrows and
backbones of the cosmic laws ; to study in the schools of
order and truth which are stability; to ask of all good
plants the direction of the tree of life ; to ponder every
old story, from north or from east, that babbles of the
waters of health and the fountains of youth ; and to hang
on the lips of revelation, which brings life and immortality
to light. This is our thread of golden fire that runs
through the broken moments of time. This is the sus-
THE UNIVERSAL HEARTS. 287
tenance of the body, garrisoned with invulnerable troops,
a buckler against the hostile chemistries of earth and air.
This is the safety of happiness, which with Caesar and his
fortunes on deck, rocks with treble thrill upon the waves,
a life boat to which ocean danger is a game. This sends
the soul to heroism, as its mark and print upon earth, and
by contemplation to the starry vault, as the second glass
of its endurance. In a word, the love of life, its own per-
manence, brings the soul to the earth, because it is God's
footstool, and bids it go to heaven, because it is his throne.
In these errands it runs through every other love ; passes
every scene, action, affection, through its fires, and gives
it the immortal enamel; and crowns itself in death, for
the soul that erewhile only loved life, then loves life beyond
life.
And as ancient chiefs traced their lineage to the Gods,
we follow their figure, and track up the heart loves until
they claim parentage from the God of love. There is ano-
ther heart, which is the love of God, and which by faith,
life, and all faculty not heartless, propels us to the home of
many mansions, where the father dwells. But we love
God because He first loved us ; and the force and pulse of
his love is felt in his Commandments. His " Thou shalt"
seizes our " I will," carries it forth, and commands for it
the blessing, even life for evermore. The Christian heart
is the Word : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength j and thy neighbor as thyself." This is the
first and great Commandment.
CHAPTER V.
THE HUMAN SKIN.
OF all the creatures of the natural world, man is intended
as the most finished, or, in other words, the most exqui-
sitely finite, and the skin is the instrument which first
hems him in, and by limiting, completes and individualizes
him. The skin is therefore his house and stronghold ; the
architecture of his frame ; and this is the simple idea of the
numerous offices that it performs. Without this boundary,
the body would not contain its possessions, and would have
no continence, outline and end, but be shed and dissipated
in the universe. Moreover the external skin is the outer-
most of a series of coverings which extend to all parts of
the frame, and to every particle of the part. All these are
skins, connected with the general skin, and as we follow
them through one depth of structure after another, we can-
not but arrive at the conception that they are the firma-
ment in which the organism is set, and that to take them
away, would reduce the body to an invisible essence, or at
least to a fluid, to whose volume we could no more assign
a permanent shape than to the unsteady atmosphere. The
skin then contributes to the idea of life the complementary
functions of shape and form, which must pervade all exist-
ences before they can take up any location, perform any
GENERAL FUNCTIONS. 289
act, or become the organ, or object, of any faculty what-
ever. In a comprehensive sense, the skin, under a thou-
sand forms, is the one vessel of the human spirit ; it is all
that is tangent and tangible in us. Without it, the brains
would have no receiver wherein to pour their influences ;
the lungs would have no fulcrum whereupon to draw their
breaths ; and the heart, with the other parts, would re-
dissolve into their unbounded blood : in a word, as we said
before, there would be no body at all.
What is true of the man, is true of his molecules. The
microscope affirms that the smallest organic atoms which
are visible are little rounded vesicles or cells, very similar
in appearance to some of those low forms of animal life
denominated infusoria. These cells are the brick-field of
the animal body, and each of them with its contents is a
small skinful of liquid. Here we have the simplest form
of active and passive, of skin and fluid ; and if in ima-
gination you attempt to skin the primordial vesicle, you
have the simplest instance of what would happen if you
could abstract the skin from the human body. For the
frame in its mighty details is even such a vesicle, but
contracted into chambers innumerable, and its wall folded
inwards into the whole complexity of our organization.
Let us, however, concentrate attention upon the skin
proper, as being the face and index of the other skins,
observing first, that the general presence to which we allude
in speaking of the skin, is a fact which holds, in structure
or in function, of every great division of the organism.
If the skin passes inwards, and seems, as we trace it, to
be the whole body, the same wholeness and ubiquity may
be alleged for other parts. Any separate life can be pur-
sued to the end of the frame. The arteries and veins,
issuing from the heart, so permeate the regions, organs
and tissues, that when they are injected with wax or
o
290 THE HUMAN SKIN.
mercury, the shape of the parts seems complete, though
with nothing but blood-vessels. The nerves likewise form
a tree which ramifies everywhere ; which has eyes, nose
and mouth, body, limbs and ends ; and in short, represents
the human shape. Even the viscera, as the lungs, the
liver, and the like, which do not substantially extend
beyond a limited space, yet reach by their motions, fluids
and influences to the body at large, and draw their sup-
port from the common stock, whether far or near. The
human body consists of universal principles ; it is one sys-
tem, or many systems, according as it is viewed ; and every
part is in all, and for all. Man therefore is the coalescence
of many men, each fulfilling the interstices of duty that
the others do not occupy, and this plenitude it is which
makes him into a substance, private from the world. There
is no room in his body, but only humanity completing
humanity. This is nowhere better exemplified than in
the skin, which is the end of the whole and the parts.
For the skin-man stands beyond as well as between all his
fellows, and clasps them into one. He has the rest not
only in his arms, but in his legs, his loins, and his head.
In short, he is all-embracing.
The skin is a threefold or fourfold clothing to the surface
of the body ; its layers firmly connected to each other, and
consisting of the superficial layer or cuticle, also called the
scarf-skin, that of which we see the polish on our hands
and faces : secondly, a deeper layer, the Mete Mucusom, in
which the coloring matter of the skin resides : and thirdly,
the Corium, Cutis, or true skin, which itself comprises two
layers ; viz., a sensitive sheet of papillae or minute emi-
nences whose summits look surfacewards ; and a firm tex-
ture of fibres underneath, supporting the papillae and the
other layers of the skin.
We will now reverse the order, and regard these skins
DESCRIPTION. 291
in detail, contemplating each by the light of its function,
and we may assure the reader at the beginning, that he is
already acquainted intuitively with the main offices of the
skin, and only requires to connect them to their anatomy,
in order to gain a memorable knowledge of the present
subject.
Underneath the skin, the exterior of the body is muscu-
lar and active, with considerable unevenness between the
parts, some of the muscles being very prominent ; and to
meet the irregularity, and also to afford an unguent for
comfortable motion, the surface is padded with fat, which
reduces it to a level, and rounds it into convenient beauty,
smoothing the harshness of the firm flesh, and gently
cushioning and combining its decisive actions.
But the fat alone could by no means repress the starting
muscles, or define the voluntary movements. The will
would run out of the leaky vessel before it reached its jets
in the hands and feet, if the good easy fat were the only
hindrance. Our fat then requires to be bounded by a
ring of sterner powers. This second provision is the deep
layer placed immediately upon the fat, of the corium,
leather, or true skin. The corium is adapted to contain
the inner parts and functions. It consists of meshes of
fibres inextricably felted together. These are of many
kinds and many purposes. The greater part are tendinous,
some muscular, some nervous, with all intermediate stages
of nature ; indeed they comprise the entire scale of reac-
tion, from its passive to its active form ; from the power of
inertness to the power of actual resistance. Whatever is
continent and tenacious in the body, sends its representa-
tives to the assembled fibres of the corium. The compres-
sion that they jointly exercise, is facilitated, and at the
same time mitigated, by the mode in which they are put
together, whereby they constitute myriads of tent-like ori-
02
292 THE HUMAN SKIN.
fices, with the broad part of the tent towards the fat, and
the peak towards the surface; a solid space of corium
being left between these tented pores, which are filled with
little bags of fat, and with serous fluid, upon which the
contraction of the skin first takes effect. In this way the
force is communicated almost through fluids, with the
utmost power to the general surface, but with the least
violence to the parts. The contractility of this envelope is
a measure of the tone and strength of the body ; it is con-
spicuous in bracing winter mornings, and in cold bathing,
which make us notably tighter and more compact.
The corium, in its elastic life, not only prevents the loss
of muscular force, or embanks the streams of will, but it
has the material design of preventing the disorderly en-
trance of substances from without, and the undue alienation
of fluids from within. This function supposes in the skin
a discriminating power, or sense of touch, a like and dis-
like, to inform the brain of whatever goes on at the out-
posts ; and also an active power, to enable the skin to obey
its consequent decrees. That which feels and acts in these
subtle purposes, is the next layer of the skin, the papillary
cutis, more superficial than the corium. This is an en-
campment of small conical tents coextensive with the sur-
face of the body, differing however in different parts, both
in the thickness with which the papillae are set, and in
their size and power. The papillary substance is a Briarean
limb put forth from the corium, consisting also of fibrous
elements, and quick with blood distributed in meshes of
inconceivable fineness which pervade the papilla, and com-
municate with similar networks in the layer underneath.
Our finger-ends are a type of all the papillae, and like the
fingers, the papillae are instruments both of feeling and
prehension. They are eminently moveable, and being
provided with nerves, and grouped together in different
DESCRIPTION. 293
forms, they constitute with the corium, of whose grasp of
the whole body they are the infinitesimals, the immense
field of touch and take, the basis of the pyramid of the
senses.
But the necessity that sent us from the fat to the corium,
and from the corium to the papillae, pushes us onwards to
demand further instruments. The papillae, depending for
their exquisite life upon the most delicate sensibility, upon
pleasures and pains so fine that our senses give scarcely
an idea of them, must not be exposed directly to the rude
breath of the outer world, which would cause them agony,
and soon blunt them to the delights of touch. The papillae
therefore cannot be the last covering. What is nature's
next resource? The blunter sensations are themselves
assumed by the superaddition of new layers ; not however
actively sensitive layers, but beds of organization that less
feel themselves, than regulate the feelings of the skin.
These coarser touches become the matrix and defence of
the finer. The layer covering in the papillae must of
course be soft and yielding, or it would be as injurious to
the parts beneath as external objects themselves ; at least
when contact with the outer world is taking place. This
layer is the rete mucosum, or mucous network of the old
anatomists.
It is a soft, tenacious substance, placed upon and be-
tween the conical papillae, and furnishes a bed that groups
them together, and into which they protrude. When care-
fully peeled off, and viewed by the microscope against the
light, it assumes the appearance of a network, which is
caused by the counter- sinking whereby it fits to the uneven
surface of the papillae ; the thin places seeming like holes.
Possibly also some of the papillae perforate it. This layer
is the seat of the color of the skin both in the European
and other races, and what is remarkable, the coloring
294 THE HUMAN SKIN.
matter is chiefly abundant in its inner parts, and decreases
outwards ; though sometimes dark points continue to the
surface, and form little streamlets of blackness as far as
the exterior integument.
The unfinished softness of the rete, necessary for foster-
ing the papillae, unfits it for contact with tangible objects,
which would lacerate it at the first touch ; and consequently
nature (in which utility is creative), not only compresses
and hardens the rete in its superficial parts, but superadds
to it a fine covering termed the cuticle, a kind of glazy
platework, capable of assuming, at the bidding of the
same principle of utility, whatever thickness and deadness
is required. Formed out of flattened vesicles or cells, the
cuticle, in its adult condition, consists in point of fact of
scales ; of which our finger nails are the largest and
strongest type.
We have now considered a fourfold mechanism in the
skin, deriving all from the general fact, that the skin gives
an outline and end to the body. We will briefly recapitu-
late our positions, in order to cover in this part of the
subject. The body requires to be levelled, both for safety
to its parts, and economy of space ; this is brought about
by the fat, and the cellular frame- work, which round our
muscular ridges, fill their clefts, and give sweep and
curve to our plains. The body requires to be limited, as
well in itself, as in what it takes in and gives out ; this is
accomplished by the elastic garment of the corium, which
follows our bodily fashions, and sits upon us differently
during every moment of our lives. Furthermore the
corium requires to do knowingly whatever it performs ; to
act discreetly in its functions ; to animate reaction, ab-
sorption and exhalation, with the life of the brain, and
this is ensured by the papillae, which are both brains and
hands to the skin. The papilla on their part need support,
DESCRIPTION. 295
encouragement and protection, which are accorded to them
in the kindly rete, and in the fine, half-earthly cuticle,
which latter is the direct medium between the little world
and the great world, or between sense and exterior nature.
In these pages we do not treat of the sense of touch,
excepting so far as it may be necessary to the general
consideration of the skin, but we notice nevertheless from
what has been said, that the skin enjoys a triple sensi-
bility. First there is the sensation of contact from the
three layers at once, that is to say, from the surface in-
wards ; the papillae make common cause with the rete and
cuticle, and all feel together. This answers to cuticular
sensation or gross touch, and runs in direct lines from the
cuticle, through the rete, to the papillae. In the next
order, arising from the first, we have those perceptions of
touch which are the consciousness of the papillae clad with
the rete alone, the cuticle not sharing in these inner feel-
ings. This species of touch is chiefly horizontal, and
spreads over the live velvet in sheets of vague sensibility.
The last pinnacle of this touch, and whose activity is tact,
belongs to the papillae alone, with their naked summits
and tiny vortical brains. It is so individual, that we can
put forth almost a single papilla, as it were a finger from
the finger, and play with a little agony of quest round
atomical objects.* The lines of thought and purpose meet
* It is not perhaps easy to realize this statement, seeing that all
the layers are permanently united to each other ; but so are the parts
of the nervous system, which yet may be functionally separated, and
the action of the higher, or the lower, stopped off by the force of the
mind. We may lay it down as a rule, that the process by which
nature unites is also inversely the process by which she separates, or
that all her syntheses contain analyses, and vice versci. It is neces-
sary also to take into account the existence of spheres of life as well as
spheres of substances ; for the life of a part extends beyond it, and
296 THE HUMAN SKIN.
it, and set it moving in curved explorations. These three
species of touch in their union, make touch itself into a
substance, and give it over to the mind, which communi-
cates with the skin, not at first hand, but through the
mind of the skin.
The skin, so far as we have considered it, isolates the
man, and makes him world-tight. It is, however, neces-
sary that the world's goods should come into his house,
and that his own produce, not to say refuse and wear and
tear, should be carried forth : nay more, that he himself
should go out and in with the common freedom that a man
requires. The skin is our abode, and not our prison. It
must therefore have bivalve doors and windows, opening
inwards and outwards, and these, as small as the supplies
that are to come from without, and collectively as large as
the spirit that is to step forth from within. In short, the
skin, that is to say, the body, must be porous.
The cuticle or superficial layer is a very permeable
membrane, and the more closely it is examined, the more
porous it appears. Three orders of perforations are visible
upon it to the naked eye ; namely, the large perspiratory
ducts, whose orifices may be seen as little dottings on the
wavy ridges at the ends of the fingers ; the sebaceous folli-
can come bare to the surface, abrogating for the time the hindrance
of whatever parts lie between it and its object. It must be remem-
bered that we are not now treating of dead layers but of three coope-
rating lives, each of which abstracts itself from the others as use
requires. Hence the prodigious sensibility of the skin, and the naked
tenderness of the feelings in many cases. The difference between
papillary tact and cuticular touch is but a difference of animation. In
all cases the inner can be separated from the outer, and itself become
the outer, under favorable circumstances. The soul can be separated
from the body, viz., at death, and this is the universal of powers of
abstraction or separation existing everywhere in the body itself.
UNIVERSAL POROSITY. 297
cles, which anoint the skin with a thin limpid oil that
prevents the excessive evaporation of watery moisture ;
and the passages which lodge and transmit the hairs. All
these are channels of communication for influences, that is
to say, influential substances, from the body to the world,
and vice versa. They are simple involutions of the skin
upon itself, or portions of its three layers as it were pushed
deeply inwards, and the end of the tube so intruded,
wound upon itself into a little ball in the perspiratory pores
and sebaceous follicles ; whilst in the hairs on the other
hand, the tube is formed as before, but the cuticle at the
bottom of it grows into a prolonged cylinder that comes
out again through the orifice ; the hair being essentially a
linear extension of the cuticle. All these organs, viz., the
perspiratory glands and ducts, the sebaceous follicles, and
the hairs, in the channels of which latter the sebaceous
follicles frequently open, are beset with little blood-vessels ;
and as the matters given out and taken in, either come
from, or go to, the blood, so the exterior pores are but the
outer porticoes to the real pores that lie in the sides of the
blood-vessels. The porosity of the outer skin is the sign
of a universal porosity in the system, whereby, according
to circumstances, everywhere leads to everywhere.*
The offices necessarily performed by the skin as the
frontier of the body, consist in the purification of the sys-
tem, in the elimination of some of its products, and in its
renovation by fresh substances, all under the auspices of
the sense of touch. We will now regard it by the light of
* The same muscles which produce action without, and carry us
along our way, shape and alter the ways and channels within, deter-
mining the fluids between new embankments of substances in action ;
and the possibility of these constant changes in the organism, whereby
every action makes its own facilities, is due to the porous cooperation
of the skin man.
o3
298 THE HUMAN SKIN.
this three-fold function. And first, for the office of puri-
fication.
This is effected by the entire surface of the body, which
is continually giving off an atmosphere of exhalations,
differing in quantity as well as grossness at different times.
It is calculated by an ingenious anatomist, that in a
square inch of skin there is a length of tubing of 73 feet,
or in the whole body, of 28 miles ; this vast drain- work
being intended to conduct effect materials from the system.
Every organ is engaged night and day in sweating them
out, through passages more or less circuitous, to the border
shores of the skin. What is the nature of this large clear-
ance of goods ? or what is its common source ?
The blood is the origin of the sensible perspiration, which
comprises both the watery matter given off by the perspi-
ratory glands, and the unctuous moisture which oozes from
the sebaceous follicles. This is shewn by the fact that the
skin, and especially its glands and follicles, are beset with
sheets of capillaries ; and the fat itself, which furnishes
the matter to the sebaceous follicles, is a deposit from the
blood. The rule is, that the blood all over the system is
constantly sent to the frontier, and its useless portions,
averse to the life and movement of the rest, are let out
through the skin, in obedience to their own unsocial ten-
dency ; the skin itself regulating their escape, and pre-
venting the life of the body from being led away at the
same time with the worn-out or ill-affected perspirations.
This is shewn to be the case in health by what takes place
in disease, as well as during fear and other mental emo-
tions, in which the proper constraint is not employed by
the skin, and the living essences themselves run away in
crowds from the irritated and incontinent blood-vessels.
As in other parts of the capillary system, the nervous fibres
are the intelligent agents of the above elimination, and
THE TRANSPIRATIONS. 299
governing, that is, opening and shutting the pores, from
the minute doors of the blood-vessels to the wide avenues
in the skin, they grant or refuse passports to the various
applicants that incline to go out into the world. This office
of the nerves is seconded by the mechanism of the parts,
for the perspiratory and sebaceous ducts rise from the con-
voluted glands in spiral turns through the layers of the
skin, and their orifices also exhibit the law of the spiral
pathway, and are half-closed by the cuticle, which shuts
down upon them like a lid, from under which the perspi-
rations escape obliquely, by overcoming its gentle force ;
exsinuation and insinuation being the methods of this
commonwealth. The cutaneous exhalation is reckoned at
nearly 30 ounces per day, which is supposed to be about
twice the average quantity of matter breathed out during
the same time by the lungs. The skin is therefore our
greatest theatre of substantial change, just as the sense of
touch is the most influential of the senses, impressions upon
which will alter the mind when other means have failed.
The perspiration is of use up to the moment of its ejec-
tion ; nay, after quitting the frame, it partially remains
on, and around, the surface, fomenting the cuticle by its
watery portions, anointing it by the oily, and providing
it with suppleness, and power of intelligent motion or ani-
mal fluidity. Take away this natural cosmetic, and what
a dried and painful expanse is the skin ; as in fevers, each
joint of the tesselated surface grates upon its hinges, until
the dulled sense is stung with a misery that rouses the
whole nervous system for its removal. Nothing can shew-
more clearly the great though gentle power that the cuticle
exercises in health, when it is soft and pliable, its power
of reaction as the general bond of the skin, and of per-
forming the functions included under this reaction, rthan
the disadvantages that result when this thin varnish, as it
300 THE HUMAN SKIN.
is considered, is either removed, unhealthily produced, or
not sufficiently fomented with its appropriate emollients
and unguents. The interests at stake in the suppleness of
the cuticle are known instinctively by savages, and tribes
that despise dress, yet protect themselves by a garment of
oil and red ochre, which serves as a supplement to the
perspirations, as well as takes the place of other clothes.
Our own oils, perfumes and pomades come from a similar
instinct, and every one must have experienced that dry-
ness, whether of the skin or hair, is more than a detriment
to comeliness, that it amounts to discomfort, verging fast
towards pain.*
Besides the sensible perspiration, another species used
formerly to be admitted under the head of the insensible
perspiration, and which was reckoned different from the
former, though now it is regarded as only the minimum of
which the sensible sort is the maximum. We prefer the
old classification, which marks a broad distinction both in
the circumstances and form of the fluid. The one is to
the other what oil, or liquid, is to gas. As a writer has
said : " If we examine with a microscope the naked body,
exposed during summer to the rays of a burning sun, it
appears surrounded with a cloud of steam, which becomes
* The use of the cuticle, as we have seen, is to modify the sense
of touch, or to produce a more external sense by reducing the papillary
keenness and liveliness to earthy conditions. It is not what the cuticle
seems, but what it does, that shews what it is. It produces the most
general sense of all, which sets in motion the next wheels of sense
according as itself is moved. Hence scaly and cuticular diseases are
full of annoyance, and subvert the sense as effectually as diseases
mainly affecting the other layers. Hence too the pleasant effect of
cleanliness and ablutions. In considering the penetration of effects
from without, it is best to think of the cuticle as not a layer but a
sense, and that sense the outmost, and therefore the first determinant
of the quantity and quality of feeling that comes in.
THE TRANSPIRATIONS. 301
invisible at a little distance from the surface. And if the
body is placed before a white wall, it is easy to distinguish
the shadow of that emanation." This emanation, as the
author calls it, constitutes a large proportion of what the
skin gives forth. Its functions are no doubt both purifica-
tory and anointing. It would seem to arise from the finer
pores in the skin, and from pores in the sides of the per-
spiratory and sebaceous ducts ; for let us bear in recollec-
tion, that it is impossible to conceive anything not porous,
and the same principle of permeability which is a physical
fact in the external world, is an organic fact in the human
body, commencing from the skin.
A ratio of size is required between the pores or passages,
and the sweats. This is partly ensured by the varying
contractility of the former. But the difference between
the sensible and insensible perspiration is too great for
this case to meet it. Different sized pores are necessary.
The condition of what transpires through the skin, is touch.
A fine perspiration would not be felt by too large a pore,
and the skin, when such perspiration passed, would know
nothing about it. The story of him who cut two holes in
his barn door, the one for the cocks and hens, and the
other for the little chickens, is no fable in the skin. Such
a provision is indispensable where the walls are feelings,
and act as checktakers to whatever goes in or comes out.
But are our communications to the atmosphere limited
to products which the senses can perceive, whether in
small quantities or volumes, in vapors or fluids? This
question, not answered anatomically, is decided in the
affirmative by broad facts, fertile of consequences. What
are those influences that carry contagion over great spaces
from skin to skin, and which no eye, or microscope, or
analysis hath seen, notwithstanding that they are irresis-
tible ministers of disease and death? What are those
302 THE HUMAN SKIN.
odors proceeding from the skin, by which the exorbitant
sense of the wild Indian tracks the footsteps of his victim
over the long flight of a diversified country ? What
aroma shed upon the earth, and stiffer than the sweeping
wind, is the guide of the bloodhound and other instinctive
hunters, to the distant quarry which they seek? The
footprints of the skin, have they not modified by subtle
sheddings the very ground and stones where the tread has
been ? And how far, and how long, does the magic work
from those scheming lifelike centres ? Nay more, we
appeal to mesmerism, and we ask what it is, proceeding
from the operator's body to the patient, that spell-binds
every sense, or produces the play whereby the automaton
sleeper is set in motion, and set in thought, at the bidding
of another's brain ? Clearly it is no perspiration in an
ordinary sense ; it takes effect through obstacles too great ;
yet as clearly it proceeds from the surface of one frame,
and is received by the surface of another ; in short, it goes
from skin to skin. These facts conclude, that through
certain channels occult to the microscope, quite unknown
to anatomy, but assured by our babe and suckling com-
mon sense, the skin, or the nervous system through it,
pours forth a subtle radiation of tremendous efficacy on
other organic creatures. They render it evident that
through this battery of surfaces, the animal creation, and
man most of all, is constantly impressing a character upon
external nature, literally magnetizing it, and producing
we know not what modifications and new forms in its plas-
tic matrices. It were foolish to suppose that emanations
which engender such changes in those delicate tests, orga-
nic beings, have been powerless to alter dead things in the
ages that have elapsed since first organic life, bent thence-
forth upon multiplication and dominion, sprang from the
seminary of the original earth. Led in this train of
THE RADIATIONS. 303
thought, philosophers have suspected, that the tigers, lions
and snakes, and other ugly foes not seemingly of our
household, were at first but the wind-cast seedlings of
our passions, wicked words overheard and dramatized by
nature, returning now from we know not whither to plague
the inventors ; though doubtless men will be slow to own
such children as these.
What deduction is to be drawn from the above state-
ment, shewn to be a fact by such gross proofs? We claim
it in confirmation of the existence of a manifold nervous
fluid ; for the subtle exhalations we have been acknow-
ledging, pass through space, and from body to body ; nay,
take up a location, and keep it, which would be impossible
were they not bodily themselves. We have therefore
traced the sensible perspiration to the red blood, and this
influential radiation to the nervous system ; and grasping
these extremes, we may put the mean into its place, and
assign the insensible perspiration to the lymphs and color-
less fluids pervading the body. Here is a trinity of exha-
lations, given off by the nervous fluid, the lymph or white
blood, and the red blood respectively ; and which are
established by huge facts not to be gainsayed.
This gives new import to the transpirations of the skin,
for particles constitute volumes, and volumes are groups
according to laws. It flows from the previous conclusions,
that there is round each man an atmosphere which has a
formal existence equally with the interiors of his body. If
the organs underneath the skin be different in every part,
and if the blood be similarly various, then the emanations
from different tracts will exhibit the variety of their
sources, and the image of the body be stamped on its cir-
cumambient sphere. This spheral man environing the
skin is not without a witness in ordinary sense. Observe
the phenomena of sympathy and antipathy manifested
304 THE HUMAN SKIN.
when certain persons come together, and referred by com-
mon observation to the feelings, and very rightly, for the
matter touches us nearly ; and although sight accounts for
impressions, yet a residue of influence is experienced which
all will say is not seen, but felt. And mark the fear which
animals know when they come for the first time into the
presence of their natural enemies. Impressed by such
events and appearances, we recall the doctrine of the
microcosm, nor slight the influences of the sky, but recog-
nize in the sympathetic friend some benign planet of our
destiny ; or in the repulsive presence of others, the malig-
nant rays of an evil star. For as there is no vacuum in
the outward world, so there is none in the human world,
but all mankind touch each other, and form again a globe;
the grand sphere of all individual spheres. One use there-
fore, and perhaps the greatest use of the emanations of the
skin, is, that we may be instinctively known and knowing,
and bring with us our own groundwork of sympathies and
antipathies, whereby to find and maintain our places, ac-
cording to the old laws, of cohesion, attraction and repul-
sion. For what is true in the mineral kingdom, is only
more and differently true in the human.
We are accustomed indeed to think of the transpirations
as not only effete, but unclean. Yet there is certainly one
honorable sweat, namely, that which stands beaded on
the brow of toil. Little children too are of a sweet savor
to their mothers, " as the smell of a field which Jehovah
has blessed." Lovers also dwell in a common atmosphere
of purpureal satisfactions. The redolence of health itself
is like fresh morning air to those that meet it. History
moreover gives cases of persons whose presence was plea-
santly aromatic. It belongs indeed to the skin to rid the
system of particles outworn in its service, but these are
not necessarily foul, but simply the dead forms of the
THE RADIATIONS. 305
same principles Avhich are living forms in the organs.
Inanimation does not imply uncleanness, but rather the
consolidation of a new universe inferior to life. It is the
body as influenced by perverse passions and habits from
generation to generation, that makes our legitimate spheres
into noisome sweats, and the radiations of our minds,
actively repulsive. If the rose or the lily could be glut-
tonous or covetous, lewd or hating, the third generation
of them would give out stenches. It is the inner world
that exalts, or contaminates, the outer; and the purity
of the soul in the body would add a thousand perfumes to
the air, and a manifold attraction of fine sympathies to
the instinctive understanding. At present the rule of
tolerable scents ascends no higher than the flowers ; the
perfume of good and true men is an incense both prophe-
cied and possible.
But the whole of the transpirations do not consist of
effete materials. We feel on the other hand that life is
surrounded by life ; that a man's outposts extend beyond
his skin, and convey his feelings by their emissaries to
our own. Spheres touch before skins. Judging by the
analogy of the saliva, which comes out of its organs alive,
and returns back thither after a circuit, we deduce that
the transpirations are not primarily dead, but leave the
body for a space, to revert to it with fresh supplies won
from the atmosphere in their journey. Man in every
sense can travel out of himself with profit and interest.
He drives not only trade, but commerce, with the sur-
rounding natures. His atoms have the benefit of seeing
foreign parts, and bring home new fashions. Are there
not also currents or winds in the human sphere, whereby
clouds drawn from one part of the surface, are drafted to
other places, to descend with refreshment thereupon ? for
306 THE HUMAN SKIN.
what is dead in the view of the face or chest, may be
living enough for the belly and the limbs.
We therefore see reason to divide the transpirations
into active and passive, or into sweats and radiations, the
former of which gravitate and fall, but the latter are per-
manent and creative. In treating of the lungs we made
a similar division, into breaths and spirits, or into bodily
and purposeless respiration, and into spirited breathing.
And the same remark applies to every system with greater
or lesser exceptions. But this belongs to a new psycho-
logy founded on common observations, and which shews
that heart touches heart with magnetic fingers, and indeed
that organisms are linked to their similar parts by sym-
thetic columns of emanations. The reason of this is, that
the soul is not only included in but also includes the body,
or not only lives beyond the brain, but also beyond the
skin ; being the omega as it is the alpha of the microcosm.
In Chapter II. we dwelt at some length on the ensoul-
ment of the breaths, and here we might shew, did space
permit, that each externization* or excretion that we
make is a similar spirit-carrier. The sweats are no ex-
ceptions to the rule. In faintness whether born of fear
or pain, the sweat is mortal cold, for the life has left it
prematurely. In low animal passions the sweat is hircine,
to suit the goat who owns it. And so forth. The range
is as great as it is subtle. It extends from the shininess
* The externization of things amounts to a new essence in them,
whereby they become distinct objects, not only to other beings, but
often to themselves. The difference between a foetus and a child is
externization acting upon a capable organism. Emanation, therefore,
where it is an emanation of life, differences itself, or becomes a fresh
object, at each successive elongation from its source. But this for
the metaphysical.
THE RADIATIONS. 307
of oozy monk and stall-fed prelate, to the glory-rim around
the saints, and again to the crucifixion before the cruci-
fixion, the Master's agony-sweat as of great drops of blood
in the garden of Gethsemane.
Perspiration then is not only purification, but emis-
sion, and emanation or creation. We now proceed to the
other half of the subject, to the renewal of the body
through its cutaneous surface from the external world, or
its reception of fluids and exhalations from without. And
first for the fact. It is proved by the absorption of medi-
cated substances when rubbed upon the skin ; by the relief
of thirst, the increase of weight, and the nutrition of the
body, when plunged in baths of water, or of alimenti-
tious fluids ; by increase of weight from the air itself,
during sleep, as well as at other times, and which cannot
be accounted for by the food taken ; also by the phenomena
of sympathy and antipathy, and by the effects of mes-
merism ; and in short by the same evidences that attest
the cutaneous exhalation. There is then a parallel of
giving and taking ; the man and the world cross hands ;
the exchanges are balanced between the skin of the body
and the skin of the planet, the atmosphere being their
market; the spirit, lymph, and blood modify nature by
their sphere ; and nature by hers constitutes their circum-
stances and supports their reactions. This is also shewn
by the organic effects of climate, and by the geographical
colorings and other differences of the skin. The rule here
is, that as the atmospheres, as well as the earth, environ
the skin, the latter is natively adequate to avail itself of
their wealth, whether ponderable or imponderable, and to
feed its own system with whatever is inferiorly organic,
or earthy, watery, airy, gaseous or ethereal. In short
the skin man is a sponge immersed in nature's plenum,
308 THE HUMAN SKIN.
and soaking us through, soul-deep, with the substantial
properties of every medium.
This which is established by facts, and afterwards ap-
pears self-evident, is the point whence to start in unravel-
ling the texture of the skin ; common sense being the way
to uncommon sense. In this texture there are several
kinds of fibres that are unaccounted for ; the microscope
has done its best, yet they are known but as threads, of
different colors and varying elasticity. Are they not con-
duits of some reasonable stuff to the frame? Are the
primary fibres impervious, the dams and hindrances of
motion, spoiling its current by their inadmissive contracted-
ness ? Truth is shocked at the supposition, and answers
that nature, the deeper and smaller she becomes, is the
roomier in accommodation for her essences, which are
only represented in the fluids. It is abusing the micro-
scope to imagine that it can sound the depth of any struc-
ture : honest sight is deeper than the microscope ; for we
see on the broad canvas of space, effects which point to
properties that no lens can verify.
But the truth is that nature is more considerate than
our science, and she places somewhere in every system
one or more big facts to shew her designs. These are her
maternal "great A and bouncing B," her picturesque
alphabet, intended to be learnt by implicit rote before
anything else. Too often how r ever we begin at the end of
her grammar, and never find this alphabet ; and can but
timidly copy her forms, without the power to spell much
less to read them. Now what is the largest pore in the
skin? Without hesitation, the mouth, which shews us,
by an unmicroscopic exhibition, that the whole skin feeds
upon terrestrial elements, solid and fluid. What are the
next pores ? Plainly the nostrils and ears, the purveyors
THE BIG PORES. 309
of the atmosphere and its motions. And what do these
cutaneous orifices declare but the universal aeration of the
body by the surface in which they are constituted ? But
is there an opening for the ether ? Undoubtedly two, in
the eyes, where the mind stands face to face with the
world, and the world with the mind. This is sight, which
permeates the closed windows of the cornea, and sees that
there are pores above the microscope, and that the uni-
verse can come in to us when the doors are shut. Those
ether wells, the eyes, are the naked truths of a whole
humanity of similar orifices whose lids conceal them in
other parts of the skin. If these deductions be too strange,
we ask then, do not we interpret other things by their
leading facts ? And what is our knowledge of the world
but the knowledge of its faces and its heads ?
But upon this subject of the appropriations of the skin,
we caution ourselves that the life of each part seeks and
takes the kinsmen of the part, and no other things. The
lungs or air organs breathe air, gas, whatever ascends
from the solid into the void, or tends to enlarge itself or
to breathe. The stomach eats whatever is eatable; it
fructifies fruit of every order, or puts the material finish
to that process by which nature is eaten and digested until
it comes up to mankind. So again, skins are the proper
object of the skin ; for this system skims the world, takes
a film for itself from every surface, and assumes the cream
of body as the matter of the sense of touch. This sense
is the essence or single substance of the skin, which clothes
the mind and the organism with the personable outsides
of things. We are not then to think any longer of assimi-
lation as a formula in treating of the skin from its own
point of view ; for we have left assimilation behind in the
stomach. It is the external apposition and mutual feeling
of the parts which alone belong to the skin.
310 THE HUMAN SKIN.
We do not however dwell upon the sense of touch or
the pleasures of the skin, for we are not yet treating of the
senses, but of the bodily organs. Only let us remember
that the armies of the papillae, encamped in force upon
the frontier wherever great sensation is wanted, and every-
where posted, spaced and grouped for watchfulness and
protection, are armies of industry also, being to their ad-
jacent pores what the hands are to the mouth. They are
exquisitely quick, attentive and manipulative, and can
help the skin to what it may feel, or warn it against de-
structions or irritations, with an agency more discriminating
than our consciousness. But the mind acts with great
force upon the skin through the nervous system, and de-
pressing emotions playing upon the surface, destroy its
equilibrium, damp its courage, throw it off its guard, and
cause it to let in the emanations of disease. Hence during
fear the papillse desert their posts, and contagion invades
us. On the other hand, the might of life is similarly
transferable to the skin, which thus encouraged, walks
the pest-house unharmed, and feels virtues like its own
in the poisons.
Nor must we forget the motion of the skin, with which
we are familiar in the breathing, Our feelings of the uni-
versality of respiration are the running accompaniments of
the universal respiration of the skin. Under this, its con-
stant movement, its other movements are performed. The
sympathy of sense between it and the lungs is close : the
same air and temperature bathes them both, and the winter
that narrows the desires of breath, contracts the skin to fit
the diminished visceral spheres. The air and earth of the
microcosm both lessen together, and both expand together
under kindlier seasons. The expansion of the breathing
skin is the enlargement of every pore of the lung order,
and causes the absorption of the various influences in which
THE SELF-POSSESSION OF THE SKIN. 311
the skin is plunged. This is the active cause of the sym-
pathy of the skin with the air and the powers that it con-
tains. The state of the mind or the animation of the brain
and nerves is in like manner concerned in the relation that
the skin holds to those parts of nature which lie above the
air.
Thus the skin is a natural balancer of temperature, be-
cause it is the medium between two fires, those, namely,
of the body and the sun. It is a remarkable circumstance
indicating the self-possession of the body, that its heat
varies but little with climate, or the seasons. Standing at
about 100 degrees of Fahrenheit, it repulses the equatorial
fervor, and the northmost cold. Undoubtedly this is due
in the last place to the mettle and temper of the skin. It
sprinkles its heated envelope of atmospheres with abundant
vapors, cooling as they rise ; for the supply of which our
thirst is commanded in the sultry hours : on the other hand,
when the outside weather is inclement, and winter howls,
the skin fastens up its infinite shutter- work, and the fires
are fed with liberal materials, which then must be taken
according to hunger, which prescribes the fuel.
The skin then suitably, or sensibly, gives out and takes
in what it requires, this being the sum and substance of
inhalation, exhalation, and the intermediate touch and
the sphere surrounding the skin serves as a medium to
attemper, humanize, and convey to the body the forces of
the external world ; much as the atmospheres receive the
rays of the sun, and convey them to the planet.
Whither does the skin go ? or where does it end ? It
may be said that it is continuous with itself, and ends no-
where, as it begins nowhere. True, but it is more circu-
lar than this. For besides that it covers the whole body,
it passes in along the great thoroughfares, only assuming
a thinner and moist surface, and constitutes the lining of
312 THE HUMAN SKIN.
the nostrils, the windpipe and the lungs ; it also enters by
the mouth into the alimentary canal, and therefrom into
the depths of the liver and the pancreas ; and by other
ways into other viscera, and into all the glands. These
are its highroads ; as for its private paths, they are innu-
merable. It passes down every hair-follicle, and by the
cuticle to the tip of every hair ; it runs along each perspi-
ratory gland and oil gland, through the eight and twenty
miles of our ingenious surveyor ; and next through every
pore of every sieve-like blood-vessel along the sanguineous
system, and along the lymphatic system ; over levels which
no anatomical quadrant has taken, and through a mileage
which wants another surveyor still ; in short it ranges
through brain and body wherever anything touches any-
thing, and where consequently a sense of touch and a skin
are indispensable.*
So much for the altitude of the skin, or its penetrancy
body-deep, and its rise brain-high. But the surface of
the organic miracle, its means of display, are not less
remarkable. The plummet line that finds no soundings is
matched in the lines of sight, which meet a constant hori-
zon, but never a shore. Awe stands giddy over the chasms
of the soul ; amazement heaving with joy, finds and loses
itself moment by moment, at the prospect of the landscapes
* The presence of skin in the body is the double of the presence
of feeling, which is skin-function, in the mind ; and as feeling is co-
intensive with life, skin is coextensive with bodily structure. Feeling
however subsists in different powers and degrees so dissimilar to each
other, that no boldness short of common sense dare call by the same
general word the sentiment of duty, or love, and the sense of warmth,
or resistance ; all of which, however, are rightly designated feelings.
It requires the same boldness, and no more, to denominate the mem-
branes of the pia mater by the name skin, which signifies the general
envelope of the frame.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL SKIN. 313
of the never-ending life. The skin is as broad as it is
high.
The geographical or regional consideration of the skin, to
which we are now pointing, is capable of being pursued in
different ways. It may be followed literally, and the diver-
sities of skin traced in nations and races in different parts
of the globe ; looking on the earth itself as clothed with
men as with a coat of many colors. Or it may be
traced over the individual body, where it exhibits a scale
of varieties, minute indeed, but apparently as exhaustless
as in humanity itself. Let us briefly advert to each of
these departments.
In all races of mankind the corium or true skin is
white ; the difference of hue residing in the other layers.
Blumenbach reckons five general varieties of color ; the
white or Caucasian ; the yellow or Mongolian ; the red,
copper-colored, or American ; the brown or Malaic ; and
the black or Ethiopian. In each of these classes the
general varieties are again repeated. Thus the European
skin embraces' the swarthy Italian and the fair Swede ;
and the English ranges in a lesser compass through the
same shades from the blonde to the brunette. What is
the cause of the great difference in the color of our skins ?
One cause is, that variety is the child of nature, and
coextensive with existence. But why should the variety
run from white to black, rather than play through the
infinitude of whiteness with all coloration and enrichment?
What produces hues repulsive between races of brothers,
and why does nature char and begrime her offspring ? Is
it merely that the sun "will keep baking, broiling on?"
Not altogether ; for in that case the inhabitants of equal
levels in the tropics, would be as uniform belts of colored
tribes around the globe ; which is not the fact. The rea-
son is more complex. The true whiteness of the skin
314 THE HUMAN SKIN.
would signify the equilibrium between the light and heat
of the man, and the light and heat of the sun, which were
they balanced, the face would be a transparent panoply,
reflecting both the spirit and the world, and self-defended
against the invasive subtlety of the solar rays. If the
light of life were there, the skin would bleach into more
resistless whiteness in the burning noon-day, light living
upon light, and energy upon energy : the brave life would
stand with gleaming shields upon the extremest ramparts
of the cuticle. At present, however, in the black man's
skin, his darkness eats up the light, in order to effect the
balance. The sable rete of the Ethiopian is an organism
that, by its relation to light and heat, absorbs the fierce-
ness of the sun without making claim upon the nervous
energy ; and does by a fixed or unsightly circumstance
what life would effect by its own witty heroism. His poor
body cannot help being burnt, and kindly nature has
strewn it with coalfields for the purpose. No wonder
that his color is a felt degradation, for it is the police
of weak-eyed and waxen virtues, that would melt under
the fierceness of his skies. With respect to the other
skins, red, yellow, brown and pied, all rising to their
own blackness, they are to be regarded as separate or-
ganizations, or as so many intelligent resources for
maintaining reasonable terms between the tyrannical
strength of nature and the enfeebled life of man ; and in
general the rainbow of human skins is a divine signal
against these floods of the sun. The power of climatiza-
tion is measured very much by the ability of the skin to
stand up for itself, or else to take on the restored balance
that color produces between the surface and outward influ-
ences. The colored parts in each instance appear to be a
distinct tribal organization, required in different shades
and proportions by various races under the same sky ; for
THE GEOGRAPHICAL SKIN. 315
there is nothing to make it probable that the English skin
for instance, place it under the line for a number of gene-
rations, would assume the jettiness of the Negro, or the
tawny shade of the Malay.* We may therefore see that
among the causes that have led to the present distribution
of races, the relative life of the skin is one ; and that cer-
tain tribes would instinctively move down the sides of the
planet, until they found the spot where the slanted sun-
beams were dilute enough to befriend, and not injure, their
undefended skins ; the flaming sword behind chasing them
away to more frigid destinies as their loves waxed fainter.
And indeed the light and heat are continually operating in
all great migrations, from the east to the west, and now from
the west to the east ; much as the same causes in nature
produce winds and currents, which are inanimate migra-
tions. {
* The clothing of the different races is significant, relatively to the
present state and future prospects of our skins. Under the line,
where the rule of the skin is blackness and also thickness, we clothe
in white and light garments ; in the temperate regions, in dark
woollen clothes. Shewing that opposite conditions to those of the
skin, are sought in the clothing. Were the skin able to keep its own
balance, it would be what the clothing now is, whitest at the equator,
and darker where greater heat is wanted, and where less bleaching
power is given.
f We see remains of the migratory principle by which the world
has been peopled, and which has forced the races to quit the
fairest spots r and to move onwards, often into comparatively inhos-
pitable regions, in the fact that many persons are born out of their
health's latitude, and cannot live in our English climate, but are sent
away to Madeira, Italy, the South of France, or Australia, where
they can continue an existence which would be early extinguished
here. What was once the rule of races happens now with individuals,
and that, exceptionally : yet as it goes on from all countries, it
amounts to the collection of new races destined to be united in the
amity of new mother climates. The development of a human race is
P2
316 THE HUMAN SKIN.
Passing from the geography to the hierarchy of the
skin, from its planetary to its social developments, we find
that the skins of the extreme classes of society differ as
much as the classes themselves. The horny hand of labor
represents a prevailing texture of the surface, which ex-
posure to the air, coarse exercise, the sweats of toil, and
the quality of the bread of toil ; in a word, every circum-
stance connected with the lower classes, tends to produce
and perpetuate. Their complexions are those of the brawny
limbs of society. The present is ever a magnified time ;
the past and the future are compressed ; and the pores
and fibres are large that work upon the present, and deal
with the rude exaggeration of our immediate wants. The
upper classes are closer knit and finer surfaced, and breed-
ing is unsuccessful, if it does not alter the skin. You do
not see the details of their bodies, or criticize their timbers,
but they come before you with a whole front at once.
The skin also exhibits the phenomena of sex with its
own characteristic openness, concealing and revealing ac-
cording to the eldest modesty .of nature. Softness and
strength are married in the male and feminine skins, and
sense and sensibility are completed in that union. The
woman is finer grained, to constitute a permanent aristo-
cracy, so much of humanity as nature can keep without
coarse drudging in the world. She works her feelings by
fleet algebra in spaces less than our knowledge, while we
like that of a human body. At first its parts are moveable, and are
not born in the places which they are subsequently to occupy : emigra-
tion therefore is a distinct branch of embryology : and even at a late,
or what we may. call the historical period of the frame, some great
changes, occur : the testes for instance emigrate from their hot birth-
place under the kidneys to the neighborhood of the pole in the scro-
tum. Moreover, the opening out and stretching of the infant man at
birth amounts to the elongation of his feet from his head to the
greatest possible degree.
THE SOCIAL AND SEXUAL SKINS. 317
swelter behind, learned porters, carrying cumbrous slate-
fHls of figures. It is because her skin is deeper, more
vital or as it were visceral | a sweeter trembling nakedness
as of a soul stripped of one earthy covering to shew what
its mode and doings are when the hood of flesh is gone.
For this natural reason, and many other reasons, women
are sometimes called angels. This sexual difference of the
skin is the sign of such a difference reigning throughout
the organism, for the means are carried in the extremes ;
and as the soul is coordinate with the body, the common
sense of the skin proclaims the existence of sex in the
soul, where the laws of diversity and union become also
extended.
Again the single skin is suited in constitution and color
to the part that it covers, and to its function in every place.
Where great resistance is demanded, as on the heel, or in
the palm, the cuticle, no longer thin, becomes a dense
and almost horny pad ; and in short, it sympathizes with
our occupations and habits, presenting an open declaration
of the statesmanship of the body ; for if there be this
power of wise change in the scurf of the skin, what is
there not in the depth of the system and in the senate of
the brain ! So also the reticulum varies with the latitudes
and longitudes of the person, being greatest where the
sensibility is greatest, as over the hands, and upon the
tongue. The papillae also are various everywhere, and
peculiarly grouped multitudinous where feeling is quick
and frequent; almost indiscernible in other parts. The
corium too is thick and thin, and differently woven, as
utility desires. In short the individual skin brings us back
again to the social and geographical ; it too runs from
coarseness to fineness, from whiteness to shadow, from life
to dullness ; representing on one person the skins of all
ranks and conditions, all seasons and zones ; kingly face-
318 THE HUMAN SKIN.
skin and peasant foot-skins; swart patches of Ethiopian
dusk, and tracts of open fairness, as it were temperate
climes.
Turning from the general map of the body to the head,
chest and abdomen, we observe that their great divisions
of skin modulate through successive functions. Over the
belly, receptivity is the leading office ; it sustains material
distention for periods short and long, and recovers itself
more or less. In the skin covering the chest there is a
higher elasticity, fitting it for its lifelong reciprocations ;
active strength is the gift of the thoracic covering, and it
easily recedes before the filling breath, and then as easily
runs forward after the retreating lungs. In the head, all
the other functions of the skin are present, and capital
functions superadded. Besides that the head- skin is me-
chanically yielding and elastic, it is also intellectually ex-
pressive ; it runs after the changes of the brain, faster
than the skin of the chest follows up the alternations of the
lungs. But in robing the sovereign brain, the beauty of
the organism, such as it is, dwells in its natural folds, and
harmony and love come forth perforce around it. Feature
or intellectual form, active fitness, and close continence,
severally representing mind, motion and body, are thus
the three spirits of the skin, according to the three regions ;
and these are the cornucopia of its uses.
We have said but little upon one important appendage
of the skin, namely, the hair, which is of a threefold
kind, and is universal over the body. There is the mas-
sive growth upon the scalp, the short hairs met with in
other parts, and the invisible down, which appears to exist
everywhere. We can only remark that its uses through-
out are typified in those of the hair on the head. Warmth,
clothing, conduction, protection, expression, beauty, every
hair means them all. It is also observable that there is
THE HAIR. 319
an intimate connexion between the hair and the tempera-
ment, and between the hair and the nervous system, and
a sympathy between the hair and the mind in health and
disease. The narratives of fear turning the hair white in
a single night, are so well attested, that a late clever
writer on the subject has nothing to object beyond the
*'of course it is impossible" of his own education. Cer-
tain it is that the hair is a part of the man, and in a
broad sense comes from his very nerves. In the face of
anatomical limits, and heedless of learned giggling, who-
ever has once felt the hair of his flesh stand up, knows
right well that something ran out of his brains when the
fright was on his back. Let the anatomist make a scalpel
out of that fact, and carve away with it at the hair follicle,
and he will soon find that every hair carries a streamlet
of his life.
The hair presents an elongation of the qualities of the
cuticle, and analysed by the wearer, we see in it the same
round world again as in the most living organs. The
moss and grass of our skulls is just like us. The head is
nature's king, and nature crowns it. The essence passes
into the crown, and it represents the royalty of the wearer.
The manly forelocks rise with independence and openness,
equally with the forehead that they overshadow. The
clustered curls of the woman catch and benet with the
same witchery that glitters from her eyes, or fascinates
in her smile. Yea, every state and feeling makes as free
with the hair as fear itself. Low-browed self abasement
has a straight-haired head ; its very comb puts it down
by instinctive logic of correspondences. Courage and
energy crisp the hair like wire. Prolific and young-
blooded races like the Negro, are woolly as sheep ; old
and decaying tribes, such as the American Indians, are
lank and drooping in their locks. Life throws the hair as
320 THE HUMAN SKIN.
a substantial shadow around tke principal organs, to which
it offers a native contrast, forming the colored complement
of their grace. Whatever shadow is required, comes by
this rule : red hair is the contrast in keeping with one
complexion, and black hair with another. The back-
ground is not only itself expressive, but in harmony with
the portrait ; the sun-faced day is set and framed in its
own casket of night.
Did space allow, it would here be proper to make a
brief excursion into wild- wood nature, to note the fertility
of the skin as it undulates over the plains of animal exist-
ence. What is wonderful, that demure thing, the cuticle,
when applied to lower lives, breaks into a sportiveness
that amuses belief. Scale in the fish, coil in the serpent,
feather in the bird, many-colored coat woolly or hairy in
the quadruped, impenetrable mail in the pachyderm, it
shews on a mighty arena what are its delicate and silent
uses in the human body. But we must not be led into the
pleasant ark of zoology. Suffice it however that these
properties are represented in man also, whose fine tact,
and its sober instrument, terminate in arts that beat the
feathered wing in flight, and outdo the fur in warmth,
and the mail in protection; and his model skin stands in-
wards unspent the while ; and all is there in its prolific
source, which is doled out in strict though bountiful mea-
sure to the jpoor unalterable animals.
We recur, however, to the function of the skin as ex-
pressing the mind, and as being, with the Sovereign
Artist the canvas of the beauty of the world. This beauty,
they tell us truly, is only skin-deep, but none of them
has told us what is the depth of the skin. At all events
it must guage to profound realms, for it brings the whole
man to the surface. Moreover, it is not in fact made up
of tvvo layers, but cuticle and cutis are artificial produc-
THE FACE. 321
tions, conveniences of books, the work of men's hands.
The human countenance especially is the painted stage
and natural robing room of the soul. It is no single,
double or triple dress, but wardrobes of costumes innu-
merable. Our seven ages have their liveries there, of
every dye and cut from the cradle to the bier: ruddy
cheeks, merry dimples and plump stuffing for youth ;
line and furrow for many-thoughted age; carnation for
the bridal morning, and heavenlier paleness for the new-
found mother. Masks are there indeed for every time ;
and tragedy, comedy, and farce are positive nature in the
skin. Every shade of passion has its mantle in that
boudoir. All the legions of desires and hopes have uni-
forms and badges there at hand. It is the loom where
the inner man weaves on the instant the garment of his
mood, to dissolve again into current life when the hour or
the moment is past. There it is that love puts on its
celestial rosy red, which is its proper hue ; there lovely
shame blushes, and mean shame looks earthy; there
hatred contracts its wicked white; there jealousy picks
from its own drawer its boddice of constant green ; there
anger clothes itself in black, and despair in the greyness
of the dead ; there hypocrisy plunders the rest, and takes
all their dresses by turns ; sorrow and penitence too have
sackcloth there ; and genius and inspiration in immortal
hours, encinctured there with the unsought ancient halo,
stand forth as present spirits in the supremacy of light.
In a word, the compass of human nature, as it is seen
and felt, is all to be referred to the inexhaustible repre-
sentations of the skin.
Thus the skin is the kingdom of show, for whatever is
seen of mankind is nothing else ; a proof of the expres-
siveness of a covering which can be the universal face.
For the skin is the fine but ample decorum in which the
p3
322 THE HUMAN SKIN.
inward terminates ; the only thing that is fit to be seen
either in art, in nature, or in science. It hides the raw-
ness of our curious fleshwork, and reveals it anew as comely
and personal ; it gathers up thousands of. nervous fibres in
the speaking countenance, and mingles the infinite colors
of life into a single complexion ; it groups discordant mus-
cles into lovely or manly limbs, and braces the unseemly
viscera into a statuesque humanity, toning and levelling
the whole out of its own reservoirs of temperament. And
so it is the official presentation, and the bright honor of
the body. It is sacred too in its wholeness, and blood lies
under it film- deep, to start forth red before man and nature
with a divine protest against its violation.
Clothing or fallen decency comes forth from this origi-
nal source ; the art and mystery of it is first given in the
skin.* The materials of our garments tally with its ema :
* It will be seen on our principles, that clothes are natural to the
human body, because art is included in our nature (p. 140), and man,
the image of the Creator, cannot but surround himself with those
secondary creations which we are accustomed to term artificial. Vest-
ments however are as natural as birds' nests, or birds' feathers ; but
as they spring from the nature of reason and imagination, from the
constructive faculties of mind instead of those of body or instinct,
they are more free and various than animal clothes. But wherever
the human form is, in whatever world, the principle of utility that
commands the arts, will reproduce the vestures to the occasion. The
productions of art are in fact the comparative anatomy of the human
frame, as distinct from the comparative anatomy of the animal frame,
the procession of which latter is exhibited in the kingdoms of nature.
And the tendency and promise of the true humanity is, a world which
spontaneously follows what Bacon calls " human uses." " Houses
not made with hands" are spoken of in the Bible; also garments that
wax not old. In the same book we learn that the people of hea-
ven are not naked, but clothed in shining raiment ; and the Ancient
of Days has " a waistcoat of white wool :" the armies there also are
" clothed in fine linen, white and clean." For if man is immortal,
CLOTHING. 323
nations. The linen is the cool and watery envelope of the
body ; the cotton is the middle, or earthy ; woollen and
cloth are the prolongations of the hair, the unctuous and
the oily ; silks and satins, with their metalline glow and
ocular glancing, stand for the ether and unresting fire that
goes out and in, and changes for ever in the eyes and coun-
tenance with elusive lustre. Jewels and ornaments also
are of the brotherhood of the eyes and face, and make
dress into rank and dignity. The costume of nations, sexes,
times and events descends from their countenances and
skins. White and scarlet and Tyrian purple are but their
chromatic refractions. The Persian scarf, the Thibetan
wool, England and France with their stuffs and laces,
China with its cloth of gold, only continue in measured
movements the infinite fabric of the weaving corium. The
great first shuttle is human nature still.
This skin, like all things besides, ascends by its powers
to other spheres. Surfaces, bonds and communications
belong to nature and spirit alike. Manners are a social
skin, whereby our savageness is hidden and compressed,
our wants are tamed into shapely occasions, and the rules
that glide from man to man fold and wrap individuals into
communities, and keep the warts of our eccentricity levelled
down under the common tone of the time. Laws and bonds
all is immortal, sense, faculty, art, decency ; and in the more plastic
world of the spirit, the constructive powers realize instantaneously and
organically what is here the result of the same powers working through
imperfect machineries. So much for the naturalness of clothes, whose
forces and forms are those of the human mind, and accompany the
mind whithersoever it goes. We write this note, because the Bible
narratives are sometimes discredited for attributing investiture to the
future man, whereas this attribution is in harmony with common
sense, and the contrary is a part of the indecent doctrine, that man,
when he dies, goes nowhere, and has nothing on.
324 THE HUMAN SKIN.
are more penetrating manners, as it were the membranous
politesse that is binding upon the inward life. And the
arts that beautify our estate, live and reside upon the new
extensions of human nature formed by these amiable skins.
The universe also has the cutaneous principle through-
out, as the ground of its beauty, and the substantial the-
atre of its changes. Landscape and ocean-scene are the
planetary skin, and field, garden and grove are the ex-
pressive face that the world upturns in gratitude to its cul-
tivators.* Atmosphere, tides and magnetic lines, varied
soils and successive climates, depth and deeper depth of
strata, enamelled vastness of plant and flower, mutations
of all as constant as heaven is constant, these are the
* It would not be difficult to run the parallel between the human
and planetary skins. The body with its hard muscular surface is
the naked planet, to be clothed with a skin that will receive the sun
by inviting but independent forms. The soil, itself chiefly of organic
origin, is the fatty layer which first covers in the bare rocks and sur-
faces, and makes them mildly round. The network of binding grass,
the interlacing kingdom of plants and trees, represents the cutis with
its fibrous coverings. The animal kingdom, and man especially, is
the papillary layer, quick, sentient and locomotive, living on the best
and most fertile parts of the great surface. The vegetable kingdom,
as it proceeds from human cultivation and through the mind of man,
is the rete mucosum, a world of new growth rising to the surface, and
covering in the rest. The universal mechanism of the arts, polishing
everything externally, educating man, domesticating animals, pruning
and raising the culture of plants, and conciliating mineral or mecha-
nical truth with vital rotundity and flexibility, is the varnish of the
cuticle, through which man and the world are put in their court dress
of beauty, suitable to hold the train of light which falls from the pro-
gressive sun. Thus the skin is a circular vesture, coming up like a
scarf from the earth to wrap the shoulders of man, and falling down
again from him in statelier folds towards the same earth. Its ascend-
ing sweep is from the fat to the central or capital cutis ; its descend-
ing, from the cutis to the cuticle.
THE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 325
natural family of those minutiae of the human frame with
which we have busied ourselves here. And go where we
will, we cannot transcend one pen- stroke of the everlasting
order. The skin is a truth, and omnipresent. Especially
must it reign in the intellectual sphere. There it is a noble
species of touch, allied to all that is great and solid, no
other than our common sense, polished, inviolate, sensi-
tive of trivialities, rejecting at once what is antiquated
and useless, open as day to edification, reconsidering many
things ; the basis of capacity ; the beauty of the emotions ;
the complexion of the virtues ; the conversibility of the
understanding ; the simple drapery of wise actions. This
it is which fosters the man, and is the defence of an im-
mortal vesture.
Let us, then, attend a little more severely to the corres-
pondences of the skin considered as a function and principle,
and elicit its formulas in their main departments. In ful-
filling this task, we shall come to the largest generalizations,
as the skin is the generalization of the body ; and to self-
evident positions, because the skin is ocular evidence of
ourselves. This is the reason why the present chapter is
descriptive, for the skin being scenery, we wander perforce
around its regions, pencil in hand.
The outer skin of all is space, whose face robes the suns,
its breast envelops the air, and its belly overlays the ter-
rene globes ; a skin adapted to its contents ; space expres-
sive to the glancing fire, free space to the atmospheres,
and fixed space to the earth. At the top the name of space
is light, the countenance or beaming of things ; in the
middle it is expanse, the chest of the same ; and below it
is extense, the flatness of matter, or the skin of the ground.
Space limits, for nothing can exceed its space, or add a
cubit to its stature. But it is porous, and keeps in none
but insides of its own grossness. The light-space transpires
326 THE HUMAN SKIN.
through the air-space, which becomes luminous thereby ;
and spiritual things invade space with no resistance, for it
is not their bound. Space has no existence without things,
as neither the skin without the body. But it holds the
creatures that want room, and carries them all ; it is the
quarry of the sculptures of shape, the canvas of the pictures
of color ; white and glowing in its sunny eyes, blue in its
immensity, green on its seas, and verdant on its earths.
And as by room and show it gives free expression, it makes
the outward world candid, that is to say, representative of
the inner. So is space the mundane skin all-expressive,
all-elastic, and all-continent.
In the realm of growth the same skin-principle has a
new name, and there we call it nature, the expression and
limit of growth, or the vegetable term. This is the end of
that kingdom, which clips it in and gives it bounds. The
nature of trees is, to rise so high, and no higher ; to be
fast in their places ; to be immiscible with other trees ; to
be attached to climates and fostered by seasons ; to be
limited by each other, and to be annual or perennial, and
die when their vegetable space and time are passed. Their
nature also is growth itself; the bud transpires through
the bark and unfolds into the leaves, and the flowers trans-
pire and unfold in their turn, like verdurous skies steam-
ing out of the brown earth, and brilliant vapors collecting
into petals like little suns in the cope. For their nature is
to live in space and represent it, ranging minutely from
its head to its feet. Furthermore, by the nature of the
vegetable kingdom, the tendencies that it cannot hold, escape
it, and the animal kingdom is evolved on its outside, cre-
ated among its unbounded parts ; and this nature is the end
of development. For all is developed from growth as all
lives from life. The animals are as apparitions to the trees
and herbs ; they come and go out of the dead spaces by no
THE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 327
vegetable law ; and by nature the science of stiff stumps
avers that animals are illusions, but that birdless and
beastless wildernesses are vegetable orthodoxy and truth.
We are now upon another skin-principle, a third space
and a second nature, namely, that of the animals, and the
name of this principle is Self, which is the limit of the
love of pleasure or animal heart (p. 284) ; for the beasts
love only those pleasures that please themselves. They
assimilate what suits themselves ; they go whither they
will ; they breathe for themselves ; their instincts are for
themselves ; in a word, wherever they run they are con-
tracted to themselves, which is the same as to say that
self bounds them, or is their skin. Self, however, is the
surface and slumber of every animal passion ; for passions,
or the life that " suffers itself" to be provoked, begin from
the skin. Hence self-defence, in which nature seconds
passion, and gives shaggy hair to one, horns and hoofs to
another, beak and claws to a third. And as self is a
faculty highly jealous, it incites every part for its own,
that is to say, for self defence. Again, when self is touched
by pleasure, it opens and lets in the pleasure ; when hurt,
it shrinks away : in short, it is the texture of superficial
motives, and answers every appellant with lightning-haste.
And being the instigator of show, it tricks itself with the
allurements of animal art, and sees its own graces in every
polished surface; and while it always displays itself, it
conceals by hiding one self under another, and putting the
most feasible forward. Self then is the dear u whole skin "
of animality, which keeps it what it is, bounds and binds
it to its pleasures and pains, making it impassive to all
others, and cuts it off from the universe, but connects it
with similar selves. And as only a certain amount of ^elf
or animal space is allowed to any creature, an equilibrium
or competition arises, which is the congregate self of ani-
328 THE HUMAN SKIN.
mal tribes or the selfishness of animal societies. Yet
through self transpires more than self, and from animality
oozes forth that which it cannot keep in, a sphere of wis-
dom, self-denials and animal virtues, as it were the first
gases in which moral life is respiring ; qualities whose
origin we do not attribute to the animals themselves, but
to the Creator passing through their shades, and leaving
his prints among their dreams. It remains to be said, that
self rigorously clears out whatever is incongruous, and
makes each animal more and more itself the longer it lives.
Anything unselfish is ghost and fantasy to self, necessarily
denied by every art, science and heart-beat of the brutes.
Consciousness is the skin of human mind ;* for at any
* Philosophers, busy with the investigation of consciousness, do
not suspect that they are writing monographs on the cutaneous prin-
ciples. The Ego and the Me, the self, the personality, and suchlike
thin things of thought, cannot help being somewhat spare, and in
themselves dry, for they are skinny subjects. And when consciousness
sets up for itself, and assumes that it is the human mind, instead of
the bag in which the mind lies, then the diseases of the mental skin
begin, and the unconscious philosophers describe their own maladies
as the history of the universe. Those who attach themselves to the
"pure Ego" as having an independent life in itself, are investigating the
hairy scalp of the mind, more or less full of pediculi, which are " the
life" that it has " in itself." Those who limit themselves to person-
ality or individuality, are all " face " in their pursuits, and study
impudence in its universals. The drier studies of consciousness are
busied with the mental scarf-skin, and when the organic history of
philosophy is written, the times of barren logic and method will form
a chapter, headed, " The Age of Dandriff." For logic is an armour
of little shiny scales, infinitesimal flints of thought ; in a word, cuticle ;
and when it is separated from practical ends, scurf; though when
legitimate it is the proper varnish of the mind. Again, when conscious-
ness is sought for its own sake, it forms the mental itch, which is a
general and excessive -self-consciousness. And when it is taken for
the world, as by the Berkleyans, it constitutes elephantiasis scroti
THE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 329
given moment our consciousness is ourself, the boundary
of our apprehension. Cogito ergo sum is this reflex power,
and means that we see our outline in our states of conscious-
ness. These states are elastic robes to our faculties, cloth-
ing the placid eye of thought equally with the long arms
of will ; and where they are not, the faculties considered
as human possessions are not. But consciousness is an
ocular tunic, or a man of eye ; it sees self, nature and
space without it, or permeates all the inferior extenses.-J-
mentis, in which the intellect dwells in the crannies of the warts of its
own imagination. We might easily range the diseases of conscious-
ness parallel to those of the skin, and classify the philosophies of
consciousness under vesicles, papules, pustules, exanthems, and
the like ; but time fails, and the work would be both unseemly and
irritating. It is enough, however, to indicate that the idols of
modern philosophy, the Ego anu the Me, the personality, the
self, the individuality, are as necessary as our skins, but that they
are our surfaces and lowest parts, and require brushing and combing,
washing and tending ; but will by no means bear deifying ; for what-
ever of dirt and ugliness, whatever private parts there are in us, or
come upon us, these skins catch. When we look at the philosophies
through the organon of the human body, we see that the skin of every
subject, the sensual part, has alone been studied ; and that speaking
bodily, neither brain, heart, bowels, lungs or muscles have entered
into philosophy, which accordingly has been the dead plane and flat-
ness of the human mind, the coarsest texture of all, as it were the
dishcloth of the fates.
f We may notice cursorily that the various skin-principles are in
their own way co-extensive. But the law of extension is different for
each. Consciousness reaches the stars, not by being put on the
stretcher of space, but by enjoying the faculty of representation.
Conscience extends similarly, because duty is co-equal with conscious-
ness. The perfection and relative infiniteness of things lies in their
having the greatest amount of presence in the smallest space. Thus it
is the pre-eminence of the eye over the skin that it touches things
without contact, and that there is no known proportion between its
size and that of its objects. And thus it is the perfection of motive
330 THE HUMAN SKIN.
It also looks inwards, and feels as if it saw the vitals of
the mind. It has moreover different layers whereof the
one is conscious of the other ; and it is luminous in various
degrees, from glimmers of perception to complete thought,
in which it forms a tight envelope of self-knowledge that
ensures our collectedness or presence of mind. The inner
organs within this skin, each of which has its own covering
likewise, are memory, imagination, thought, will, wisdom,
and the parts of the mental body, which find their stay in
consciousness, and from consciousness run back into their
deeps. For surface makes things doubly large, and adds
the height and show of the outside to the guage and secret
of the inside. Consciousness too is porous, and much es-
capes it : within it there are humanities that it does not
hold, and without it, minds and persons that it does not
see ; but as its grain gets closer, and the rays of its woof,
finer and more feeling, it girdles more of mind, and brings
new invisibles to light : thus ever and anon it puts its
knowing film over new worlds, folds in sciences, and gains
fresh wisdom for its organs. For whatever it embraces is
straightway in its body. Consciousness also defends the
mind, for what is self-evident or known is our invulnerable
part, in which we travel through the unknown ; it holds
against harm our tender and ungrown wisdom and thought.
This is the me of which the philosophers inorganically
speak, and which has the not me inside it for its vitals,
and outside it for its society ; for our substantive faculties
are not me, and are wise in proportion as the skin of me
force to move bodies without exerting any push like their own resist-
ance. In thinking, therefore, of the higher spaces and forms, we
must regard each successive perfection as equivalent to all the matter
and extension that preceded it, and look within the human skin, and
not in the cosmos, for the image of infinity and power.
THE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 331
is thin and pellucid. Consciousness also is an organic sieve,
and clears the mind ; being the theatre of mental elimina-
tion ; for the mind tends to consciousness or show,* and no
sooner are we conscious of anything, than adoption, or
rejection is involved. Consciousness, for this purpose as
well as others, is largely porous, or full of blanks and ob-
* From the ground of these generalizations we may give a clearer
rationale of some functions of the skin. For in tracking any sub-
ject into the mind, we come to self -evidence, the mind being the
arithmetical quantity of which other things are algebraic symbols.
Or to use another figure, the mind is a banker that cashes the notes of
physics into its light and life, the gold currency of the sciences. But
then we must know the equivalence between the notes and the gold,
or we cannot check our receipts.
Now the skin, as the love of show and self-knowledge, is an attrac-
tion towards the surface. This is exerted upon the body, and calcu-
lates upon a love of manifestation inherent in the organs. The love of
show is the heart of the living skins : seemliness is their body : when
the former propels any particles into the latter, they are at once judged
in this court, and excreted, purified, or reabsorbed. This magnetism,
of the love of show, or of coming to light, explains the determination
of fluids to the skin ; and as the organic light judges them, we have
here a self-evident account of the phenomena of perspiration and ex-
cretion. If you ask further, Why ? we answer, Why do you like
seemly and beautiful things ? Because they are pleasant. If then it
be said, Why- do you like them because they are pleasant ? This, we
reply, is not a question, but a question and answer, and wants no
further answer. But if it be said, Why are they pleasant ? that is a
different matter, but involves only your account of your own pleasure.
The ground of the soul's doings is, because it likes to do ; and the
ground of the body's doings is, because it quasi-likes, or acts as a
material soul : this is its intelligible magnetism.
Let us then bear in mind, that the self-knowledge of consciousness,
and the self-examination of conscience, are the lights of the eliminatory
and purificatory offices of the skin. When the figures are thus ob-
tained, we revert to the dead algebra, and find plain numbers under-
lying it throughout.
332 THE HUMAN SKIN.
livions for what is not agreeable. Sleep is its great hole
or mouth through which stuff is put away, and a thousand
slumbers to one thing and wakings to another, vacancies,
forgetfulnesses, and assumed ignorances, are the pores by
which it rids itself of thoughts and memories, and refuses
them a longer footing in the mind. By consciousness also
we stand in the universe of mind, and feel it in all forms
and structures, as though mind were matter, and nature
the caprice and building of a grand idealism.
In the state the skin-principle is the sense of right, which
implies the former principles, space, nature, self and mind,
and is the citizen's motive of self defence, for we are jealous
of our rights as of our skins. These rights are our social
selves, our honors and shining parts, which make the
faces of freemen lustrous, and are plain manliness in the
state. Courtesy and manners are the dyes of this social
skin. Moreover, according to his rights the citizen is
measured, for they are his stature ; where they are small
he is small, and where they are absent no citizen is seen.
At any given period, there is only a certain quantity of
social space or room, whence each right is compressed by
its fellows, yet the world of rights is we know not how
elastic, and the state can expand, or make new rights, as
fresh worlds introduce new spaces, and as self engenders
other selves. This sense of right is the limit, defence,
and reformer of the citizen ; it sifts the state continually
to eliminate old laws and habitudes, and opens it to allow
for new : and moreover it is surrounded unwittingly by the
rights of new eras, which it is one day to embrace ; for its
nature is the gradual assumption of all virile togas from
the wardrobes of liberty in the state.
The brain of the sense of right or social man is the skin-
principle of the moral man, that is to say, the conscience,
the surface upon which the moral sense is felt. For con-
THE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 333
science is the jealousy of the virtues, as self is the jealous
principle of animal defence. The individual is an intense
society in this spaceless space ; a tender feeling outraged
there, is a wrong to the poor and the needy ; a hatred is a
murder 5 on the other hand the virtues exerted in this
secret chamber toward the least of the little ones, are done
in the state of the state, and to Him who lives within the
conscience. The moral faculties are defended by this sense,
whose monition rouses them to self-preservation ; its ago-
nies, and its happiness, are the exterior motives of the
virtues. Conscience limits us to its compass ; our right
and wrong are according to it, for our morality is no larger
than our conscience. It individualizes and spaces the vir-
tues, for it gives to each its own grounds of action, and
makes moral difference among men. It expresses them,
for the beauty of no goodness can shine nakedly, but
through the face of the conscience. It purifies, for it is
the essential organ of self-examination,* and the supreme
area of our approbations and rejections. But it is also
elastic, or is wisdom living in circumstances. Finally it
is a point of conscience, that there are degrees of its sense
which it does not include, and hence it is open to new ex-
periences. And as is the case with all skins, where they
are not, the organs underneath them are not ; but where
they are, the man comes solid within them. So true it is,
that in giving a new conscience, a new man also is given
in the old.-j-
* The body is put into a sieve, which is the skin, and shaken about
by the mind and muscles, to clear it of dust and debris ; and the sieve
itself knows the dust from the gold, and keeps and rejects accordingly.
The skin is therefore the bodily principle of self-examination, the sieve
of our daily life and death.
f Any one may be without some of his bodies if he is without their
, skins ; for he does not possess until he comprehends them, or has
334 THE HUMAN SKIN.
In the soul, the skin principle is identity, whose germ is
the / that runs along all our time, governs each human
verb, and stands as a focus over our actions ; but its adult
body is our sense of immortality, which binds us in all
things to be and to do for ever. World and man feel per-
manence when they touch this surface, which we may
term, the human organ of eternity ; for it is a sense with-
out almanacks or clocks, which apprehends likeness with
God, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
It is sanity in its castle, as on the other hand a lost sense
of identity is the top of confusions. It holds us together
in a oneness that is the model of coherence ; and in its go-
ing forth, it is the apostle of the unity of our knowledge.
The soul is protected in nature, because its very surface is
a sense of living for ever ; the flux of years falls down like
water from the oil of such a virtue. It is limited or sepa-
rated from nature by this same unviolated sense. Its
beauty also is represented on this sense, for the beauty of
the soul is virtue seen under its own immortal skies. This
sense also purifies the soul, and causes it to throw out
perishable motives from its constitution. And furthermore
makes it elastic, empowering it to change without losing
the identity that engirds it. For the soul becomes more
and more immortal. In the body it is immortal for a time ;
out of the body, for other states ; and so on with increment.
But the deeper immortalities escape it until they are at
hand, and hence faith comes in.
But our senses of duty and immortality are inconclusive
unless the fact be added to the sense, or unless that which
is given in love and feeling be true to the letter ; that is
to say, unless there be a letter of revelation to enfranchise
their sense or skin. What is not manifested or revealed, is not, so far
as man's faculties are concerned. *
THE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 335
conscience in a real universe of God. Divine Truth in the
letter is this reality, apart from which our faculties would
be baseless visions ; for humanity can as little exist with-
out the spiritual world, as animals can exist without space.
But the office of the letter is, to contain and manifest the
spirit. And in order that we may dwell within it, it is
like us in its form ; plain also in its Gospel face, dark with
brightness round its Apocalyptic head, vocal to all souls in
its Psalms, clothed with mystery in its Prophecies ; and its
feet being immoveable, we do not see the ground on which
it stands.
CHAPTER VI.
THE HUMAN FORM.
HITHERTO we have contemplated the human body in par-
cels and fractions, and have come gradually down into the
world from the brain to the skin, or from the centre to the
circumference. We have seen that the animation of the
body depends upon the brain, and comprises both a living
motion, and a living eradiation of spirit to every part *of
the system. We have seen that the force of the body de-
pends upon the lungs ; that the play of life is brought
about by the breathing ; that alternation by this way enters
the frame, gives it motion and rest, and makes it the in-
strument of an ever- varying progress. We have seen that
the renovation of the body with substances made in its
own image, comes from the heart, which gives the organs
a population of new individuals as the old elements die
out. We have seen that the field of preparation whereby
aspiring substances are fitted for citizenship, that is to say,
whereby food is assimilated, and converted into blood, is
represented in the stomach. Finally, that this motion and
busy life, constant infusion of new blood, and insatiable
appropriation, has a government of its own, yea, that it is
a common government ; and this is represented in the skin,
which limits everything to its uses, and connects it to its
fellows.
THE HUMAN BODY. 337
In stating thus much we have the position, that the hu-
man body is a living, moving, substantial, enduring, invio-
lable subject. The brain gives it life or ends, which are
the lords and masters of organization. The lungs give it
motion, without which life would be futile. The heart
gives it substance, without which motion and work would
be impossible. The stomach gives it supplies, without
which, moving substance, subject to wear and tear, could
not last. And the skin gives new ends, or individuality,
without which the whole would evaporate. Furthermore,
the mind and muscles take this visceral man into their
ranks, give him wholeness of progress, make every grain
of his organization human, and stamp it with the spiritual
seals.
We may now go a step further, to a closer truism,
namely, that the human body is alive. This is what we
have been endeavouring to prove by elaborate argumenta-
tions ! For science does not know this fact with which its
neighbours all round are acquainted, being scarcely aware
that there is any difference between a corpse and a gentle-
man, or even that " all flesh is not the same flesh, but there
is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts." For to
say that the human body is alive, excludes animal life or
beast-body from the subject, and in this light our truism
is not recognized in physiology.
We must, however, proceed from one truism to another,
and further affirm, that the living body is a man, with no-
thing in him but humanity. We may illustrate this in many
ways, for all things preach it. For example, in crystal-
lization, a salt that is broken according to its cleavage, is
still a perfect salt of that species ; the smallest crystal is
as properly the salt as the largest. What is the corre-
sponding cleavage of the human body ? We do not here
enter on the question of substantial separations, but of
Q
338 THE HUMAN FORM.
those of thought, in which the cleavage is the representa-
tion of the whole in the parts, of the laws of the body in
its members, of humanity in the organs and their elements.
Take for instance a papilla of the skin, in this we see a
delicate nerve, there is its brain ; a miniature system of
blood-vessels, there is its heart ; contact with the air
and movements communicated from the breast, there is
its lung ; imbibition of stuff from, and discharge of matter
into, the atmosphere, there is its stomach : finally, it is
part of the covering of the body, and is itself covered
with a particular vesture, there is its skin. In this way
the parts are integers of the whole, and have both complete
minds and bodies, and hence the whole is the microscope
that reveals them. Wholes, however, are relative to
greater integers of which they are the parts : the individual
is a little whole compared to the mind or progressive indi-
vidual, whose whole is a lifetime ; and this too is small
compared with Society, which covers continents, and lives
for epochs. There are then in the mind's optics vitreous
substances of different degrees, which magnify more and
more. For example, the businesses of the great world,
the organs of the social man, are one power of lens with
which we peer into those of the individual man. Anthro-
pology, or the knowledge of races, with their large types,
characters and functions, are a still higher power, and the
body under this glass shews like a world of man, and a
point in universal history. Under the moral glass again
the body is governed by miracle and prophecy, and we
look through the flesh as a gallery of new forms, the plas-
tic statues of the virtues. According to our eyes, we see
the human frame, either as a congeries of dots and mole-
cules, as children see the stars, or as an infinitesimal man-
kind, constituting the smallest complete humanity, which
is a single human body.
LIFE. 339
We are now on another landing on the stair of truisms,
and we affirm that humanity is the greatest human body,
and the likest of all things to the least or individual body.
It has its brains in those who are the presiding influences
of the social universe ; its lungs are in those who are the
practical intellect of the ages, and the voice of truth to the
world ; its heart is the thousandfold love that carries the
races to their goals, the poets whose bold blood licks up
toward heaven, and talks in tongue-like alphabets to our
own ; its belly is the whole schooling of mankind, all the
men and means that have ever grown up, that hunger and
thirst to receive infants and savages, and convert them
into angels. Its skin is in those who are the bonds of their
state, which are nothing more than the lines and currents
of the social freedom, but looked at from without as decor-
ous beauty, or inviolable law. In this organization, each
molecule is an individual man, the account of whose func-
tions depends upon the constitution of the whole.
So far it will be perceived, that life is the main element
of our wants in physiology ; which accords with common
sense, for who does not desire to be alive, and more alive,
in whatever he does and thinks? Yet nothing has so much
agitated our science, as that which ought to be its greatest
blessing Life ; nothing has seemed so much beyond it as
that Life which is the first perception of infantine reason,
and the joy of even the beasts and birds; nothing has
thrown it into such peevish atheism, as that great plain
gift which we accept every moment from the Author of
our being and the Founder of our faith. They cruelly say
that life is mysterious, but learned ignorance alone is mys-
terious : how can life be mysterious, when light is truth,
and light and life are one ?
Let us look at our predicament physiologically, that we
may see where we stand, and what we have to do. The
Q2
340 THE HUMAN FORM.
living body is the field which we are to explore. What
course are we obliged to take ? We are compelled to dis-
sect the dead : but does this give the information which we
seek ? Evidently not, for dead organs are the antipodes
of our quest. What is to be done, to raise the dead man,
and unbind his grave clothes ? What divine voice shall
cry to physiology, " Lazarus, come forth ?" Life must be
brought from the living, from the quick body and mind ;
also from the great forum of men, which we call life par
excellence. Tell us whither else can we carry it into the
sciences than from the mighty reservoirs of history and
humanity ? Beyond a doubt it can only come from where
it is, that is to say, from the land of the living.
Here the question of life loses its mystery, and shines
with understanding by its own inherent effulgence. There
are not two lives, but one ; not a human life here, and a
physiological life totally different there. That which is
life in humanity, that which is life in society, that which
is life in persons, and in the moral soul, is also life, and
the only life, in the organs of the frame. Ends, motives,
passions, affections, likings, loves, virtues, are human
vitality, and there is none other. For what is our life,
and the measure of it ? What is our experience thereof?
What is it that sets us in motion, and opens us for sensa-
tion? Why do we do anything, or think anything, or
keep ourselves awake to feel anything ? Most surely be-
cause our being lies in cherished ends, in which success is
delight, and delight the flaming of our lives. Remove
these ends, and we stare without seeing, and sit in corners
with hideous apathy and indecorum, miserably dishevelled
and vegetalized ; for life has nothing to do, and is taking
its departure : as in the Metamorphosis we are growing
into trees, and the needy soil shall swallow us.
Apply this to the body and its parts, and we find that
ENDS ARE LIFE. 341
the ends which it subserves in the order of things, are its
animating principles. They are not abstractions, but
spirits embodied in works. They are not fluids, or solids,
but human uses incarnate. Above or beyond these there
is no life in us ; but whatever is useful or endful, God is
with it, and that is its only life. If you look for the life
of friend or brother, it is the stature of himself working
in his daily calling : no one part of him, but all parts and
the whole, kindling as he moves round his orbit of ends,
into more than the whole. Life is man and whatever is
manly ; humanity itself in the fire and work of develop-
ment ; it is incapable of dissection, for it never can be
seen but in play ; whence the end of anatomy is, to shew
that man cannot be anatomized. The desideratum is, to
see each portion of the body united with the whole in its
uses, when the life of the whole will come to the parts,
and summon them to .live. After which that thing so often
mentioned, and so little conceived, namely, human anatomy
as distinct from cadaverous, will begin ; for the life of our
lungs and liver is as inalienably human, as the life of
Shakespear, or of the English nation. And then, more-
over, the science of the body will lose its grossness, for the
moral and spiritual powers will have their analogues in
every chamber of the organs, and cleanness and chastity
will be busy maids among the useful furnitures of the
flesh.
If life consists in ends, there is a soul to entertain them ;
and wants and desires imply mankind beforehand. For
we assume the soul, as also the existence of an imperisha-
ble humanity. It is a venerable creed, like a dawn on
the peaks of thought, reddening their snows from the light
of another sun, the substance of immemorial religions, the
comfort of brave simplicity, but the doubt of to-day, and
the abyss of terrified science. Let it come, however, scien-
342 THE HUMAN FORM.
tifically, in the ghastliness of hypothesis, and let us work
with it, and see what it is worth ; and treating the question
of life under that formula, let us proceed to the connexion
between the whole and the part, or between the body and
the soul.
This is another branch of the same problem, which be-
wilders speculation, because we go away from the meaning
of human life, thinking to attain to some indescribable life
separate from our nature. As we said when speaking of
life, so we repeat in this new field, that there are not two
kinds of connexion, one physiological, the other, human,
but the connexions that we form in our daily walks are
the types of those of the sciences.
The question may be divided for convenience sake into
two heads; namely 1. Why is the connexion between the
soul and the body effected ? And 2. How does it take
place ?
First, for the Why ? We answer to this, that the soul
is connected with the body for the same reason as we are
connected with the persons, objects, and circumstances
that surround us, and which answer to our wants and in-
terests. In a similar manner the body answers to the
wants of the soul (p. 276 279), being the soul's wife,
the soul's friend, the soul's house, the soul's office, the
soul's universe. It is engaged to the service of the soul ;
shapen into usefulness by the soul's ministrations. As the
hand shapes the pen, and then writes with it, so the soul
forms the body, and then makes use of the properties
resulting from the form. The connexion between the soul
and the body is not more mysterious, than the connexion
between the pen-maker and the pen, excepting that our
knowledge of the pen is so much more complete than our
knowledge of the body. A science of the body, had we
such, that displayed its uses, or its specific fitness to serve
CONNEXION OF SOUL WITH BODY. 343
the soul, would as evidently give the motives of the at-
tachment of the soul to the body, as the capabilities of the
pen account for its connexion with the fingers of the ready
writer. In both cases it is the bond of service, of liking,
of utility ; for to intelligent life what other connecting
principle is possible ? If this is too simple for philosophers,
still it is the ground of every connexion they themselves
form with man or thing.
For the purpose of breaking abstruseness from the ar-
gument, let us look upon the natural body as the well
furnished house, the admirable circumstance and worldly
fortune of the soul. Then, steadily regarding the soul as
the man, something like the following analogical discourse
may result from this point of view, in which we take our
stand inwards, to gain distance for the object.
The soul being the man or real body, the natural body
represents the appliances and arts of life, whether economic
or aesthetic. The eye is its window, telescope, micros-
cope, and answers to the series of means that transparent
substance lends to vision, and which are as curious and
exquisite for their appearance as they are excellent for
use : for the eye receives the finest impressions from things,
and gives the finest expressions from the soul. So likewise
the ear is the hearing-trumpet of the real body, which
would otherwise be deaf to the music of nature ; it embraces
all the means of reverberation, whether in the free air, or
of cheerful voices from household ceiling and walls, or of
stately sounds from the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault :
in short, both the whole instrumentality and the whole
architecture of sound. But the nose is to the real body
the prophecy of devices that have not yet entered into arts ;
full as it is of membranous parterres and vacant aviaries
for odors ; for hitherto, aromas are but casual visitants ;
they come and go in brief seasons with the fitful winds,
344 THE HUMAN FORM.
and where is the vessel that can hold them ; hence the nose
of flesh is deficient in circumstance, and we can only iden-
tify it somewhat barbarously as the scent bottle of the real
nose. To pass over the other senses, we find that the legs
are the outward art of locomotion, from passive to active ;
from the nails of the toes to the wheel of the knee and the
globe of the hip ; in short from the walking-stick to the
railroad ; the real body uses them in nature, whether as
the staff of its lowliness, or the means of its swiftness, or
the equipage of its pride ; they are the columns of move-
ment ; the rich soul's carriage, and the poor soul's crutches.
But the arms and hands are all the finer machineries or
inventions that are wielded directly by the arms and hands
of the soul ; they are the pen and the sword ; the instru-
ment of many strings ; strength and manipulation in their
bearings ; in short, the mechanics of intelligence, whereby
nice conveniences of truth are gathered in the dwelling of
the soul. Then #ie abdomen is its kitchen, preparing
from all things in its indefinite stores one universal dish
even the blood of life, to be served in repasts for the
spiritual man ; the viand of viands, varying from hour to
hour, and suited with more than mathematic truth to the
appetite and constitution of the eater. Then again the
chest distributes with a power of wisdom dictated from the
halls above, this blood, the daily bread and wine of the
body of the soul, and the wisdom that ordained, enters the
feast, and it becomes a living entertainment. And the
brain is the steward and keeper of the animated house, re-
ceiving order and law from the soul or brain-man, and
transplanting them into its mundane economy. Yea, and
the brain is its natural universe, its wide spread landscapes,
its illimitable ocean, its royal library, studio, theatre,
church, and whatever else is a place of universal light and
contemplation. And lastly, the skin is the dress of the
CONNEXION OF SOUL WITH BODY. 345
soul in every kind, convenient, beautiful, official ; and it
is also the very mansion itself; for our houses are but the
largest -suits, admitting our domestic movements.
By this artifice of holding out our bodies before us, we
illustrate in a plain way, the connexion or correspondence
between the soul and the body ; and though there be other
motives of connexion, it is sufficient to remark for the
present, that by the foregoing signs, it is because the body
is so replete with exquisite convenience, that it is the do-
mestic establishment of the soul. Given a tenement of the
kind, so royal with apparatus, and it is impossible that
the soul, to whose wants it answers, should not live in it,
and use, that is to say, animate it. If the soul were not
a tenant on such invitation, it would be stupider than the
birds and beasts, which are drawn by far lesser affinities
to their own convenient lairs.
Let us now reverse the picture, and suppose for the
argument's sake, that a savage is introduced for the first
time into one of our convenient mansions, and knows the
use of neither table or chair, knife or fork, bed or carriage,
washing or lodging ; but his naked body and unarmed
hand have been accustomed to rude fellowship or direct
fight with nature. Can he account for the connexion of
the civilized man with his house ? By no means. Un-
housed body that he is, we see in him a type of those who
cannot conceive the bond between spirit and nature, be-
cause they know nothing of the wants of spirit, or of the
uses of nature to spirit. At first, then, the savage cannot
divine why his civilized brother limits himself to a house,
because he is uninformed of the good of a house, and not
prepared for information. As, however, his wants grow,
and he learns the uses of the furniture, and the proper
mode of employing it, the motives and points of connexion
come forth one by one ; and when all the uses are under-
Q 3
346 THE HUMAN FORM.
stood, then for the first time he understands both the rea-
son and mode of the permanent act of inhabitation.
So it is with the body and the soul. The physiological
savage (we beg his pardon) knows nothing of the body as
a correspondent or furnished abode, but only as a strange
looking exception to wild nature, an affront to the wilder-
ness, and how then should he see its connexion with an
owner or a soul ? For the uses of things are the reasons
why they are used. And hence the perception of the con-
nexion of nature with spirit, is the exact counterpart of
the perception of the spiritual uses of nature. To see the
one is to see the other, as to miss the one is to miss the
other also.
A word now respecting the second point, or the mode
in which the connexion is effected.
When we speak of the connexion between the body and
the soul, we are apt at first to think, that it is a single
link or act ; but this is an insufficient conception. There
are as many different modes of connexion as there are wants
in the soul, and organs, parts and particles in the body.
There are as many different modes as there are possible
species of contact in the great and the little creation. The
soul is connected in one way with the brain, in another
with the lungs, in another with the heart, in another with
the belly, again in another with the skin. To make this
clear, recur to the house and its furniture. The inhabitant
owns everything contained in it. Upon one piece of fur-
niture he reclines, upon another he sits, at another he
writes, upon others he treads ; some contain his viands,
some delight him with harmonious sounds, and some look
down from his walls, and gratify him by arts and propor-
tions ; and with all these, and many more, he is connected.
Now in each case it is the shape, make, form, or properties
whereby the thing serves its purpose, that is the means of
CONNEXION OF SOUL WITH BODY. 347
his connexion with it. If he sits at his desk, it is because
it is such or such a structure, and serves him for reading
and writing ; he never makes a mistake of sitting for these
purposes at his coal-skuttle. Apply this to the body, and
we find that its dweller uses every implement there also
according to its form. The reverent soul kneels in the
knees, because they are natural kneelers. The enquiring
soul peers through the eyes, for they are born windows.
The make of the organ is the handle whereby the inner
man grasps and uses it. Our business therefore is, to shew
the motives for which the soul affects the body, by demon-
strating the deeds that the body performs for the soul ; and
it is our further province to shew the manner in which the
soul lays hold of the body in different parts, by explaining
the precise mechanism whereby the useful deeds are done.
The whole is a matter of facts, too full for speculation.
This connexion of soul with body is no chaining of the
living to- the dead, like the horrid punishments of old
times, but it is the live man freely working with the finest
tools of nature, the chief musician in continual play upon
the choicest instrument of music. Moreover as the soul
goes beyond the circumference, and returns into itself, so
it includes the body, and takes it back with it alive ; the
immortal confers his own life upon his mortal bride : there
is a reciprocal connexion of the body and the soul, and
that wondrous house is the model faery-land : the bells
ring of their own accord at the time of the master's voli-
tion ; the chairs dance into their places for the guests ; the
harp and the player understand each other, and sweet
touches of no violence are simultaneous with delicious
sounds rising upwards to the listening soul. There is not
only connexion but consent. As to freedom, the relation
is permanent, but liberal. There is ample space between
soul and body, as between friend and friend, and yet the
348 THE HUMAN FORM.
ever- varying bond is all the closer, being founded upon the
interests of each, which have room for play in the wide
interval between them.
This same problem of connexion occurs wherever a
higher system is united to a lower. The connexion of
nerve with muscle, or with vessel, is as inscrutable to the
physiologist, as that of the soul with the body, to the
philosopher. A sight immersed in the muscle would as
little find the nerve, as our incarnate eyes can see the
spirit land. Here, as in the larger case, it is the depen-
dence of uses and forms that makes the connexion : the
body is a whole, because its parts are chains of correspon-
dencies. There is no glue between the organs, but they
are always loving each other, and always using each other.
No wonder they cohere. Birds of a feather flock together,
and likeness and liking are the gold wedding ring of the
universe.
The cosmical relations of the body proceed upon the law,
that the body is the form of the soul, according to the order
of the universe. That is to say, as the plant grows by the
unfolding of the seed, according to the climate and soil, so
the body grows from its own ensouled seed, according to
its soil and clime, which are the mundane system. The
soul commences with the commencement of nature, and
flies down, weaving and constructing, through all her
kingdoms. The brain is the home that it makes on its own
plan, of the solar fires, and the brain is the soul of the
body anew, and the sun of the microcosm ; the principles
of the world are the beams of its chambers, and it lives
like the eagle unharmed in the glory of its native pavilion.
The nerves are the next construction of the dramatic soul,
where it brings the imponderable forces and fluids into a
beaten highroad of human life, making ether and magnetism
COSMICAL RELATIONS OP THE BODY. 349
into pathways for the processions of thought and will ; for
the nerves are the horses of the sun, which carry out the
decrees of the revolving brain from the east to the west,
and from the morning to the evening, of the microcosm.
Next the soul is victor of the air, and poised amid the
whirling winds, she knits their filmy stuffs into obedience ;
and lo ! a fabric huge rises like an exhalation, it is the
lungs, the temple of (Eolus, the shrine of the powers of
the air. There is the first house of liberty, the free place
of elections, the Campus Martius of the understanding.
Accordingly the breathing lungs are the barometer that
indicate the peace, or the power, or the storm, of the soul :
all the passions swing and swim, and find their golden
liberty, in that aerial sea : there they rock, and waft, and
sail, in gilded barge, or pompous balloon, or happy skiff,
or dark boats of Erebus. But the progress continues.
The work of ensoulment is carried on through the animal,
the vegetable and the mineral. The heart and viscera are
the stations of the soul in these uttermost regions. The
abdominal organs are the garden with its trees and inhab-
itants, where bread and salt, fruit and flesh, are presented
to the soul ; and the heart is the animal man himself, the
sovereign of the tribes, appropriating their tributes, and
making the body an assemblage of the universals of the
earth. Then, as nature moves by immense attractions
from space to space, or is always making new spaces, and
worlds to populate them, so the soul will do the like ; and
out of the moving mechanism of things she builds the limbs
of human kind, which are as a new liberty ; and the legs
are the beginning of all progress, and the arms, of all se-
condary creations or arts. But from the extreme of nature
from the boundaries of death, there is something to come
that nature can never bestow, and that something is sen-
sation the vital hoop which girdles the body, and sepa-
350 THE HUMAN FORM.
rates it for a season from the universe. Hence at the outer
gate of nature life again breaks forth in joyful resurrection ;
unabsorbed, unextinguished, the Maker is not exhausted,
but is greater for his work. For the soul running down-
wards from the brain to the skin, never ending in the end
begins anew, and reattaches death to life by the standing
wonder of the fivefold senses. So where the formative soul
ends, the conscious soul or the man begins, viz., with the
senses, as the basis, clothing and incentive of the will and
understanding. And as the soul descended, the senses
reascend, the same grand staircase of kingdoms. Touch,
taste and smell are the living mineral, vegetable and ani-
mal ; and hearing is a new-born palace of the air, whose
shakes are music, and its. winds are speech. And the eye,
round like the world, and rolling on its axis, communes
afresh with the whole possessions of light, and sees all from
the sun to the landscape in the gloss of that glory which
is an image of the truth.
We now come directly to the human form, the stature
of our souls, and the vessel of our lives ; and here we quit
the anatomical, and enter upon the integral sciences ; nay,
we also quit the body, so far as it is material, and addi-
tional to the form.
The human form is the image of God ; for " God made
man in his own image, in the image of God created He
him," and man is a living human form. And the Creator
Himself, as the archetype of the creature, is a divine man,
or a divinely human form. Accordingly God's revealed
faces are such as man apprehends by his own mind and
likeness ; as it is said, the Maker of all is " King of kings,
and Lord of lords ;" and again in the new covenant, God
is " our Father in the heavens." And this way of speak-
ing, accommodated to our nature, involves no compromise,
THE IMAGE OF GOD. 351
but the divine truth that man, the image of God, can
know God by his constitution.
The Word, in which God comes to man, or makes human
revelation of himself, reveals man to his real body, or
shews the manhood of the soul. For angels and spirits,
who are souls, are brought to us by the Bible in the human
form. Heaven also, the holy city, which lieth four-square,
has the same stamp, being " according to the measure of a
man, that is, of the angel." By this apocalypse we are
among brethren in every world, and we know that their
humanity is distinct according to the eminence of their
form.
Here occurs another field of subsidiary revelations ; for
the world (not the sceptical but the real world) is complete
in cases wherein parted souls reappear to us, and shew us
that the human form is not meet for death : and even when
intangible to the grosser man, still the form stands before
his eyes, because its very colors are immortal.
To turn from what is revealed to what is perceived, the
eye opened by revelation is the eye also of reason, which
now sees the same omniprevalence of the human form
divine. Our thoughts of God are thoughts of an infinite
humanity : the love and wisdom counted for all manliness,
are attributed to our Creator by the very brightness of our
minds. Whenever reason shines and becomes half angelic
it talks humanities of the living God. The mind is con-
structed for revelation, and its functions of loving and
thinking, once opened, flow according to the truth of
divine things, as the body when launched into the world
in breathing, falls in with the laws of the world in rearing
its own constitution. It is not easy to discriminate between
the gift and the giver, but in the better faculty, perception
is revealed, and revelation is perceived, and our powers
are properly our own, when we own that they are of God ;
352 THE HUMAN FORM.
for in the soul the claim of private property abrogates the
possibility of possession. The result is that thought is
necessarily directed to the God of Revelation, whom un-
derstanding and affection meet ; i. e., to a divine humanity :
in the case of our fellows, to a soul of which the body is
the counterpart, i. e., to a soul in the human form : and
with those who have left our world, still to human souls
and shapes, to whom " he " and " she," and the like pro-
nouns of our love apply.
Let us register here, that the body of man is the anchor
of these perceptions, and attaches to every contemplation
of the human form. For body is the exigence of spirit,
the partner of its love and the throne of its power. And
though God be not as we, it is not our form that we cast
to view him, but the imperfections of our form, which as
we put them off, the form becomes more sincerely human,
and likens nearer to the truth. Hence the way to a divine
perception is the rejection of our inhumanity. Moreover
by a connexion that none can repeal, the man of the senses
is- married to him of the soul, for better, for worse, for
richer, for poorer. In thought also, every idea has a form,
every form has a shape, every shape has a body, every
body is a substance ; and to sum up all by the same fact,
human truth is incarnate. Thus the human form implies
the shape of the body, but ninefold flexible, or drawn into
perfections of which flesh and blood are but the footstool.
On this subject we say further, that disembodiment is
hateful to man, and the fear of death itself, apart from the
love of life, arises from our ignorance that the dead are
men. No wonder that we shudder with all our life beside
a brink where philosophers teach us that the human form
is wrecked. It were weakness not to shrink from the loss
of that which is the instrument of all our power. For
whatever is strong tends to incarnation. An energetic
STRENGTH-INCARNATION. 353
purpose is at once in the arms and hands, and emboldens
their play : whoso crosses it, finds that its missionary is
never such tough matter as when his spirit is behind him
and within him. A lively thought calls up image after
image, and is embodied at once ; if the images will not
come, there is an end of the thought. A will not only
rushes into the muscular system, which is a battalion of
arms and limbs, but it rifles resistance for hardness, and
plucks out the teeth from steel and stone, to make fresh
bellies of strength. A high contemplation in the soul,
begins to see heaven only with the upturned eyes, and to
pray in the body as soon as the contemplation is full. A
soul is no sooner projected than it begins to build a body
for itself. Thus strength clasps and presses body, to be-
get works as children. Impotence on the other hand en-
genders with abstraction, and prating philosophies come.
In returning from this digression, we next meet that
activity of mind which begins to work upon the two worlds
of spirit and matter with native conceptions of its own.
This is the poesy of knowledge, the sense of nature and
things which is born of human religions. And it affirms
the personality of its objects, not only of men and women,
but of flowers and horses, stars and streams ; and dwells
upon them fondly, as if they were in its own sense alive.
The childhood of races as well as individuals is so vital
and full-blooded that it looks on the world and all it con-
tains as a land of the living. With no permission of after-
thought, it deems and imagines structurally, and its or-
ganization is the mould in which every conception runs.
It believes that it is enfranchized, not limited by brains ;
and it knows that departure from these leads to nothing
but folly and confusion ; space and matter, irrespective of
man, are silly monsters which it does not heed ; so flimsy
that thought goes through them as if there was nothing
354 THE HUMAN FORM.
there. For the rest, the prime method of humanity is,
trust to the topness of the human head. Those who belong
to this method, send forth words that feed on time, which
feeds on all other things : words which already play with
everlasting flowers over the graves of many philosophies
that have been impertinent to the human form.
We note then, among the first natures of our minds,
the conception that there is an architectural human life
among the beams and rafters of the world; which con-
ception is the ancestor of science; the natural loins of
truth out of which come all the families of the adult un-
derstanding : and we hold, that to repulse this nature is to
be brutal to the mighty mother, to bastardize knowledge,
to begin the sciences nowhere, to expect to find by staring
without looking, and, in fine, to select impossibility as the
arena of our struggles. The attempt has been made in the
inductive sciences, and with what success is known. Phe-
nomena and their laws are the recognized objects of these
sciences ; substances and causes are reckoned spurious :
hollowness and superficiality are thus become the postu-
lates of knowledge. Yet causes are past exorcism, and sci-
ence runs into chronic "goose-skin" before these, its self-
constituted foes. But why has science been so successful?
In the first place, it only half succeeds when it sees nothing
but the matter and none of the mind of nature, for in this
case, its use is culinary, and not educational. For what
can a world of shadows, and rules of shadows, have to do
with God who is a substance, and with man who is a sub-
stance too ? There is no real instruction in formulas, how-
ever well they answer to facts, unless one knows why the
facts come under the formulas : otherwise man is a child
in a despotic father's house, who never knows the wisdom
or rationale of the father's actions : the actions go on with
blind strokes like toothed wheels in a factory ; and the only
HUMANITY RULES IN THE SCIENCES. 355
lesson is, to keep out of the way of this ponderous and re-
morseless nature. On the other hand, instruction, such
as heart can love, and memory remember, arises in pro-
portion as we see that the external world is nothing but
humane ordinances, and that suns are central, systems
revolve, plants grow and fire burns, in the interest, and
as the vehicles, of a Divine Mind, which is the archetype
of our own. To explore God's purposes is the first thought
of man ; and to find why Grod acts in such ways, shapes
and properties, is equivalent to finding the wisdom of the
world. The laws and formulas of things are but new spell-
ing books of this deeper and earlier consideration.
But in the second place, where science succeeds, it is
because it cannot throw away its heirlooms its instincts
of the humanity of nature, but applies them to the enucle-
ation of natural truth. For law, rule, phenomena, order
and succession, are cerebral humanities, which we get
from things and give to things, because we have brains.
Where would law be in our conceptions, if no legislator or
lawyer had existed among mankind ? Where would phe-
nomena be found, if there were no eyes ? Where is our
order, when the mind is delirious or in disorder ? And
where succession, unless time be ticking in ourselves?
These dim ideas as much imply humanity as the most car-
nal Sagas of the mythologies. We equally palm ourselves
upon things in averring that they obey law, as when we
imagine, in prattling childhood, that the flowers hold
speech with each other, or that falling waters are moulded
into veils and scarfs by the limbs of the Naiads. A
Franklin, bottling electricity with the knowing air of a
butler, and " calculating " how many dozen the skyey tun
will run, is as little emancipated from mannerisms as the
poor Norseman of fifteen centuries back, who hears Thor
hammering in the thunder-clap, and sees the brightness
356 THE HUMAN FORM.
of the vengeance of the same God when lightning stripes
the night with terror. The axioms of Euclid are as incur-
ably human as the fairies and elves. So the difference
between modern science and old Myth is not that the one
is disembodied and absolute, and the other fettered to the
flesh ; but that in science some cerebral dot, according to
the age, sets up for monarch, whereas in myth the whole
man, all dots included, is tremblingly alive to the existence
in nature of some living God or Gods, whom he approaches
according to his revelations.
Let us, then, rid ourselves of the blur, that man is lim-
ited by being a man ; when the reverse is true, that what
cramps him is, that he is not a man. The human form is
emancipation from the prison-house of the inferior crea-
tures. Each man is indeed limited as a man, but manhood
itself is a ladder of infinites.
The mind, as we have anticipated, is in the human
form. For it is in every part of the body, co-extensive
and co-intensive with the organism. This is only to say
that we are conscious of ourselves. As the eye sees the
human form of its owner, the mind sees and feels its
own human form, though in its own peculiar way. We
are solid statues of consciousness of just the size of the
bodily frame. This is self-evident when it is not dwelt
upon too much. For as there are objects that the eye is
meant to see very seldom, viz., the face and person of
him who carries the eye, so there are truths which the
mind, unless full of the looking-glass, regards but for a
moment, and then leaves them, viz., self-consciousness
and its bodily form. Each cursory glance of this kind
finds the mind in the human shape. Whence we know
that the sciences and subjects of the mind are part and
parcel of the same constitution.*
* If, however, the vanity of reflexion be indulged in too much,
THE MIND IS A MAN. 357
As for the passions, poetry embodies them in personal
lives, but not before experience has well concluded that
they are the humanities of their own order. Passions are
men, women, or children. Imagine rage, if you can,
without starting eye -balls ; or love of power, without com-
manding eyes and hands. Think of eagerness without
legs. Fancy the repose of a being who has nothing to sit
upon ; the intelligence of one without an eye ; the joy of
one without a face ; the tenderness of one without heart or
bowels. The residuum, after every conceivable amputa-
tion of the kind, is a philosophical angel. " A footless
stocking without a leg," was the Irishman's definition of
nothing : it is the metaphysicians' definition of the soul.
On the other hand, to common sense, every passion has all
our parts. If the painter delineates love, it is by a beam-
ing countenance, by clasping hands, by open arms, by
beating heart, by flushing cheeks, by a bending and in-
clining form : or if the sculptor will shew you duty, its
white marble is a cheerful severity of brow, hand and
frame, and a steadfastness as of limbs in the axis of the
poles of the heavens. Moreover, the typical features which
the imagination summons, run like light to fetch the rest ;
they have a creative call to form the remainder of the body.
So that when the mind sees the sparkling eye and elevat-
ing smile of joy, it next, from these foci, sees the face as
their radiant firmament ; and the lifted arms and lifting
legs, and the jocund body, come after more slowly, until
the stature is there, and the joy, like its artist, is a man.
But if any part of the body is missing, a letter is left out
philosophy at first sees nothing but its own pretty face in the mirror,
and then as it is an intellectual person, it concentrates itself on its
own obverse eyes, and falling (by the laws of hypnotism) into reverie,
it finds plainly enough, from the ground of its own state, that the
mind (i.e., its mind) is nothing at all.
358 THE HUMAN FORM.
of the word, and the creative power has not spelt it. All
this shews that the mind imagines the passions structurally,
according to the form that they have when in play.*
The same applies to the intellect, when described not in
its effects but in itself. To the mind's eye, it at once as-
sumes the lofty brow and high conversing glance, and
thereafter its incarnation proceeds by rapid stages. Here
again the central features are first struck ; but no sooner is
brow and eye on the disk, than they call forth their breth-
ren of the frame and mood, for they all belong to intelli-
gence, the clever nose, the receptive fastidious mouth,
the slanted open ear, the considering vibrative head, the
awaiting arms, the balancing body, the moveable feet,
stationary but changeful. All these come part by part
from the land of the human form, drawn thither by intelli-
gence itself with the magnet of the eye. In this case,
what we take for abstraction is the centre separated from
the rest of the body, and held forcibly apart ; for violence
is needed to hold asunder elements which so love each
other, and rush together, as do the parts of man. Pale
philosophy, indeed, has attempted to draw a sharp cut of
spells between the round pellucid intellect, and the face of
which it is the jewel. But as it sits in its dissecting room
with platefuls of human eyes before it, we recognize in the
amount of its victims the exact number of its failures.
We might pursue this thread of truth through every
other faculty ; and we should then record, that goodness,
virtue, honor, bravery, industry, and all the names that
* On this subject see further, An Essay upon the Ghost-Belief of
Shakespeare, by Alfred Roffe, 8vo., London, 1851. In this ad-
mirable performance we have the first beginning of a study of Shake-
speare, not according to reasoning and criticism, but according to
fact and nature. It cheers me to have such a mind as this courageous
author's with me, in these untrodden paths.
THE MIND IS A MAN. 359
we revere, are man and the organs of man, and that out
of him and his they are nothing. But it is enough to in-
dicate one or two cases, for these, as the eyes and forehead
of the rest, bring with them the predicates entire of the
human world, and marshal them into its form. We now,
then, pass on to the sciences, to notice their impartial
teaching in spheres where man seems to cease, and to be
environed by apparently intractable, that is to say, inhu-
man forms.
It is not necessary to have recourse to any ideal state of
the sciences ; but their present condition serves to shew,
that humanity by its principles extends through the realms
of beasts and fishes, herbs and stones, and even through
winds and the fluid worlds. For the instinct of science in
all these departments, drills their subjects with reference
to order, the ends of which order are, mind in the one case
and matter in the other, mind, the intellectual plenum of
the human form, and matter, the stages of nature that
lead from her deadness up to that life which is the perfect
man. The schemes of the atheists are obedient to this
roll-call, for otherwise they would not cohere into schemes ;
their vile scientific cunning can exist on no other terms.
The difference between them and the religious world is,
that they have the task of making man out of the ground
by their own dust- strife, whereas the others hold that he is
ready made out of that very dust by the breath of Jehovah
God : but in both cases the dust is recognized as a fit ma-
terial for building into the plan of the human form. There
is then an admitted reference of the dust to man, and this,
when put by experience through its degrees, constitutes
the order of the sciences.
With regard to the organic sciences, the case is clear :
their aim is, to range living beings in a scale of which
man is the head, and to set down the lower animals as ex-
360 THE HUMAN FORM.
tended cases of the human type. " The animal kingdom,"
says Oken, " is man disintegrated." Comparative anatomy
is the anatomy of the beasts compared to that of man.
Take the animal forms one by one, and their likeness does
not perhaps clearly shine inwards to their chief, but group
them severally upon the order of the mind, which is science ;
and unlikeness travels into likeness as they approach the
human goal. As in languages a word shall seem alien to
its root, but track it through a number of kindreds and
tongues, and the links are supplied that connect it with its
source, and draw it from its parental stem. So man is the
word to which this social science of comparative anatomy
leads up the forms of animal life, and Adam still in this
way gives all living things their names.
This is better the case with natural history, which leaves
dead bones and goul sciences to become acquainted with
animals at home in their gaieties and enjoyments. The
portraits of man are so close here, that the naturalist asso-
ciates with his pets, and a White of Selbourne can spend
a long day with his swallows, Huber with his bees, Wil-
son with his acartls folliculorum, and Swammerdam with
his snails. Moreover, we judge the animals by our own
standards of pleasure and pain, attribute to them a part of
our metaphysics (would they took them all) ; and assign
them natural virtues and vices for which they are respon-
sible with their lives. We also reverse the case, and
feel no inappropriateness in giving our brethren animal
names, making a comparative natural history out of the
eccentricities of man ; for we have human asses, geese,
pigs, foxes, tigers, monkeys, peacocks ; nay, in some
cases we qualify humanity by an animal color ; as when
we say that an innocent person is a lamb ; a gentle beauty,
a dove ; or a heroic man, a lion : which shews well the
sliding scale from man to nature, in the easy projection of
HUMANITY IN THE ANIMALS. 361
ideals into these distant but beautiful types. The symbol-
ism of the Bible makes animals thus expressive. It is
impossible not to interpret them by our own faculties,
though reason knows that the faculties between the two
are not the same but analogous. But the interpretation
holds all the better ; for it embraces the animal fact, plus
an intellect that enlightens it. This is one function of
man in his social universe, to give his life away to beast,
plant and stone, and raise them into company for his mind :
a function like the Creator's, who makes all quasi- things
into substances, mere substances into minds, and unites
the world and men to himself by nothing peculiar to them,
but by the golden links of his own merciful attributions.
Imputing the higher to the lower is therefore hearty truth
running Godwards, or the process by which universes are
made and kept. Hence it is our duty to give the stor.es a
tongue, and to cover it with all the runes of our ov,n elo-
quence and wisdom. . . . Furthermore, there is 'joinmon
companionship of men with animals, and duties from him
to them, which duties have the significant name of hu-
manity, as though the humane man recognized his species
wherever life was seen. And according to the materialists,
this is true to the very mire ; for they deem that there is
no difference between men and beasts but the want of
speech in the latter, and the absence of tails in the former ;
which shews a strong dirty perception on their part of the
oneness of principle pervading life : a principle which if
sought at the head for in the matter of the tail they ad-
mit unlikeness resolves itself into the prevalence of man.
Again, man never falls below himself, but animality re-
ceives him with open arms : " nemo unquam repente fuit
turpissimus :" on the road to moral death, before the de-
scender is as dead as a stone, he runs through the beast
properties, transmuting form and feature right down the
362 THE HUMAN FORM.
devil's ark, and at last crawls, serpentwise and toadwise,
into his chasm and block of a thousand years. And lastly
the animals, to conclude their manly participations, are
many of them direct and even domestic servants of man-
kind : they share our lot, of poverty and riches, good and
evil, civilization and savagery : they become honest, or
sly, according to the rule of their master's house ; shew-
ing that they are willing fellows. And as the domestica-
tion decreases by degrees, and embraces main generic
heads, the whole animal kingdom may be grouped about
us from this principle, either in the way of friends or foes ;
and thus approve a human reference of this close kind, co-
extensive with natural history.
The science of plants falls under humanity for similar
but lower reasons to that of the animals. For their natural
history is digested into botany, in which they assume or-
der, classes, species, and families ; and the order is subject
to that of the kingdoms themselves, and included within
it. But being a vegetative or growing order, and not an
animal or moving order, it does not travel to man, but
enters into him by his own choice. Hence the uses of
the plants are their chief human relations. For the plants,
like factory men, begin to feed and clothe us ; they spin
our cottons in vegetable Manchesters, and are the looms
of looms, in which the Arkwrights of the sap and pod
herald and provoke the Arkwrights of the mill. In this
kingdom there are all things not made with hands, in pre-
paration for all similars to be made with hands, and this
again in earnest of a new growth in heaven, where all
things not made with hands again appear. And the more
good science we bring to bear, the more humane do the
plants become ; in other words, we find that they are alto-
gether useful, that is to say, grow towards us : until at
length we see all the trees as one tree, whose fruits are good
HUMANITY IN THE PLANTS AND STONES. 363
for food, and its leaves for medicine. More remotely, plants
are our anatomical brethren ; they have sap like blood, and
leaves like lungs, skin and limbs, and roots of stomachs
also, each of their own order. They also have seed and
progeny, and in their green ambition, they tend to people
all earths, and to build airy castles like our own, raising
up the soil on their hods in wooden galleries to the clouds.
Moreover they are symbolical, or humane to our senti-
ments, with which they easily tremble and glow ; and in
the same light they are biblical, or humane to the divine,
leading him from paradise, the harmonious garden, to that
city in the midst of whose street there was still the tree
of life. And as the domesticated animals stand at the
head of the animal kingdom according to one mode of
classification, so the useful plants occupy the first ranks in
the vegetable kingdom : and constituting the beginnings of
series, summon the rest about them, and group their whole
realm around man.
Again, the mineral kingdom is humane, because it is
included in the scheme of order, or the mental humanity ;
and because it supports the vegetable, which grows up to
the animal, which travels towards man. And here be it
observed, that each realm has its own approach to us.
The animal makes its way thither by a scale of likening
forms and functions ; it looks and acts as if it were human,
to a certain extent. The vegetable, on the other hand,
bears no resemblance to the whole man, nor does it act at
all ; it likens to us in being of use ; and whether it be as
fruit and flavour to our bodies, or as beauty and symbolism
to our minds and souls, this same law holds : the law,
namely, not of progression to man, but of use entering
into progression. This use is the making up of substances
into new forms to serve us. Support, however, is the
human property of the mineral kingdom, and in all cases
B 2
364 THE HUMAN FORM.
terra firma is its kindness to us. It stands under all
things, and bears their burdens ; and in all things it still
stands under them, and makes them real. For it not only
supports the stems of trees, and the feet of animals and
men, but it supports the vegetative process in the one case,
and the animal life in the other ; so that without it the
trees would be but plans of trees, and the animals but
illusions. Its gold, unlike paper, is the earth of credit, by
which solidity enters into commerce. Its salts are the
earth of the blood, without which that soulful organism
would be footless, or without a base. Its rocks are the
surety of foundations for houses, otherwise than sand and
mould. Its jewels are stern flowers that shine in spite of
the seasons. Its stones make our palaces and prisons,
which are the ultima ratio of our arts and laws. It also
supports the soul as well as the body, and give our ideas a
terrene base, of resistance, hardness, permanence, steadi-
ness, and much else which is low, moral and strong, so
that to the soul the very ground is terra firma to justice
and virtue. Nothing of this could be, unless the earth
were coordinate with man, that is to say, in its own re-
moteness, humane.
The three kingdoms have also succeeded each other as
the organa of so many hypotheses of the world ; thereby
attesting that they themselves belong to an affiliated scale.
Thus we have the idea that the world is an animal ; a con-
ception attributed to Plato, but not, so far as we know,
carried out in detail. A second idea of the world is spiral
or vegetable, and works the hypothesis of development
instinctively through all things : according to this concep-
tion worlds grow : it has been a favourite notion with
races who have lost their revelations, and was set forth in
that Scandinavian myth of the Ash Yggdrasil, which ash
was in fact the universe : it sprang out of depths which no
HYPOTHESES OF THE WORLD. 365
God or man knew ; beside its root was the weird or Urdar
fountain where the Norns or fates abode ; its branches were
heavens and earths, the giant- world, the man- world, and
the dwarf- world : and every morning the Norns repaired its
many wastings by lading over its head from the Mimer
spring the dews of immortality. A third notion of the
mundane order is, that the world is dead or mineral : this
belongs to the old age of hypothesis, and to the youth of
cold experience : accordingly, on this view, the planet is
hoary with immeasurable years, the stiff-kneed laws of
to-day presided over its cradle ; if indeed it ever had an
infancy, ajid were not senile from the beginning. The com-
pletion of this stony truth takes place in geology, which
is a kind of mineralogy of larger growth. Yet as geology,
or the science of the great crust, detects order and mutu-
ality in the earth, so it begins to revert by analogy to or-
ganization ; just as crystallography points its dry spicular
nails towards vegetation. Again, a fourth view is, that
the world is quasi-human, or indeed superhuman, in its
parts and in the whole. On this score, the planet unites
with man ; the head races inhabit its head countries ; in
short, the human organs reappear on the surface of the
globe, and account as well as they may for its relations
and distributions, and for its housing of special nations.
These hypotheses run in a strict and mutually suggesting
series, and either all of them are true, or none. But we
do not moot their truth, but adduce them to shew that
hypothesis has been consistent from the first ; that it has
always handled the world as some analogue of man ; and
we will add, though it is beside our present object, that the
hypotheses deeply imbedded within modern science, are
the fag-ends of those which shone candidly out from the
ancient mythologies. For ourselves, the truths of revela-
tion are our hypothesis, and we hold that the worlds, dead
366 THE HUMAN FORM.
and living, include every attribute that others have as-
signed to them, not as their own, but because they are full
of the spirit of Providence, and under Him intend man in
their courses. Thus we accept all analogies as tools to
work with, but none as a rest.
To conclude this scale, the unattached natures, waters,
atmospheres and the like, are our circumstantial relations,
the support of our liberties and fluids as the ground is the
substance to our feet. Blood and water, breath and air,
light and sight, are playmates introduced from of old.
The vitals also of nature, the nervous suns, enclosed in
their rib-work and grate-work of planetary masses, are
among outward things most kindred to us, and lend them-
selves to joy and exhilaration for all that lives. In their
other considerations, as the mundane system, they offer
us great helps of order and law ; and enriching without
dissipating our minds, remodel our first notions upon crea-
tion, and our faculties rightly applied to the universe be-
come mightily more human for the process.
The pure sciences, the abstract truths of the rest, are
themselves the laws of mind transplanted into matter;
they are therefore, as we said before, cerebrally human
(p. 355), and indeed only true within the sphere of our
faculties. There is no escape anywhere from humanity :
there we fully agree with the subjective school ; but the
reason is, that humanity enfolds everything, and not ex-
cludes us from, but lets us into, the veriest nature of the
world. But it is well to be observed, that there is no
Kantian world of " things in themselves/' but the world
is social to the core.
In the view we have taken, we have with us the attes-
tations of all parties. The theologians are with us, by
the text and scope of their revelations. The superstitious
are with us, by their crouching anthropomorphic worship ;
CONSENT OP PARTIES TO HUMANITY. 367
by their fears of eclipses, as though their god's eye were
black upon them ; by their tremble before all places and
natures, lest the tapestry of their world should open, and
stiffen them with some gliding terror. The idealists, or
metaphysical ghosts, are with us, by their creed that man
cannot travel beyond himself, but that sense and its world
is still within the circle of our being. The materialists
are with us, by their vaunted alliance with the dust ; for
are they not "spouse of the worm, and brother of the
clay ?" The scientific are with us by the actual order of
their sciences, and because they cannot help it. And the
practical men, including the rest of the world, are with us,
in their own practical way, for not one of them cares a
rush for nature irrelevant to man, and contributing in no
sense either to goodness, enjoyment, the pocket, or the
person. We now therefore require, that what all have in
part, shall be corrected and completed in each, and that
the truth of the all-embracing humanity shall be set in
that matrix which opens and hungers to receive it.
It is further to be observed, that impersonality is human,
just like personality, the latter being the skin of which the
former is the substance (pp. 330, 334) ; a substance however
which is no substance without that skin to hold it. For
the best things in us are impersonal, and the more they
are, the better persons we become (p. 330). Upon this
principle, physical as well as moral, the impersonal in na-
ture communes with a proportionate impersonal in our-
selves (p. 330).
We have already trenched somewhat upon the other
side of this question, namely, the relation of the arts to
the human form, and we have hinted that poetry, painting
and sculpture always act personally and dramatically with
their highest subjects, which are the human actions and
passions (p. 357). A Michael Angelo uses no theory, and
368 THE HUMAN FOEM.
makes no apology, when he throngs his Sistine Chapel
with glorious human forms as the attributes of God and
man : the admiring sea of ages of hearts and heads under-
neath him, finds no fault with such impersonations. But
art extends far below these regions; and as we have
noticed throughout, there is an art in science itself, which
blindly musters its kingdoms under the human form. The
useful arts again, the sisters of the material or culinary
sciences, aim to reconstitute nature into human images
closer and more commodious than at first. The mission of
these arts consists in making nature into the wraith and
image of history. For this purpose the world underground
is a mine ; its iron must not lie waste in those old lockers
of the veins, but it is drawn into rails, girders, ribs of
ships, stalwart engines and vertebral bridges ; and the
nations look on their continents as worms fall of this
metal silk, out of whose bellies untold glancing cities shall
be spun. The geologies of the arts are new strata above-
ground, inhabited tier after tier by the centuries ; so that
nature, besides the Plutonic and diluvian, includes also the
humanitary formations, and is never natural until she en-
velopes all the arts in marriage with all the natures. The
mission of the husbandman and the cultivator of stock adds
new varieties to existing species of animals and plants,
and nature embraces the new with the old in a tighter ma-
ternity than at first : her grandmotherly love increases
with posterity, and ascends hotter and brighter to her chil-
dren's children. In a word, use and cultivation by huma-
nity are accepted by nature as her own consummation of
her plan. Hence, what expresses all these facts, there is
not a place or thing in the known world but comes under the
notion of property, evidently on the insight that all things
are man's, and may be of use ; and so he registers his
claim to their reversion when he wants them. Thus the
HUMANIZING MISSION OF THE ARTS. 369
planet has an intra-social existence, and the men who de-
nounce our pride in claiming all things for the race, hold
their estates by title-deeds of a later credit, and by weaker
seals than that of this ancient faith. In evidence of this,
the flag of property, either individual or national, waves
over every region, from the northern to the southern ice,
and gives Christian names and surnames to capes and
headlands, bays and islands ; mine and thine are the zenith
and nadir of the willing earth in the grasp of mankind.
But what cultivation and re-formation is to the ground,
that is regeneration to the mind, and reform to the state ;
and as the mind and the state become more human as the
rights of the soul and the society enter into and alter them,
so does the world become more natural in proportion as
the cultivator stamps his humanity upon it. There is
more nature in that prophecied nature where the wilder-
ness blossoms as the rose, than where the sand alone
extends.
We should have enough to do with objections if our
intention cared that way : but we will briefly consider
only two. 1. The " moral " objection, that there is great
pride in man, a little statue of dust, a crowd of pismires
on a hillock, a mote in the sunbeam, &c., &c., conceiting
that all things are his, when yet nature is so much bigger
than he. But to this we say, that all men act on this
belief, and the more faithfully, the better it is for the
world about them. The savages believe it least, and give
nature the greatest swing of laissez faire ; the consequence
is, that she is a dirty and undressed female, snaky-haired,
under their feet. Humility however consists in obeisance
to the truth, and if man is nature's king, he must not be
too proud to wear her crown ; for pride may rise on that
side also. Kingship is either nothing, or the chiefest
service; and if all things are for man, it is because he
R 3
370 THE HUMAN FORM.
alone can make the best of them. Humanity through
industry is the very dew that the Norns lade every day
over the good ash, Yggdrasil (p. 365). For the rest, this
"humble" objection is always made with a lordly and
exulting voice, and in abdicating nature's crown, it treads
upon pride with greater pride of its own. We suspect
that it proceeds from dislike of work, for certainly the
duties of the opposite view are sufficiently stupendous.
The true humility then, we argue, lies in man taking his
hard, high place with its responsibities, the place that he
has in history and property, as the lord of the visible
earth. Let him accept the title-deeds, and obey the de-
clarations, of his Genesis. The higher the station, the
higher the humility.
But on the other hand we will not grant, that nature is
so much bigger than man as to escape his handling. For
if the world be providentially coordinate with him, then
as he is, so will it be ; or in other words, the threads of
the mundane Norns are managed in that end of them
which constitutes our human nature. A world made by
the Word is plastic to the Word, and the Word in its
second projection exists in man alone. It is then a part of
our faith in Providence, to believe that the magnetism as
well as the handiworks of good men and good societies, are
the first beginning of the natural laws ; and that there is
nothing so ponderous as to outlie the power of the moral and
spiritual kings (pp. 271, 272). The harvests and rain-
clouds of Judea were once obedient to the obedience of its
nation to God : how if nature now be equally symbolic and
ready ; and for new springing of theocratic crops, only await
a new Judea in which the whole earth shall be a Holy Land?
2. A word also to the intellectual objection, that other
creatures besides man doubtless look out from their places
as central points, consider themselves as foci, and the uni-
OBJECTIONS REMOVED. 371
verse as their subject and servant. " See man for me, ex-
claimed a lordly goose." (N.B., the sly poet puts this
into the neb of a goose.) Were such the fact, it would
only shew, that the animals are images of man in these
perceptions, and that in the wide madhouse of animality,
they all conceit themselves kings and potentates. But are
there signs that it is a fact? Has an ass with ribs bela-
boured, anything like our perception, that we are " lords
of what we survey ?" With regard to our slaves, and even
our lower classes, they do not imagine that the state is for
them ; on the contrary, they complain that they are out
of the social scheme, which is only for their betters ; and
although they build up a little hovel of content in the
midst of their sad inclemencies, yet they do not consider
that the body politic exists for their behoof. True, it
ought to do so ; but the fact that it does not, shows a power
above theirs. So it is with the animals. Those which
bear our burdens either deem nothing at all ; or supposing
them to deem, that exonerates them from the charge of
stupidity which we make, when we say that the cow knows
nothing of the supremacy of the milkman ; the dog, of the
huntsman and lash ; or the horse, of the spurred and whip-
provided rider. It is however the want of deeming that
makes the want of the thing deemed ; and man is at the
head because he knows and feels it. Vice versa, the ani-
mals are subordinate partly because they do not know
their situation, and never can be taught it.
The argument on this score has been pushed by ani-
mals' friends, to invalidate the humanity of the Divine
Nature. For while it is admitted that all our conceptions
of God are human, it is contended that if man has a God-
man, a cow, could it imagine, would frame a cow-god ; a
dog, a dog-god; and so forth. But imprimis, none of
these creatures can imagine in this direction, which termi-
372 THE HUMAN FORM.
nates the argument. And secondly, if they worshipped
what was visibly above them, they would worship man,
who is in such a sense their providence, that Bacon has
wittily cited, that man is the god of the dog. The asser-
tion then comes again to an end, and shows that in all
respects the living creatures look to humanity. For our-
selves, had we any experience of a being transcending the
human form, whose mastery over us was undoubted, this,
we grant, must give the form by which our God would
reign. But no such being has intervened in history,
either in the solemn night, or in the daylight of religions :
on the contrary, the Highest has declared, that man is
made in his image, and that his Son is also the S.on of
man. In short, we find the human form, divinely aug-
mented, burning with uncontrolled intensity in the thought
of man, in the records of inspiration, and in the religions of
nature ; and this with its attributes, though often unseen,
is a real presence in every temple.
There are indeed religions which do not accept the cen-
tral symbol; there are animal, vegetable, and mineral
religions ; for men bow down to wood and stone, beast and
bird, in all fantastic forms. There are also fossil religions,
records obscure and terrifying of past conditions of our
race ; hieroglyphics too large to live in our petty present
time ; and which speak of warmth and fertility in regions
of the mind now cold and dead ; of great perceptions and
mighty propagations ; gigantic promises of the world's
childhood, only to be justified in her second innocency.
Again, above and around these solid creeds we have the
philosophical religions, the sciences of the atmosphere of
the religious world, or the theologic wind ;* pretences to
* The sensuality of creeds which oppose nothing but flatus and
criticism to the instigations of the flesh, is set forth in that hiero-
OBJECTIONS REMOVED. 373
regard Deity under no form, and as "neither in body
mankind resembling, neither in ideas." But as the reader
now foresees, each of these creeds has the same principle,
namely, the human form, which is portrayed in the atmo-
sphere as in the earth, in the vegetable as in the mineral,
and in the animal as in the vegetable. Abstract philo-
sophy is the furthest of all from the centre : idolatry itself
falls more easily under that rank and discipline of natures
which leads to Christianity, or the Omnipotent Human
Form.
But a sceptical ghost still haunts us, for are there not
higher beings than man, whose form is consequently above
the human. Truly such beings there are, known from of
old under the names of angels and spirits ; but then their
form is the human. For the human is a travelling form,
which reaches from man to God, and involves all beings
as it goes. There are then men higher than man, but
there is none superior to the human form, which itself is
superiority advancing for ever to the supreme. Revelation
declares as much as this, for if the human form is the
image of God, there can be no more eminent form.
However, what we call the human form, is doubtless the
least truth and manifestation of that Divine image. For
minds, souls, societies, nations are themselves in this form.
But time fails us to attempt a flight through these second
spheres, and we must leave to other hands the tracing of
manliness through polities and socialities, which are the
laws of the collective human being. But in the meantime
the reader easily sees that man on the greatest scale is
more man than he on the least.
We seem in all this to be wide of what is called physi-
glyphical proverb, that "pigs see the wind," which marvellously
signifies the face to face posture of stolidity and abstraction.
374 THE HUMAN FORM.
ology and science ; but on we go, for science cannot subsist
without these heights at last. What we desire added to
all, is a divine physiology, flowing according to the chan-
nels of the divine form into which we men are born. For
there is no life in science unless it communicates with the
fountains of its subjects ; no resource in art or healing,
except from the draw and gush of the same living waters.
Therefore we have done our best to shew, what the con-
tents of the human body are, and what pressures of life it
stands under. For it is the form of God ; as it said in
Psalms, we are His temples : and so it is the native land
of hope, and the arena of miracles and providences : there
is nothing which it cannot do, and nothing that cannot be
done with it, according to its correspondence with the
Most High. It is also the form of spirit and heaven, and
the heights of Zion and the abysses of hell are within it,
circumpressing and acting upon it, according to its corre-
spondence with good and bad, and the other roots of man,
his body and his mind. It is therefore a pipe which runs
with every wine, angelic or daemonic. Again, it is the
centre of history, and the life of the world plays upon it
from without, and brings forth tones which are myth and
song, strife and triumph, the fulness of the eras. More-
over it is the parliament of the natural sciences, and the
executive and army of the arts, into which knowledge
arises and speaks, and from which power goes forth. Thus
what it finally does and can is by these rules alone, that
it is like a god among other things, like a heaven or a
hell in its radiations, like all history in its scope, like all
science in its laws, unlikest of all things to death, most
inscient of impossibilities, most untrue to itself in mean-
ness, and most immeasurable by lies and materialisms.
We will conclude this argument with two glorious
scientific songs, which say as we cannot hope to do, the
LAST RESORTS OF PHYSIOLOGY. 375
mere truth on this matter. George Herbert On Man
remarks :
" Man is all symmetry ;
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And to all the world besides.
Each part may call the farthest brother,
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.
Nothing hath got so far
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey ;
His eyes dismount the highest star,
He is, in little, all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.
For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow.
Nothing we see but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure ;
The whole is either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.
The stars have us to bed ;
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws,
Music and light attend our head.
All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being ; to our mind
In their ascent and cause.
More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of. In every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
! mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him."
376 THE HUMAN FORM.
William Blake on the Human Form also observes :
" To mercy, pity, peace, and love,
All pray in their distress ;
And to these virtues of delight,
Return their thankfulness.
For mercy, pity, peace, and love,
Is God, our Father dear ;
And mercy, pity, peace, and love,
Is man, his child and care.
For mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And love, the human form divine,
And peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the Human Form Divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the Human Form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew :
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too."
But if the parts of the human form have functions, the
whole has functions too. A new problem therefore occurs
and we now ask what is the physiology, not of brain,
heart, or skin, but of the human form as an organ ?
In order to answer this question, we must know what
the human form is ; for its functions cannot be told until
we have it before us. In the lowest consideration then it
is life, being or substance. For in fact it is the end of
creation, and the end is also the beginning, and supports
FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN FORM. 377
the means, or lifts them into standing. The end also jus-
tifies the means, or gives them solidity. The human form*
is therefore the living Caryatides of the world ; or more
properly, in revelation it is the I AM, Who not was but is
in all time and nature. Its function accordingly is the
gift of substantial life to those whom it includes ; aye ! and
of comparative life and substance to all its images and
types. In the lap of this sustaining form, we receive the
seals of fact, and are bound to be real : we have no escape
into nothingness any more, but existence is our fate.
Herein then we are in the essential organ of life ; and as
the body in the form receives life, so its function or neces-
sity is, to make life.
In the second place the human form is use. For man
in fact is the creature who can surmount himself, and elect
the universal use. He has a spirit above his nature, or
can breathe for the commonwealth of heaven. Born into
this human form, it presses its industries upon him, and
commands him to good works. Its signal before all his
battles is, " The Lord of the universe expects every man
to do his duty." " Thou shalt eat bread in the sweat of
thy brow all the days of thy life." Man's work is uni-
versal ; in laying bricks to the hovels of his plans, he is
working at other plans veiled; rearing far and future
* That Indian myth, that the world rests upon a tortoise, and the
tortoise upon an elephant, though deficient in ground for the ele-
phant, involves a deeper thought than the metaphysical conception of
substance, and stands many degrees nearer to a true answer than the
barren pantheism of Spinosa. For elephant and tortoise have good
broad backs of their own, unlike metaphysical abstractions ; and
moreover they are analogues in the series of humanity, and in this
degree approach the true answer. The conception of substance
belongs to the skin -principles of thought (p. 334), and is the epi-
dermis of the conception of support, whose inner parts, as we have
given them above, are, 1. Being; and 2. Life.
378 THE HUMAN FORM.
states ; the basements of ages to come ; the limbs and wills
of his posterities ; the strength, or weakness, of his own
soul, and by reversion, of his societies : buildings, good
and bad, high, and low, and broad. This is according to
his incessant form, which is the essential organ of activity.
And if he will not work but drone, his waste is universal.
The ground supports him in vain, and his feet kill its pur-
pose ; herbs feed and beasts clothe him for disgrace ; his
frame puts costliest energy in play, to be manufactured into
sloth; and his soul hovers uninhabiting over his slime.
This is the final shape of unhappiness, the lot of apoplexed
men and societies, whose curse it becomes that they are
lashed to the halberts of use upside down, which cleaves
with poison to their human forms. For the human form
is the divinity either of Nemesis, or of God.
The third human form surrounding and entering into
the former two, is wisdom or divine light, whose care it is
to make us wise. And because we are shapes in which
wisdom may dwell, it presses us with ought and must, and
throngs us with duties through our eyes ; for by the mag-
netism of our likeness it is at our side, to shew us the
way, the truth, and the life. We can therefore no more
escape existence than elude the necessity to be wise, or
foolish. In the latter case we founder upon the human
form, or stumble blindfold through a world of posts and
pitfalls : for our world is even as ourselves, and if we are
wounded within, all things chase and gore us, as the herd,
a bleeding deer. But the form of wisdom is, first, the
understanding mind j hence its earliest pressure incites us
to know ; and heaven known, man known, God known, the
world known, is its mission : the second form is the spiri-
tual mind, which elects the noblest causes from the rest,
and has ears from that scripture : "If ye will do the works,
ye shall know of the doctrine." Thus as our bodies of
FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN FORM. 379
sense oblige us to see, work and exist, to eat, drink and
generate, or to pay the penalties of refusal, so our bodies
of understanding and wisdom bind us to answerable courses,
or mulct us in equal retributions. In this light we are
organs of new products again, and necessity forces us to
increase the wisdom, or the folly, of the world.
The fourth human form is love, the substance of sub-
stance, the use of use, and the wisdom of wisdom, which
takes the names of the rest, and completes the circle of all
in all. There is no such incumbence as this, of loving, for
love is not only God's image but his likeness, and comes
from the highest of the Highest. Its organ is the will,
which is motive in all acts and apathies, a man who nei-
ther slumbers nor sleeps. This is he that ceaseless love
solicits ; and it stands around him in all the shapes that
touch him, as child and parent, spouse and country ;
and by irresistible drawing, it welds him to his objects,
and assembles each world under its banners. But union
begets being, or love is the parent of substance. Hence
love is increased by existence, as flame by fuel. And
being born into the form of love, which is the human, we
are bound not only to our adopted will, but to its increases.
In this form then we stand under an almighty pressure
towards union and generation ; and are compelled to be at
one with our companions ; and by ever similar progeny
from the loins of our love to augment the society we have
chosen.
This organic consideration presents old facts in a new
discourse, and we come to a functional root of the happi-
ness and unhappiness of man, and of his manifold healths
and diseases. For life and wisdom, love and action, are in
his blood and spirit, and he must either produce and secrete
them aright, or fall into maladies innumerable. The form
which he bears, being the essential organ of happiness,
380 THE HUMAN FORM.
wails over its own loss in tones which are essential pain ;
for joy and sorrow, strange in the world, are native here,
and Omnipotence itself seconds every monition and delight
of the human form. For the rest we have to observe,
that to this physiological shape all science, art, morals and
spirituals revert ; for substance is the quest of science ;
use, including beauty, is the compass of art ; wisdom is
for moral philosophy ; and love and its universe for the
spiritual man: whence the human form is the future
grammar of every school which gives real instructions to
mankind.
Here too the problem of life receives its present last
illustrations. For though already we have shewn that the
inner man is " the vital principle " of the outer, yet a new
vitality is demanded for him again ; tortoise and elephant
(p. 377), by themselves, though they seem to support,
only increase the weight to be supported ; in short, the
inner man drops into metaphysical dust as the outer man
into physical, unless his parts are coherent through some
self-sustaining life. That latter is evidently the living
God, the end of problems and the font of certainties, who
makes us not of cells and molecules, but of humanities
because He is human. Therefore the last office of science
is, to cease to make, and to accept a Maker.
We have frequently adverted before to the principle of
Correspondence (pp. 254, 255, 276 278, &c.), and we
again remark, that the above functions take place by its ne-
cessity. As spirit and soul are present with body because
creation is a band of like superiors with like inferiors, so
God is present to man when the same reason holds. The
spiritual world also plays upon us by this law of likeness,
sameness or assembling : all the angels rest on our good
parts and deeds, and all the devils urge down into our mis-
chievous fibres; so that correspondence is the union of
FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN FORM. 381
things, and harmony has existence in its arms. Think
then of what jets the passions and virtues are the springs ;
and what it is to be born into the human shape, with its
celestial and infernal hydraulics ! But this too is under
direction ; for unstop our souls as we may, their wells are
supervised ; for there is one " openeth and no man shut-
teth, and shutteth and no man openeth."
These also are things of which we spoke under other
names when treating of the anatomical organs. And we
find by the spiritual telescope, that the same fallacy has
clouded our eyes here as that which resolved the stars of
heaven into a doctrine of glittering dust (p. 338). For as
those molecules of the universe are universes, so the mole-
cules of man are men. That which seems little by distance,
is not little but mighty ; and that which seems little by
nearness is, perchance, greater still. If the kingdom of
God is within us, then have we roominess indeed. The
little chariots of blood, seed and spirit are magnified into
eternal processions ; and judgments, thrones and principal-
ities, horses, white and pale and red, move in awful cycles
through our human forms. If we are of the dust, well !
There is an end of us. But if we are images of the Most
High, there is no end of us : but our breeding, educating,
and healing are according to this pattern and rule no less,
and no other.
But lastly, to shut out unreality, and bolt its door, if
we are in the image of God, Who not what is that God
whose image we are to wear? The answer in fact is Christ.
Of other gods we speculate, but none other do we know.
It is his love, wisdom, works and body that clothe us with
our second forms, and enable us to fulfil the end of our
being in making our lives and acts co-human with our
shapes. Christianity, it is obvious, is the only human
religion : other religions are mineral, vegetable, animal, or
382 THE HUMAN FORM.
anthropomorphic ; but this is theomorphic ; the revelation
of no Man- God, but of the God-Man. Henceforth, there-
fore, there are no problems of God, but a history of Christ.
Christianity accordingly works to the redemption of the
physical man and human body, that it may be like to his
glorious body. And among its other miracles is the con-
nexion of grace with nature, or of divinity with physiology ;
so that by the harmonies of this connexion Christ is to be
Lord of the sciences, as well as High Priest of the churches.
For it is very obvious that the laws of love, wisdom, and
use, which are the health or functions of the body, are the
obedience of its atoms to His new commandment, and that
in this way the formulas of Christianity are all prevalent
in physics. From the moment that this is seen, the modern
polytheism is ended, for the Creator and Redeemer are the
same, and the God of nature is also the God of revelation.*
For be it remembered that the divine empire and pressure
of Christ upon his subjects takes place by revelation : it
is not left to straggle down through history, through jour-
nalists and scribes, but the book which is God's with us, is
the continuation of the Man who is God with us. Whence
again our human form is according to our correspondence
with the Word of God.
All this belongs strictly to the sciences, and especially
to those that relate to the body as the casket of the life of
man. For the great Incarnation is the model of the rest.
And moreover it is not this or that man that concerns phy-
siology, but the problems of corporeal humanity in its
scope. But this matter of religion, in which Christ's in-
carnation is part of experience, necessarily takes rank in
its way as the leading instance of all, and can never be
* See these points considered in my " Address on a late work on
the Philosophy of Religion." 1849.
FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN FORM. 383
banished from the cases upon which fair induction works.
It is not the average man, but the archetypal and typical
man, who is the subject of anthropological science, accord-
ing to that plain rule, that cardinal and representative in-
stances, and not extrinsic and adventitious ones, are those
in which knowledge seeks for principles. Indeed there is
no doctrine of man, who is a variable and fluid term, unless
it be in the doctrine of Christ. The average man is unat-
tainable ; every fresh birth alters his number and figure :
it is only the God-Man who can be known (p. 275). Hence
the necessity of turning the telescopes of physiology and
anthropology in this direction, that around the variable we
may see the constant, or that science may become divine
by admitting Him who is the light of the world. This
will give both dignity and facility to our studies ; for the
revealed divine perfections are the tacit axioms of all truth ;
and consequently in the working of these remote problems
of physiology we find here the principles that lead us on
by imperceptible stages, each easy as the first, to ends
where the first in all its brightness reappears. In nature's
dark mines, this is a circle from light to light, in which
light is the way.
We may here obviate an objection to these general views ;
for it may be urged that we have forgotten throughout that
the original human form is defaced, and cannot now be
called the image of God. To this we reply that we so
designate it, in reference to what it may be, not to what
it is ; and claim that thought shall live upon our future
health, and not upon our present diseases. For man still
retains his prerogative so far, that he is capable of recon-
version into the primeval image, as all religion knows.
The human form has never been abolished : it has a divine
strength of conservation (p. 334) ; so that even the poor
Bushmen and Australians, nay, all criminals, are still men,
384 THE HUMAN EORM.
and we dare not cease to say that they are in the image of
God ; for that same emancipative form which is the immen-
sity of righteousness, is also the dungeon of sin. By this
conservation it is that the children of those who are bend-
ing to death under all guilts and plagues, are born infants
as the rest ; they too begin from heaven, by whose elasticity
the liberated seed recovers itself with a spring from the
pressure and abuse of generations. An earnest that evil
cannot triumph, or build through the world, because there
is this almighty arm nursing babes in the wrestle. For
the like cause every day is born afresh, and the load of
life is lightened in sleep, which lets out an ever new man
through the merciful gates of the morning. Thus though
the divine image be defaced, yet as its features may be
w r on again, we still recognize in man the remoteness of
his archetype ; just as we call reason, reason, despite of
unreason ; and leave to love its ideal meaning, though that
substance, as such, is seldom patent upon earth.
We conclude here by reverting one stage back, to speak
of the meaning and cause of death ; because this back-
ground will perchance throw forth into relief the image
and emblems of life. For as life comes by correspondence,
so death comes by non- correspondence between the soul
and the body ; just as deadness in these sciences comes
from non-perception of correspondence. Thus when the
heart has no longer any heartiness towards the man, and
no more likeness to the soul's heart, which is love (pp. 215
239, 282 287), when the blood grows callous to the for-
mation of relations, and feels no warmth or joy in begetting,
educating, marrying or advancing the children of the body,
then the soul ceases to care for it, and begins by slow de-
grees to leave it ; in other words, disease and disability prey
upon it ; organic vice besets it ; and the inner man ceases
to keep company with it ; for it is a hard heart, already
CAUSE OF DEATH. 385
dead to suggestion and obedience. So when the lungs
begin no more to play for thought, or to draw animation
and faculty forth, the soul and they have to separate, as
persons estranged from each other ; for breath exists that
soul may breathe, and when this is no longer possible, mor-
tal breath stops. And when the brain no longer elects
light and virtue from matter, and communes no more by
vibratory states with the genii of the cosmos, then the
soul quits this effete spiritualist, now a materialist; and
the brain dies from the separation, just as it dies spiritually
from the denial of the soul. So also, when the muscles
have lost their imaginations of power, the will of the soul
quits them as broken tools. Then the body falls to pieces
by its own degrees of decay. After this it belongs to no
soul, but to the world, whose first artisans with it are the
chemistries of nature, and the anatomical worms.
But the natural decay and death of the body image those
of the mind ; for this it is that, after its culmination, is
dying by degrees. The loves which come by nature are
gradually extinct as age proceeds : the intelligence also
ceases, and the sense. Thus we care much for objects at
first, but gradually less, and nothing at last : that care or
love is then dead. The child's dolls, and the man's, fol-
low this curricle. So with intelligence : its objects are
brightest at first perceiving ; in their adult state they are
active ideas ; after this they become repetitions, and sit in
easy chairs of twaddle ; and in the end the mind dies to
them, and they to it. And so with the senses also ; the
eye has at first much pleasure in seeing, and at last none :
the whole of the five are ultimately tired to death. This
is the course of nature in the natural or perishable mind
for the objects of nature ; and the body follows it paribus
passibus. For the natural is a feeder to the spiritual mind,
the stomach which the soul has for nature ; and after a
386 THE HUMAN FORM.
sufficiency of her ways and informations has been assimi-
lated, and the spirit is of age, its old guardian mind and
memory are deciduous, and the body drops off with them.
The motives of separation between the soul and spiritual
mind, and the body and natural mind, are therefore mo-
tives of common sense ; and are parallel with those for
which we cement, or dissever, our connexions with our
fellow men. For we cannot too often repeat, that the soul
is a vast society, and the body a society, and that all our
relations and utilities are in their focal union there.
The materialists are therefore right, when they speak of
the death of the mind; for die it must, or entrance to
spiritual life would be impossible. The case is like that
of the proper foetal organs, the ductus arteriosus, ductus
venosus,* and the like, which unless they died to their
embryonic functions, the life after birth could not proceed.
And so, unless our old fixed ways of wanting, deeming
and cogitating, the channels of nature's thoughts and loves,
were dried up, and rendered inert, the life after death
would be impossible : and in that case, having given up
one life by inevitable stages, and yet not attained to the
next, we should stick in death, and be lost to progress ;
which last, however, is provided by the successive dying
* With regard to apparitions, or physiological re- appearances of
the soul in nature (which by a law easily expounded are numerous in
proportion as the state of man is low, and exercise a compensatory
function for the defect of angelic communion, and faith in revelation),
they are according to the analogies of the change from foetal to per-
sonal life. For as birth may be incomplete so far as that the bodily
changes which it implies have not properly occurred, so death may be
imperfect, and the proper spiritual changes may not have ensued ;
and as " the blue disease " is the oscillation after birth between em-
bryonic and infant life, so haunting is the oscillation between the mun-
dane and supermundane states. There is the same God on both sides
of the grave, yet the state is according to the materials.
THE MATERIALISTS AT WORK. 387
of our aged minds. We therefore claim materialism as
not only the cause of death, but by poetical justice, as the
undertaker and burier of the dead ; and we leave it with
sadness to its " black work/' of caring for that for which
no soul can care. And as we leave it shovelling away
ashes to ashes and dust to dust we meet our brother, the
Man, again, with all his virilities and appointments intact ;
an eye which is mind, and a mind which is spirit, the risen
person and new born infant of the second life.
Having now dwelt upon the functions of the human
form, and seen that they repose upon the functions of the
body, and that the one is never without the other, we con-
clude the present Chapter with a few words on some of the
junctions of the doctrine of the human form, which doctrine
is to knowledge what the human form is to existence.
With regard to the sciences of the body, we have found
that this doctrine opens up the sluices of all life, and de-
termines its tide into physiology. We can no longer think
of our vitals, or molecules,* as objects which have ever
* In stating this, we know that we disagree with the prevailing
views, which powder the human body into cells, and regard them
as the elements of mankind. But, as we before stated (pp. 190
193), only that is essential to any subject, which is peculiar to it,
and contradistinguishes it from others, whereas nucleated cells and
cell-germs are common to all organization as the chaos out of which it
arises. To think of them in connexion with anything human, is to
think of man in and from chaos. But it has required a divine hand
to win the human form out of matter, and science has no prospect of
gaining it, unless by accepting it as it is, without attempting to con-
struct it out of cells. For our own part we are conscious that we can
make nothing of cells, and we bless God every day that his works
come to us ready made, and can neither be taken to pieces, nor put
together save by his own hand. Our cells are not the pieces, but
the fragments and ruins of his works. The pieces of humanity are
men, women, and children, and by the deepest analysis there are no
s 2
388
THE HUMAN FORM.
been seen by microscope or anatomy ; for the more we at-
tribute to their life and integrity, the less are their dead
lesser pieces than these. It is the synthesis of these, and not of cells,
that constitutes fresh men and women. Every particle of the body
involves the whole, or it is dead, and not within our subject : thus as
a living thing it is the entire human form.
While upon this subject, we will say a few words on the vexata
quastio of cell-germs, the first of which is supposed to contain the
whole forces of the organism in potency. For the primordial cell
appears as the beginning of the body. But it is thought absurd that
within this delicate vesicle forces should reside that build the frame,
and continue it while life endures. In order to see how the case is,
let us apply the human lens to it, and look at it from man, who is the
atom or cell of the fabric of Society. Under this glass we see that the
cell is a man big with a new idea. Let us call that primal cell by the
name of Mahomet. This man is the cell-germ of a new religion and
polity in the world. What is the case with him ? He receives his
mission complete as a germ in his own person ; whatever Mahomet-
anism in its purity will be, is involved in the idea of that molecular
person Mahomet. He does not know it, for who knows the contents
and consequences of himself ? But there it is a logic of great events
folded into that deceptively minute form. By degrees he infects new
matter, that is to say, disciples, with his idea, whose life they receive,
and to which they add their own life ; expanding the original idea, as it
was capable of being expanded from the beginning. And one such
idea might range upon it the populations of all continents, and be less
exhausted than when its assimilations began ; for in conquering ideas,
it is not extension, but want and failure of extension, that is exhaustive.
It is therefore clear, that as a spiritual architectonic thing, all Ma-
hometanism lay in the cell-germ Mahomet ; but as a physical force
each new molecule or disciple contributed to it his body and powers.
And had he not, from the beginning, been such a cell as Mahomet,
only wanting conception or the active idea, no force could have made
him an efficient part in the body of Mahometanism.
Just so, there is a spiritual architectonic force lying in the cell-
germs of organization, and a material, obeisant, correspondential,
bricklaying force in the materials which lie ready to be infected by the
cell-germs.
CELL-GERMS. 389
bodies themselves. The effect of this upon the eyes with
which the body and its prospects are seen, is hope and
A word also with regard to the doctrine of controvertibility of
forces, now popular among the learned, and according to which heat
has only to pass through a cell-germ to be converted into vitality.
This doctrine ends in fire -worshipping, for it makes the light and heat
of the material sun to be the fountains of the force of organization :
and deems that these pass through vegetables, and become vegetable
life ; through animals, and become animal life ; through brains, and
become mind ; and so forth. Therefore a fine day, poured into its
vessel, man, becomes transmogrified into virtues; dark nights are
converted into felonies ; dull November days into suicides ; and hot
suns into love. This is materialism with spiritualism in its pocket.
The creed is an old one, and not untrue of animality ; for the beasts
love in summer because the sun bids them, and their hearts are cold
in winter because winter is cold. But it is false of man, and false of
his very atoms, excepting in so far as he degrades himself into an ani-
mal. As it has been said of the true man,
" The sun to others writeth laws, and is their virtue ;
Virtue is his sun."
For though he requires heat to love, yet he requires to love at all
times, and that is the root of the art by which he procures a constant
temperature that makes his body capable. The prior fact is his human
determination to beat winter and summer ; and though he must have
climates, to pick and choose them at his will.
There is no convertibility of forces between life and nature ; there
are no cells by which heat can be filtered into vitality. The doctrine
of Correspondence must be substituted for that of convertibility. It is
because love and life themselves are live fire (p. 82), that they come
forth by the law of invitation, when the organism which they affect by
the same principle of correspondence (pp. 254, 255, 276 278) is
immersed in the dead heat of the sun. All circumstance is necessarily
haunted, because there are spirits akin to the circumstance, which
cohabit with it, as the soul cohabits with the body. But the soul is
not porous to the body, though the body is porous to the soul ; and
by no art can camels pass through needles' eyes ; death get into life ;
gross heat penetrate living heat ; or dead doctrines of convertibility
procure admission to the distinct and fastidious truths which conserve
the empire of the world.
390 THE HUMAN FORM.
expansion. Blood, nerve and bone are the walls of the
present sciences, and their poor languid life is the resource
of the corresponding arts ; but Man, the hierarchy, is the
presence before whom these limits disappear, and the re-
servoir out of which wholeness and vitality well from
perennial springs. For as the parts rise to the stature of
the whole, our knowledge of them is the physiological dou-
ble of our knowledge of man ; and the arts of their cure
and conservation, are the religions and virtues of the human
race, represented under their healing forms.
All this means, that under the pressure of these views,
the body begins to have a spirit. But also by the same
doctrine, the spirit begins to have a body. For as the
present world, like a battle field in which the armies both
of truth and error have been slain, is strewed with the
dead corses of the sciences, so there is a melancholy array
of spectres called philosophies, fighting over again in the
air the same old cause which was hopeless on the earth.
But the sciences once upon their legs again, the philoso-
phies get into them as their proper souls. The first corse
to be re-animated is physiology ; psychology is the first of
the ghosts which will be incarnate in a human habitation.
The doctrine of the structural human soul is the basis
of philosophy, as that of the organic body is the foundation
of physiology. And this doctrine of the psychical man is
threefold ; first, what he does : second, what he is : and
third, where he comes from. With regard to the first
point, every house and every history is its answer : prac-
tical psychology is therefore the knowledge of the entire
Whether light, heat, magnetism, electricity, motion, &c., are con-
vertible, is another question ; but if they are, they want a substance
to convert them, and from it they take a new force, name, direction
and beginning.
PSYCHOLOGY. 391
works of the soul. With regard to the second, it involves
the human form in its brightest robes of consciousness,
with all its actions poured back into it as powers, and seen
not in effects, but in causes. And for the third point, as
touching the origin of the soul, it is as the origin of the
impression from the seal, or of the child from the parent ;
for the archetype by its terms is the account of the type.
Psychology is therefore the science of assumptions with
regard to the real soul ; for it is bound to make nothing,
but to assume or take up what is given in experience ; and
fact shews what our souls are by what they do and feel,
and completes the substance of the knowledge by embrac-
ing the facts of revelation. In short psychology accepts
the inner man, with all the motives, senses, and form of
the outer ; and its problems refer either to his associates,
or if they are deeper than that world, to inner men again
in a new manly orbit ; and so on through benches and
choirs of manliness until the answer comes from the human
mouth somewhere. The knowledge of the world is there-
fore the analogue, as it is the beginning, of all the know-
ledge of the soul. And men, women and children are our
only faculties, the actors in all, and the accountants of all,
up to the very throne of God. Psychology is thus not
abstract, but dramatic and allegorical.
Mental philosophy under the same aspect becomes
equally tangible, for mind impersonated (and there is no
other) is its object. Mental philosophy is always some
man endeavouring to see his image either in himself, or in
his fellows. The disciples of the schools look for it in the
masters, and the masters either in their own consciousness,
or in the works of their fellow men. That is to say, it is
men of mind who are the study of the philosopher. Ab-
stractions have indeed an empire here, because words,
which are airy men, like other men beget children, which
392 THE HUMAN FORM.
are words of words : but the first words of the mind fit to
things, which are either human, or the parts of humanity.
Hence in its centres every idea is uttered according to the
human form*
We have shewn in the foregoing pages that the faculties,
powers and causes in man are referable to the types of the
organization, and that by correspondence these inner men
inhabit the outer body ; thus, for example, that conscious-
ness is the mind of skin because consciousness itself is the
skin of the mind (p. 328). At present, we do not enter
further upon this general subject, which for its completion
would require us to trace the whole outline of the mental
body, as it runs parallel with the organs of the physical
frame. But yet we will select one or two metaphysical
ideas, in order to shew their fitness to the human form.
And first we select that of power, which has caused ter-
rible staring to eyes philosophic, for they have been trying
to identify power with nothing at all, and to see it not-
withstanding. From Locke to Brown, through the ex-
hausted receiver of David Hume, the essence of power has
been spilt, for want of the vessel of the form. And what
is the form of power but the human arm with the will in
its muscles ? The metaphysicians have asked whence they
got the idea of power, but the prior question is, Whether
they have got it, or not ? Certainly if ever they had it,
they have lost it, and their chains of causes and effects are
ropes of sand or sequences of weakness. On the other
hand, it is plain to common sense, that power is shewn by
deeds, and that the idea of power comes from the shewing ;
also that the arm of man is the central executive of expe-
rience. All other carriage of causes through effects is but
the comparative anatomy of that prime organ. But the
central form is the main symbol, or the essential body of
the idea. And by the laws of correspondence, the idea
INCARNATIONS. 393
has that body with it, either consciously, or unconsciously,
whenever it is used with force. And moreover from the
richness of that body it draws out imagery which is the
sharpness of the occasion.
The controversy about power could not fail to lead to
the conclusion, that there was no such thing ; which was
quite true of the systems of the disputants, but not of the
industrious world. The consequence was, that power was
beyond experience, and disappeared out of philosophy ;
though to avoid the shame of avowal, its name was kept
for a cloak. Power, however, becomes again an object of
study when it enters its own proper form. Let us run
along the arm, from shoulder to fingers, to notice how the
emblem offers a true habitation to the idea. First, man is
a living force, a lake of energy, from which the arm
pushes forth as a river of waters of works ; for force is the
trunk and body which urges at the back of power. Next,
the shoulder is proper power, the place where will meets
force, and where power is born. Again, the arm is strength,
where the biceps and triceps which are the blacksmiths of
action live ; the men of iron know where their iron lies.
The forearm is toughness, or the home of sinewy power.
The wrist inflexibility, where sleight of hand begins. The
palm of the hand is possession, or the power of having ; it
itches for the finger-tips, which give it the power of hold-
ing. The grave thumb is firmness or steadiness, and it
stands short and sullen among the fingers, which are of
the rapid temperament of skill. In the closed fist again
the emblem of force comes forth, and completes the circle
of this series of powers. This, for the one-sided view :
there are however two arms ; the left, for all passive
powers ; the right, for the active ; and the two are mar-
ried, and sometimes clasped, when the most important
works are to issue. It is fortunate that the thought of
s 3
394 THE HUMAN FORM.
power inhabits such an engine as its proper word, for as
we said before, a wealth of suggestion arises out of the
natural language of things, such as could not proceed
from artificial symbols ; for the etymology of this language
is the whole nature and anatomy of the arm as the expo-
nent of the idea which dwells in it : hence it introduces us
into an infinite field in the study of power. But if we
study it in words or conceptions first, we get no more than
the word or conception involves, and we leave the nature
of the case out. It must surely be evident that a child
working as well as he can with divine forms, in which his
mind too is native, is better circumstanced for truth, than
a sage fumbling ever so cleverly with notions of his own,
into which no creation, but his own laborious conceit has in-
duced him. Experience itself declares, that a thousand ideas
arise when nature is the source, for one that can come from
the closet-cudgelled brain. Hence the mercy that has
still incarnated our poor metaphysical minds in dresses of
such everlasting suggestions.
We will try to illustrate one other philosophical idea,
to embody another of the ghosts in which philosophers
believe, and it shall be the idea of progress, of which the
limbs of man are the essential emblem. Here first the
feet are proper progress, to which the ankles are speed,
the emblem of which is the talare or winged sandal ; for
the feet are the measure of advance, and they twinkle
with swiftness as they run, by virtue of the nimble ankles.
The legs are straightness, the shaft of direction, keeping
the line of the object in the midst of the rush of joints and
muscles. The thighs are effort, or the brawniness of pro-
gress ; and the hips are motion itself, globe-jointed ; while
the trunk which they bear is weight, pressure, or necessity,
the incumbence of all man's vitals and wants to generate
his progress ; as the same trunk determined to the arms is
INCARNATIONS. 395
the bye-play of all to produce his skill ; and carried to the
head, is the coronation of all in his will and intelligence.
If now it be asked, What is progress ? we say it is all ad-
vancement, upon this model : walking and running are in
its definitions in every sphere. No writer has ever talked
of it for many sentences together, without falling into the
symbolism of the legs. Such a one " makes a stride in
advance " of his age : such another is a rearward spirit,
and slow in the movements of his mind : this one leaps to
a conclusion, and that other goes rather backwards than
forwards. If these terms are metaphors, it is because the
soul inhabits a metaphor in dwelling in the human body
(p. 276279).
It may be evident from these sketches, that our organ-
ization (containing us, as it does) has the power to take
up, and arrange on its plan, the various abstract terms
which hover over the philosophical world. For intuitions
may be put into eyes, and reason into brains ; and philo-
sophers may become seers, when they get these organs of
which they have mutilated themselves so long. In com-
mon humanity let us pray for this consummation. For the
cripples of thought are painful objects to us. It is sad to
see the philosophers of progress leaving their own good
legs behind, and hobbling along through the learned world
on wooden pegs of abstractions ! To see the reasoners on
cause and effect ordering automaton arms of their surgeons,
and stowing their own arms away in the closet underneath
their libraries ! To watch the Kants putting off their
brains, volume by volume, that their " reasons " may be
"pure," and filling their skulls with pure bran instead !
These curtailments are too lamentable for laughter, for we
are all maimed in our brethren of the schools. We can
only hope that they will henceforth condescend to the
396 THE HUMAN FORM.
human form, and not make damnable imitations of it, in
words of " leather and prunella."
The immediate mission of the doctrine of the human
form in philosophy, lies in the constitution of analogy as
the method of reason in this department of experience.
For when the mind is consciously in its moulds, it becomes
allied to all existence ; like God and like nature ; and
philosophy is assimilated to theology on the one hand, and
to science on the other ; nay, and as the middle term, to
the life of man in the world. Hitherto analogical reason-
ing has had no proper place in thought, that is to say,
knowledge has been deficient in the principle of association ;
each branch was afraid of foreigners, not knowing that
their races have the common stem of humanity ; but this
once seen, the principle of analogy or friendship begets
intercourse, and the mental kingdoms begin to communi-
cate. In this case the analogy falls into no stereotyped
methods, but corrected and fortified by an abundant appeal
to facts, it touches that infinity which relatively to us is
one of the first lessons which existence has to give.
The first object, therefore, whether in questions of mind,
or body, is to find the fact, that is to say, the prime form,
or shape, of the thing in hand ; the second requisite is, to
see its illustrations, or in other words, to view it in con-
nexion with its universe ; and the third thing, or the end,
is, to see its universe over again within it, but according
to the facts of its own being. The method here is analo-
gical, running from the form of the thing, through the
forms of its circumstances, and back from these again to
the starting point, which is thenceforth no speck, but a
full- sized world. We have already illustrated this in
speaking of the idea of power: in discussing which we
first find the form and body of power, which is the arm ;
UNIVERSAL ANALOGY AND SYMBOLISM. 397
next we move down the rails of this through comparative
powers in nature, and engines and machineries in art, and
complete the circumstantial empire of power ; and thirdly,
we see in the will itself, with its own distinct facts, the
arm of arm and the mechanism of mechanism ; and one
limb of the inner man is rescued from nothingness or ab-
straction. In a similar way the analogy of the human
form makes the circuit of the world in the interest of every
other faculty, and brings back for each a portion of the
reality which belongs to man in experience. Nor does it
matter whether it be a psychological problem, or a problem
of causes, or of ethics ; for the mould of man embodies the
latter just as the former, and accounts of the nature of
things, and theories of duty, take shape and order with
the same facility under the banners of the human form.
Social theories also are incarnate there ; for it has been
known from of old of the human body, that its parts are
the exemplars of a perfect commonwealth, intelligence and
morality ; in other words, that it is Christianity practical
to very matter, built into its own shape of a man.
But if the principle of analogy be thus coextensive with
just thought, it cannot fail at the top to suggest the more
living principle of universal symbolism ; for if the mind be
like the body, and actuates the body, the latter becomes
expressive through means of the likeness and the action ;
and in that case the series of existences in the world be-
comes similarly expressive, that is to say, symbolical of
the mind. The face of man thus travels throughout the
universe, and love and intelligence look out from things
with an infinite variety according to their capacities.
Nature and form are" therefore full of meaning to the true
philosopher ; that is to say, they always signify something
in the mind and soul of man, and the last account which
can be given of them is, to trace out what that something
398 THE HUMAN FORM.
is. For as the arm means power, and the eye sight,
(though we could not guess as much unless our own po-
tency and vision were therein,) and as power and sight
seem different from these tools, so the horse and the ass,
gold and silver, the rose and the lily, have also meanings
just as apparently remote from their forms ; and these
meanings are inner functions from which they come and to
which they return. Without such meanings these things
have no communion with the soul of things, just as without
power and sight the eye and arm do not partake of the
animation of the body. Philosophy therefore has hard
work, and a glorious mission before it, in hearing what all
forms say ; so much indeed to do, that we foresee a good
time coming, when it will throw down its luggage of clas-
sified faculties; empty its pockets of its bad money of
"objective and subjective cognitions," and anxious for
labor, like blind Bartimseus cry out exceedingly, " Lord,
that I might receive my sight." Then will it find that
there are not only more things in heaven and earth than it
dreamt of; but that there are also more heavens and
earths. For if there is an inner man, there is also his
experimental circumstance, his comparative anatomy, bo-
tany, mineralogy, cosmology; in short, an inner world,
like this world in its form, though built of spirit and life :
and to learn about this will be the last privilege of philo-
sophy, when it becomes teachable, as a little child.
Having indicated that the symbolism of things is the
soul of the comparative scale of nature, and that the know-
ledge of correspondence is the punctum saliens of the
sciences, and if we may be pardoned the thought, a stream
from that divine expression, the creative Word, we pass
on to one or two other points connected with our subject.
And first let us glance at the application of the human
form to the doctrine of history.
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 399
In this field the idea has been steadily but tacitly
growing up, that there is an organic connexion of races
and affiliation of ages, so that what seems to be a world of
men, is also but One Man. The doctrine of association,
admitted of the mind on the one hand, and of social inter-
change on the other, helps us to conceive that we are all
members of one body. The method of thought which
runs from the great to the small, and magnifies our parts
into humanities, in its other curve from the small to the
great, brings mankind together in a single human body.
What may be the ultimate triumphs of this idea what
sciences may come out of its mighty loins, we dare not
venture to predict; but one thing is clear, that it w r ill
purge history of much occasional matter, and aim con-
stantly at that which is the sublime part of all annals, the
history of Providence in the world. For though we may
think that we shape our own courses as isolated parts, yet
if an architectonic whole be admitted, the scheme is neces-
sarily God's. Do we not foresee, that history from this
point of view will unwrite itself, and proceeding by the
wisdom of erasures, find that its grand task is done for it,
and that Old and New Testaments are its truth. For
when all is said, the complication returns at last to simple
pieces of good and evil. Paradise lost, missed, and re-
gained, are the main concerns. This is the upshot of the
birth, education, career and end of " the Grand Man "
upon earth ; and writing has to show, that this is already
written, for this among other reasons, that there is no man
could write it. And so from the garrulity of old expe-
rience, and after the fag of unrollings and discoveries, we
find that we are right exactly where God says to us : "I
told ye so from the beginning."
But if the doctrine of the human form brings unity to
our conceptions of mankind, and sees the terrene man as a
400 THE HUMAN FORM.
globe of societies and churches, its effects upon moral phi-
losophy are not less important, for it embraces kindreds
and tongues in one fraternal whole. The human is the
form of function, and function is diversity of act founded
upon aptitude. If the race be indeed a man, what vast
differences are needed in parts and individuals, to make up
his body of such various wants I The members must con-
sent to differ, as the head differs from the feet, or the liver
from the fingers. They must also consent to agree and
succour, as closely and quickly as the bodily common-
wealth itself. They must further know that they are
bound together in a common lot of health or disease, and
that there is no wholeness until the entire system is well.
In this light the doctrine of the human form is a standing
policy of regeneration to man, and sends out the sound to
bring in the sick, that their evil spread not to the frame.
Here, in short, we have the doctrine of fraternity, sym-
pathy, help, or the foundation of ethics.
I also deem that the mystery of Christ comes more home
to the scientific mind through consideration of this same
doctrine, though far be it from me to attempt to base
Christianity upon inductions, when it stands on a divine
rock of truth. But the mind which does not know its
claims, seems a little advanced towards them, by finding
that the human form is no accident among things, but is
the ruling soul of the world, and that to enter it by divine
means amounts on these principles to a reconstruction of
the universes of spirit and matter by virtue of such Incar-
nation. For if the end be changed, and a divine huma-
nity substituted in nature for our perverted manhood, then
the means leading to the end are altered also, and the
kingdoms of nature and science advance thenceforth to no
man but Christ, who takes all power, or is the First and
the Last, who was, and is, and is to come. It were easy
THE GRAND MAN. 401
to say more on this theme, but the hint must now be suffi-
cient, that a science resembling Christianity is possible,
based upon the divinity, humanity, and omniprevalence of
the human form.
The doctrine also of immortality is not untouched by
these considerations. The belief in a personal immor-
tality, is a belief in the never-dying perfections of the
human form. The hope of a social immortality, or a state
in which the spirit is no lone existence, rests upon the
foundation of a permanence of true brotherhood in a
grander human form. Ultimately it presupposes, that all
races under the natural skies, and that majority who have
passed away, are one stupendous humanity whose life is
God. But we may not dwell upon the overpowering
vision. Let us be content with declaring, that the more of
God there dwells in society, and the more of society in the
individual, and the more of the individual in the body, and
the more of the body in its members, the more living is
our life, and the truer the science that represents it. For
of one thing we may be very sure, that our proudest know-
ledge is either nothing, or a rill from the cataracts of
heaven.
We have now, kind reader, endeavored to travel toge-
ther over some portions of that garden of the Divine
Wisdom and Love, the human body, where the tender
paternity of God is so very manifest to all his little chil-
dren, and I trust we have found as we proceeded, that
what He does is actual as well as perfect ; that His works
like Himself are positive substance, and meant for our
positive knowledge. In the course of our journey we have
conversed repeatedly on our common sense, regarding it as
the foundation of our discourses. And once more, what is
this common sense ? It is the active light which follows
whatever is largely experienced and rightly done; the
402 THE HUMAN FORM.
mundane version of that scripture, "If ye will do the
works, ye shall know of the doctrine." It is not common
opinion or thought, both of which may be wrong, or vague ;
nay, it is not opinion or thought at all ; but it is the whole
living present hour, standing on the pier of the whole past,
and about to embark with cheerful courage upon the un-
known welcome future. This is the fortune of life and
action, and the price of the sciences ; nay, the reaper of
which science is the gleaner. This is the bond of times
and the principle of toleration. This makes learning hum-
ble, and simple natures great.
ADDITIONAL NOTES.
p. 350.
The reverse of the biblical revelation of God as a Divine Man, is
the philosopher's notion of God from physical immensity, as an in-
distinct being whose sensormm is space. " Jupiter est quodcunque
vides," &c., &c. The modern astronomical sublime, in which the
greatness of the Creator is deduced from the mileage of the universe,
and God is increased by naughts according to quadrillions, quintillions
and sextillions, is like the child's notion of a great man or a great
book, which amounts of course to a giant, or an imperial folio. It is
not, however, by piling Ossa upon Pelion, that divine size is gained :
the way to it is by common sense following Scripture, and recognizing
the intenseness of those human qualities which are the greatness of
man, and to which matter is a servant, for they say to it, " Go,
and it goeth, Come, and it cometh." So likewise omnipresence is
purely divine, and has not to do with space, but with wisdom ; in
which latter space itself is but a nook. The biblical or human view is
then according to the uprightness of reason ; whereas the notion of
the Godhead from space is an infinite sprawl, reason down wallowing
on its knees and nose.
p. 352.
We here take occasion to warn the reader against the fallacy of
the notion that man is an infinite who has been degraded to the human
form, when the fact is that he is dust, which is ever being raised by
God through and in the human form. For as we shew in the text,
the human form is mind, life and infinity.
p. 368.
The humanizing function of the arts is indeed a phrase which
admits and succinctly conveys the whole of this argument.
p. 374.
We may regard this view of the human frame as the doctrine of
the freedom of man, for it opens avenues into all expanses, and sinks
its shaft into liberty, which is the principle of sufficient space. The
dead microscopic view, on the other hand, is the doctrine of cells or
404 THE HUMAN FORM.
prisons, not indeed unfit for a limit below, but which ought to be
kept below, lest the mind, tied to what it contemplates, should be-
come a scientific bottle imp in the cases of its own museum.
p. 399.
By virtue of the human form all the ages of thought reappear
upon the scene together ; the mythologic and the scientific ; both of
them contained in that which is the first and the last, or the theologic
epoch: but by inhumanity and atheism man is a perpetual bastard*
always vilifying father and mother ; like an enemy burning the bridge
of time behind him as he runs ; and those who come after him being
of the like mind, of course his days are short in the land which his
own conceit gives him.
p. 400.
The human is the form of originality, or of special gifts and ac-
tivities to each member of the body ; for its perfection lies in the un-
likeness, yet accordance, of the uses which each part ministers to
every other. Agreeably to this form, every man has a genius of his
own (p. 71), or he would have no function in his commonwealth.
The animal form is the reverse of this, for animality limited to self,
works for no commonwealth, but aims to put itself in the room of
others, and thus to engender universal sameness of functions, each
animal striving to have all advantage, and to be everything in its
sphere. There are, then, two opposite forms in man, and out of him,
viz., the human form divine, and the monkey form infernal. And
there are two classifications of nature corresponding with these unlike
principles. See our tract published some years since, on The Group*
ing of Animals.
CHAPTER VII.
HEALTH.
AMONG the functions of human life, the presentation of
ideals in mind, body and estate, is one which influences
all motion and sensation, and gives faculty its direction
and play. It seems as if inertia were so tied to motion,
pain to pleasure, and imperfection to perfection, that they
tend to run out of themselves, and to seek something be-
yond them to which we give the general name of health.
How we come to think that we have a right to be healthy,
at least that this is our proper nature, is a problem ad-
mitting different solutions ; but that our bodies feel disease
as a grievance, admits of no doubt whatever. Shall we
say, according to the last Chapter, that it is one of the
functions of the human form (p. 378), to subject us to
ideals, and to put us under this air pump of wholeness and
happiness, that we may gasp to fill its limits ? However this
may be, the fact remains, that through all disease we look
wistfully after soundness ; from the depth of incompetency
aspire to strength, and long to be well through our little
day, that duty and pleasure may not be stunted in our
hands, but enjoy their legitimate proportions.
We seem to know sentimentally what that general health
would be which we desire. To fill our places in the world,
and to love to fill them, are the best ends of our aspirations :
406 HEALTH.
to be so organized, or so minded, which you will, as to
be spontaneously able and cheerful in our labors, at the
same time that those labors are not only our choice, but
the wants of the time. This includes the rapid direction
of every muscle to the private in the public service ; the
bending of sense straight to the objects in hand ; the limit-
ation of sensibilities to the occasion, or the running of life
in the pipes of duty ; and finally the control of the all-
controlling mind under a genius which is called felicity
when its works come forth with complete adaptation to the
time and space which they are to fill.
Health, in short, by the old definition (and we know of
no better), is harmony in its most considerable meaning
harmony of the parts of the body with themselves har-
mony of the mind with the body, and harmony of both
with the circumstances and ordinances into which we are
born : harmony also of the human frame with the climate
that it inhabits, and with external nature in its variety.
The science of health, then, is ideal physiology and psy-
chology, and the art of healing embraces the means that
may conduct us from the present or any state of unhealth,
to that picture in the clouds which we cannot give up if we
cannot reach it, the means which may gradually make
some part of our ideals real.
There is, of course, a dark side observe to health, in
the existence of innumerable maladies and diseases, which
beset human nature ; otherwise health would not have been
heard of, but instead of it existence full of the play of
power, and of the power of play : but upon our present
experience as a background, pain, which is the writhing
and restiveness of the human form away from, and against
disease, sketches out with the pencils of hope and desire
the lineaments of a bright possibility. In this light we
look at health from disease, which is perhaps its only point
ANIMAL AND HUMAN HEALTH. 407
of view. For as we said before, if that ground be left,
the name of health becomes too negative, and perishes ;
and in its place other substances arise, such as joy, love,
activity, and all those states which are blessings irre-
spective of bans. In that case we do not think of state
but contemplate action, and valetudinarianism ceasing out
of mind and body, leaves us free and fearless for our busi-
ness.
Health is therefore only the beginning of a just consi-
deration of the human being, as it were the birth of man
into the realms of humanity ; and yet as he is ever begin-
ning afresh, it pursues him with new exigencies along the
stages of his journey. To be well with the world of this
hour, and equal to the existing situation, is a demand
which is always changing, and health must be flexible to
meet it ; especially so, in a being, who is a child to-day, a
youth to-morrow, and an old man in time, and who has no
experience of these, his eras, until they come upon him.
For health implies a perpetual self-adjustment of a new
needle to a new pole. And thus, however high we rise,
the problem of health, or some difficulty of being well,
may be expected to recur to us. The beasts are better off,
and worse. They are acclimated from the first, or if they
need change of air or season, they are naturally bi-climatic,
and run along the magnetic streams to light and warmth,
caring little for earth, but very constant to summer. Then
again the cup of their heart's blood is measured to objects,
and they are drunk with no desires but those which nature
prospers. Their muscles also are full of spirit, and do not
tear from contrariety of minds. And even if instinct be
wrong on one tack, and disorder them, animal magnetism
is their physician, and like clairvoyants they run to grass
and herb, and nibble their healing leaves out of the phar-
macy of things. In a word, their potent life burns up
408 HEALTH.
sickliness, and makes medicine of little avail ; excepting
indeed in those cases where a false domestication denatu-
ralizes them. So far they have a superior lot, and earth
is their heaven. But on the other hand, brute life and
health are not enviable for us. The beasts are nature's
simpletons who are pleased with a little, and that little, of
the lowest order. They are well with their world, because
it is so single and small. Could they have another shewn
them, by those other eyes which we possess, they would
pant and struggle as we do to the ever new adjustment.
Instead of living on the bare surface, they would dig in
the mines, and build up the palaces, of sanity. Such is
undoubtedly the cause and object of human diseases, to
carry us deeper and higher than brute health can go ; or
to make the health of soul, mind and body inseparable
and coordinate. For this reason, there is no joyous inha-
bitation of the earth for man, unless the inner man also be
right with his world, and the social with his ; or unless
wholeness be fulfilled. Our maladies therefore are warn-
ings and signs of a lost integrity, which is to be sought,
and found again ; and where cure does not come, it is an
evidence that the problem has been stated and worked on
some partial ground, and that a further view and a higher
sacrifice are asked. We may terminate the comparison
between man and beasts by saying, that the health of the
latter is already complete and natural, while the human
can never be completed, but is always integral and pro-
gressive. If reason shews unwholeness, the pain of the
proof is contemporaneous with the journeying of a star
from the east, which stands at last as a heraldic sky-point
over a new born health.
In the few remarks which we have to offer in this
Chapter upon the subject of health, we shall follow that
division which is generally admitted, and consider the in-
ANIMAL AND HUMAN HEALTH. 409
dividual from two points of view; firstly, as containing
within himself the grounds of a certain stock of health or
disease, which falls under the ordinary department of me-
dicine : and secondly, as being surrounded by circum-
stances favourable, or otherwise, to health ; which consti-
tutes the field of what is termed public health, or as we
might name it, social health. It is however no part of our
design to contribute directly to either of the branches of
practice which are busied with these two walks; but
rather to complete and conclude the physiological and
psychological subjects that have already occupied us in
the foregoing Chapters. A popular education on these
themes, is very near our aim ; and general notions only
can therefore enter into our pages : yet we feel that if the
eye can be opened to the compass of the subject, we shall
not fail in the long run to have brought to practice those
first helps which depend upon the insights and expecta-
tions of the learner. There are abundance of good books,
and zealous men, engaged upon details and sciences : be it
our endeavour to elicit some little of the order and light
in which they are working, and to present it to memory
under an organic form. In the first place therefore, to
proceed from the great to the small, we shall consider the
subjects and method of social health ; and in the next
place, we shall speak, not of individual diseases, but of the
various systems of medical treatment which are applied to
disease, and follow its fashions and moulds. I do not
know that our design can be likened to anything more
aptly than to a map, in which the fewness of places, the
smallness of size, and the poorness of outline, are them-
selves valuable for giving a first view to that public which
does not travel. There will be tracts of terra incognita
also, for which the excuse shall be, that they are left
blank, and not completed for deception.
410 HEALTH.
And first a few words on the difference between the
private, and the public or social health.
The science of private health is of individual concern,
and lies in making the best of our own circumstances, for
the strength, improvement and enjoyment of the organism.
It chooses a healthful place to live in ; keeps clean the
person and the house ; superintends diet and clothing, and
all that belongs to cheer ; and aims also to keep the mind
easy. In short, it is the analysis and perfection of body-
keeping and housekeeping. But it stops for the most part
with the front door. It gives you the best of everything,
but without ensuring the goodness of the best. You can
have excellent meat and wine on this principle, if the town
supplies them ; good air, if the neighborhood be* favorable ;
good drainage, if there is a natural outfall, and the sea
washes up conveniently to carry away your refuse. This
private health is the property of the strong, the vigorous,
the wealthy and the fortunate, who have the pick of cir-
cumstances, and are the favorites of the hour ; but even
with them it is casual and impure, not the maximum of
the public health, but the minimum of the public inconve-
nience and disease. It is like a high hill at whose base
the fever-vapors curl and steam, and whose top they
threaten to invade, and by subtle fears do invade, and
some one or other of its inhabitants drops down ever and
anon, shot by invisible arrows from beneath. That supe-
rior vigor of mankind which seems to need no tending, and
to burn like fine wax without scientific trimming, is the
subject of this private health, which is no system or doc-
trine, but a resource of carnal virtue and goodness above,
and in spite of, the elements. Nature has done what she
can in producing the robust individuals who belong to this
class, but it is committed to ourselves to enlarge the class
until it embraces everybody.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HEALTH. 411
The science of public health undertakes this task, and
aims to do for everybody what it seems nobody's vocation
to do for himself. Private weakness and impotence is its
field of operations ; the want of virtue in persons is what it
has to compensate. It knows of houses only as little dots
in streets, and streets only as fine lines in towns. In
short, it looks from the community at individuals, and is
necessarily tyrannous until its work is done, after which
freedom of a new kind breathes everywhere. It washes
the foulest faces first, strikes at the Stygian neighborhoods,
keeps company with publicans and sinners, and always be-
gins where it left off, with the remaining dirtiest man.
Soap and towels from the toes upwards ; "he who would
be clean, needs only to wash his feet." Yet the problem
grows up street after street, until we find that it is the
whole metropolis that is stated. In good faith, there is no
such thing as private health; health is the Saxon for whole-
ness, and wholeness is the public health. We shall further
illustrate this presently.
Public health is either an autocrat, or nothing. Inde-
pendence is its aversion, for it has to trace and cleanse the
dependence of man upon his circumstances and his fellows.
When it has driven its ploughshare through a foul neigh-
borhood, sown with salt the foundations of sin, and carried
rivers of water under the new streets, it then knocks at the
house-doors, from the worst to the best, and rummages
privacy with a curiosity most detestable and proper. It
insists that the public fountain shall have a squirt in every
room ; that the pure air outside shall widen the windows
and space the rooms ; that the underground kitchen shall
be plucked up, and set in the sunshine ; that the chimneys
shall burn their smoke ; and the sewers have their decorum
thought of in their beginnings in the chamber. Thus it
ordains that the anatomy of the house shall spring by a
T 2
412 HEALTH.
fibril of propriety from that of the street ; and this, by a
fibre from that of the town ; and that every one shall
know what his neighbor's income of health is, that preten-
sion may die, and the easy manners of a common stock of
sanity and consequence arise. Such is public in contra-
distinction to private health ; the latter is the vis medica-
trix naturw, which takes stock of the existing health, and
sums it up, for life or death, by a balance of figures : the
former is the vis medicatrix hominis, which enlarges the
stock, and promises to make it all- sufficient. The business
of public health is prevention, but that of private health is
cure.
We shall now speak a little more in detail of the exact-
ing nature of this new duty, and for this purpose we shall
group the various branches of it upon the bodily organs.
For it will be evident to the reader of the former Chapters,
that our method of considering the world and the society
as the procession of the principles of the human frame,
offers facilities for the treatment of this question, and
throws it into an order parallel with that of the body
itself, (pp. 105, 165168, 178, 259, 260, 348350.)
Like babies on the subject, let us begin with the sto-
mach, which is the most interesting thing in all our early
considerations. And what are the demands of the stomach
and alimentary tube as regards the public service ? Evi-
dently they require that cultivated nature shall be con-
ducted into them, and their own rejections be cleanly
drawn off into nature again : that is to say, that the world
shall be an alimentary tube leading to them from the one
side, and a hidden intestine or rectum of drains passing
from them on the other. Health immediately, and exist-
ence soon, demand that the stomach shall not be isolated,
but that the earth shall be cut into ways that correspond
to, and converge into, it. Wherever there is a break in
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE STOMACH. 413
the tube of functions that conducts from the earth to the
mouth, a corresponding inanition takes place in the latter ;
and wherever there is a stoppage in that other tube that
should run from the belly to the ground, a constipation is
created somewhere in the upper parts. Our towns are in
a state of permanent inanition and constipation, owing to
the fact that markets, and drainage, are not laid down to,
and from, every mouth or inhabitant. The violation of
the calls of the frame, which is satisfied with nothing but
the conquest of the external world, leads to loss of health,
public and therefore private. And here we observe a
second time, that public and private health are inseparable,
and only exist apart in exceptions that prove the rule of
their union.
But how much is involved in that single reconstruction
of circumstances of which the alimentary tube is the mis-
sionary : how much wise industry in the creation of food,
and honesty in delivering it from hand to hand ; and on
the other part, how complete a belief in the interest of the
commonwealth in cleanness and order. This lowest de-
partment of sanitary duties, begins to demand virtues and
faculties which are not yet real; in fact, the universal
kindness of a higher polity than exists on earth. But
what then ? shall we give up effort ; or shall we not rather
be grateful, that past our powers to attain, the wants of the
body are prophetic ?
There is no organ, however, which stops with the mate-
rial question, but all flesh has psychical inhabitants, who
make their own fearful demands. The public peace, pros-
perity and ease constitute an atmosphere of circumstance
around the stomach, which allows our food to do us good,
or causes the reverse effect. Health is like the funds, and
digestion and indigestion have their daily quotations, if we
414 HEALTH.
could but read them. Low anxieties and love of money
for its own sake, neglect of the Divine truth, " sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof," make whole ages dys-
peptic ; and neglect of the republic of other men than our-
selves, creates stoppage in that which should be a unani-
mous society. Hence the public health of the stomach
embraces even these considerations; and indeed as the
lower parts of its duties are fulfilled, these higher ones
come out only the more prominently in their claims.
On our lips, the alimentary tube changes to the skin,
and the next realm of public health which we mention, is
that which concerns the latter organ. The skin is as ex-
acting upon us as the rest of the body. A polity of healthy
skins can be maintained by only the most vast demands
upon our industry and sciences. Everything about us
must be clean-skinned, or half our personal washing is
wasted. The skin leads outwards by forceful channels,
and will not be stopped even at great distances, without its
emanations recoiling upon the health ; it allures surround-
ing influences inwards from equal lengths, and will not be
deprived of them, or supplied with them in a malignant
form, without withering, or diseasing, the organization.
The effects of climate and circumstances upon the skin,
are not less remarkable than obvious : for it sympathizes
directly with the places and spaces around it, and takes its
complexion from them. The inhabitants of the regions of
gusty winds have weather-beaten faces, and lines as of the
tempests blown howling into their skins. Mountain races
have stony or granitic features, as of rocks abandoned to
the barren air. The people of moist and marshy places
look watery and lymphatic. Those where extremes of
temperature prevail for long periods, are leathern and
shrivelled, as though their skins had given up the contest
PUBLIC HEALTH OP THE SKIN. 415
with nature, and died upon their faces. And so forth.
These events shew how much the skin is influenced by the
circumstances about it.
It is equally certain that the surfaces of the body, re-
presented by the skin, are the medium of contagion, which
is the railway of the public disease. For this organ which
compasses all our parts until they form one, true to itself,
offers a sympathetic plane on which the health and disease
of the community also tend to universal oneness or diffu-
sion. There is no breach of continuity on the surface of
mankind, but the skin of the poor joins to that of the rich,
and epidemics run without ceremony from the one to the
other ; only more sparse as they spot the palaces, because
cleanness is more studied there.
After the stomach has taken care of our nourishment,
and the lungs have looked to our breath, the skin has to
provide for both in a kind of infinitesimal sense. For it
supplies us with food, and disburdens us of excretions ;
though both its aliments and rejections are for the most
part invisible : it also washes itself in air, and keeps itself
in motion ; the former, by itself ; the latter, under the
superintendence of the lungs. The skin is the theatre of
influences ; the other organs we have mentioned deal with
more palpable stuff. There is a corresponding delicacy in
the question of the public and private health of the skin.
Great, however, is the plainness, and equally great the
mystery of cleanliness. It is one of those terms that will
hardly be chained to a physical sense ; we no sooner begin
to treat it, than it buds like Aaron's rod, and blossoms into
morals. Frequent ablutions wash away the sordes of our
bodies, open our pores, enable us to emanate with freedom,
and with freedom to take in what the atmosphere can yield
us. The model and mirror of these effects is presented in
416 HEALTH.
our daily washings, which make us feel dean* This clean
feeling is the basis of correct perceptions. It gives self
respect, which marks us out from the things about us (pp.
326 330) ; makes us judicial among our associates ; esta-
blishes a ring of healthy sentiment around us, and between
us and other things ; and enables us to discriminate between
clean and unclean in whatever seeks to enter our feelings,
* In speaking of the saliva, we took occasion to say a few words on
the emotional nature of the secretions and excretions (pp. 162 164).
The field is a wide one, and embraces all the living processes. Feelings
are changing in our bodies with every transport of the animated fluids
from place to place. The current of blood above is the signal of one
set of feelings, and its rush below produces another ; for it carries soul
with it, and its sentiments are according to the parts from and to
which it is sent. The same is the case with the perspirations ; they
carry away old feelings, the perspirations of the soul, and remove
them from the person. So also do the dejections of a grosser kind.
Hence the exhilaration consequent upon the latter functions when
satisfactorily performed. In washing, especially, an effect is produced
which we may term material-psychical, and which every one must
have experienced j a sentiment of new vigor, as though the mind it-
self were washed in the skin. We do not know " how we are " in
the mornings, or what is the promised complexion of our day, until
our ablutions have taken place. The result is often quite different
from what we feared before these processes were undergone.
The generative process, with its sheddings, is the head of the
material-psychical acts, and as it secretes the germ of man himself, it
affords a light as to the force and function of the other living secre-
tions. What a quantity of imaginations the seed at once carries out
of the mind and body ; and what an architectural effect it produces
on its matrix ! Now, likewise, in their places and degrees, the other
excretions export emotion from the organism ; and when they have
come out, and reached a suitable nidus, they shew that they are seeds,
and after their own fashion germinate. In this way the world is sown
broadcast by the natures of all men, animals and plants. See our
Chapter on the Skin, pp. 300308.
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE SKIN. 417
or aspires to stay there. In short, it places a cordon of
pure life around our bodies, as a troop of angels around the
bed and before the path of the faithful. Between the life,
thus whitely washen, and its objects, nothing intervenes
to hinder immediate judgment and action so far as the
surface is concerned. The light of the sky and the vigor
of the man, kiss upon his skin, and cement a covenant of
justice, in which every predominance is conceded to the
lordly organization.
On the other hand, dirt upon the skin is not merely
dirt but dirty feeling ; and the latter is no sooner set up
than it travels soulwards. The skin is given, among other
ends, as a vivacious sentinel to prevent the entrance into
us of whatever is alien and impure. The purity of the
sentinel is of the greatest value to this exercise of his func-
tions. Dirty feeling does not know dirt when it comes,
but is bribed by it, and lets it pass the barrier. Hence an
unclean skin, besides adulterating the feelings, admits a
material adulteration to the organs. Furthermore, by
clogging the pores, it prevents the beloved dirt from es-
caping outwards ; until at length the body, crusted over
with itself, abrogates the skin-functions, and finds another
and violent eruption in disease. For nobody can stop long
in himself; he must go forth as a messenger of life, or
death, to those about him. And when he ceases to tran-
spire health, specific sickness is conceived in the struggle ;
the system makes new terms between itself and nature ;
a part of the privileges of life is ceded, and the various
maladies appear. This is the history of one class of phy-
sical evils, engendered by the neglected cleanliness, not of
years alone, but of generations.
The private health of the skin subsists in the public
health, private cleanliness also in public, as a man in his
society. There may be excellent citizens in a debased
T 3
418 HEALTH.
community, and cleanly persons in a dirty town ; but the
surrounding influences are against them; and they are
good and clean in spite of example, by mere manhood and
as it were miracle. The labors of cleanliness, though
cheerfully undertaken, are Herculean and incessant. Often
too they are unsuccessful, for the laws of nature work in
masses, and public neglect is visited not unfrequently upon
the just as well as upon the unjust. Hence the necessity
of treating these questions from the public side. A clean
house in a sooty town ; a well ventilated room with an ad-
jacent swamp or churchyard ; a chastened appetite with
unwholesome provisions these are the impossibilities
which the prudent ones are laboring to establish in the
city and in the country. It is plain, however, that things
move all at once ; that house and town, room and sky,
dietetics and food, are the same essence in different quan-
tities ; that the large is the continuation of the little, and
vice versa the little the pensioner of the large ; in short,
that health has two ends, the health of the man, and the
health of the people ; which must be treated as one by
doctors and clergy, because they are tied into one by the
Great Physician.
But if a clean skin supposes in postscript a clean habita-
tion, and this a cleanly location ; and if the skin functions
preach to us to cultivate purity in every field ; they also
enjoin another lesson, of warmth and clothing. The skin,
as we have observed, is the garment of the organs (p. 322.)
It has wonderful powers of keeping us warm, and of mo-
derating temperature (p. 311). Nakedly, however, it can-
not stand against the extremes of heat and cold, but it
beseeches to be fenced with coats of other skins, derived
by textile skill from plant, worm, and fleecy animal ,
These too must continue the skin, have pores like the
skin's, and be clean as the skin. The duties of cleanliness
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE LUNGS. 419
recur in the clothes ; the necessity of warmth in a word,
other clothes, is also broadly stated. The clothes must
be clad by the walls of a comfortable house, and the hearth
fire artificially elongate the brightness which the life fire
commences. Only thus can warmth become solid. For it
is here as in space and logic : there mus^t be three terms
or dimensions ; viz., the man in a whole skin, the skin in
a decency or wholeness of garments, and the man in a
house of comfort, in order to make the substance of a
citizen. And again the skin of the circumjacent earth must
be washed and dressed, as the double of our own, in order
that the reservoirs of outward cleanness may be filled : and
lastly, our minds in their skins (pp. 325 335) must be
clean and whole, lest eruptions worse than can come from
without, should break forth from within. Such is the logic
of duties, easier to say than do, which deduces itself by
sanitary necessity from the skin.
The lungs cry aloud for still another public science ; and
as they provide us with air and motion, they claim circum-
stances around us convenient for the supply of these two
demands. Had we no lungs, or lungs that had not begun
to breathe, we might then, so far as these organs are con-
cerned, live like embryos, closely surrounded by walls.
But the lungs require both space and atmosphere. These
are easily procured as a raw material ; we need only walk
abroad to breathe freely enough. Other agencies however
intervene ; the fields are cold and the ground is damp, and
we need shelter as much as space, and warmth as much as
air. Thus the problem arises ; for the world is too big
and too windy for our constant lungs. The first size and
air which we have to manage is that of the house. For
we soon find that we cannot live in nature, but only in
art; and are constrained to carry out the lungs in the
mansion ; to raise to the second power the air which they
420 HEALTH.
contain, and to have an airy room without us, answering
to and supplying the air chamber within us. So too with
the free motion of the lungs ; it requires to be taken up
and continued by a liberality in the dress, and this, by a
space in the house, which admits the corresponding free
motion of the body. Our apartments must be large enough
to enable us to do with our whole frames the duties by
which we live, as the body by its chest is large enough
for the play of its organs (pp. 96 101).
Nay, but the lungs are bigger missionaries still, and
they not only supervise chambers and chimneys, and love
ventilation, but they also stand on the Acropolis of all
towns, and preach their sermons there. The rooms are
but air-cells, and the chimney-shafts bronchial twigs, but
the streets are the branches, and the main streets the tra-
chea, of the outward social lung. Breathing comes down
from the larger into the lesser, and all the wind-pipes
depend upon the greatest tube. Hence the tyranny of this
organic doctrine, which detests individual smallness when
public size is concerned. It is plain that building itself
has its diseases its phthisis pulmonalis, and the rest
which ought to be cured by direct prescriptions from the
state. In the vastness of nature, when our windpipes lead
thither, impurity dies by extreme dilution ; our sordes
perishes in the great sea and the fleckless ether. Nay,
take dirt far enough away from its generators, and it be-
comes the pubulum of some other set of natures, as the
noxious breath of animals is transmuted into life, glossy
green, for the plants. We have, therefore, to make the
lungs continuous with the grand atmosphere. The man-
agement of streets and cities,* and the cultivation of the
* The providing of places of exercise, where pure air and pleasant
sights can be found in or around large towns, has naturally claimed
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE LUNGS. 421
earth's surface, so far improves the expirations of all, that
they grow lighter, and sail away into the blue places
where impurity is at a constant minimum. After which,
no doubt, the prayers of congregations go up more readily
to heaven, because they have no longer to fight a passage
through a putrid roof of vapors overhanging the church,
and of which the steeple is the pillar. They are not
attention. London, Manchester, Liverpool, &c., &c., have their
" people's parks," formed either by private or public munificence.
This is well ; but a park, at best, is somewhat formal and valetudi-
narian. It does not invite walking so much as strolling, which is a
very different tension of mind and muscle. The country adjacent to
the town is more inspiring generally than the park. We cannot but
think that the subject of footpaths belongs to the care of the sanitary
men, and if properly considered would open new energies of health
to the people. Your footpath has a refreshment distinct from either
the park or the highway. But alas ! the footpaths of the kingdom,
and even those around the metropolis, are gradually vanishing under
the encroachments of the proprietors. We propose to the reformers
to have a statutary registration and map constructed at once of all
those still extant ; and to make them an inalienable possession of the
people, which each parish shall at all times be bound to claim with
fines on the mere shewing of their registration. And we would also
have them maintained, within a given number of miles of the towns,
in a passable state during all seasons, winter as well as summer.
This would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good foun-
dation ; whereby also trespassing would be discouraged. We claim no
new right, for the paths belong to the people ; nor could the first ex-
pense of winning them from the seasons be considerable. On the
other hand, this is one of the most ready means of drawing the popu-
lation out into circumstances of vigorous exercise, and enjoyment of
nature. The whole neighbourhood of towns is a public park ready
made, if only the paths were duly administered. We commit the
subject to Prince Albert, as worthy of his patronage, and as one that
would add another lustre to that diadem of national services which he
is determined to wear. The people will never forget the framer of
an Albert Charter, if it make the scenes of our fair islands accessible
to the poor as to the rich.
422 HEALTH.
skunked by vested interests, reminding them of the dead,
or tied like coffins to their flowing robes.
But the psychical office of the lungs is the true and the
major problem. How to carry out every breath through
the society, so that man shall inspire, expire and conspire !
It is the problem of the production of a common under-
standing of what is to be thought and done, of how all
the men at the same windlass shall heave in tune (pp. 122,
123). Truth here is the sky in which all breaths must be
received and purified, and successive aspirations thither
are these second social windpipes. Moreover, the due
sectarizing of mankind is required; unanimity or one-
breathingness in masses ; no scepticism from one man
straitening the breasts of his fellows ; for scepticism is
social asthma, in which the age forgets how to breathe.
The conspiring of the efforts of many to one end, is then a
desideratum for the public health, enjoyment or integrity
of the lungs ; and when it has place, each effort pervades
a society, and 'self-breathing is the most attenuated possi-
ble. But we do not know the length of the public vibration
of the lungs ; the size of any chest when it has the truth
of Man in it ; or the delight of expanding and contracting
for a commonweal. Still, this is the problem.
Our exactions rise as we enter more deeply into the
human frame, to ask it what it wants for a world. We are
almost afraid to interrogate the heart upon the point ; if
we open its mouth, and encourage it, the organ may prove
too voluble for any good purpose. But remembering that
the brain has to speak after it, we shall allow it a voice,
trusting to correction some day from that sequel.
What then is the public health of the heart ? We do
not now speak of that food which allows us to make blood,
further than to say, that the public health of the stomach
lies at the foundation of the rest, and that bread and wine
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE HEART. 423
require to be heartily conceded by the community to its
members, on the principle that the laborer is worthy of his
hire. It does our hearts good to eat the bread of toil, be-
cause it comes charged with the votes of God and man.
But we now canvass the heart in its popular and living
sense, in which there are three points to be noticed, all
bearing upon the question of happiness, that river on which
health with its white streamers floats. A man is healthy
in this sense, 1. When his heart is in his work. 2. When
the relations of the heart are carried out for him. 3.
When there is an atmosphere of cordiality about him, sup-
plying the individual affections from the social, as the
lungs are supplied from the air, or the thought of the
writer from his age. These three things are one in the
proposition, that the man shall exist con amore. It is
indeed useless to treat of this matter, excepting in so far as
it may shew, that the highest relations belong to the
human frame, and come as prophecies out of its study.
This however is motive sufficient, and therefore we dare
go on.
I. A man's heart is the muscle of his muscles, the lion
of his strength. But muscles work together by balances
and cooperations ; in a dance, for instance, there is a mar-
vellous association and change of powers to make the
rhythm which answers to the music and unity of the soul.
If a muscle or a fibre in one leg be out of tune, it will
either be torn, or make a limp of the dance. And when
the main muscle of all stands out, and will not enter the
quadrille, as in ill-assorted tasks, the fire of industry ex-
pires, and legs and arms move languidly enough. The
joint of joints is out of joint, and the inferior limbs are but
crutches on which painful duty carries the cripple about.
On the contrary, in happy moments, when the man and
his work are at one, each muscle comes parallel with the
424 HEALTH.
heart, true to its rank, file and moment, and the strokes of
the man are constant and imaginative as his heart-beats.
Heart and hand then grasp the same thing, and are work-
ing in united pulsations. So much for the first requisite
of carrying out the bosom, namely, that the man's heart
shall be in his work.
II. l The happy carrying out of the heart's relations.
Home, friends, children, country, are the immediate world
of the heart ; and when its love can reckon them over as
its own, its every beat against the breast is answered from
without, and the heart eddies through the society in widen-
ing concentric circulations. The blood is made under the
auspices of feelings which are the sweetest enjoyments
and the dearest bonds, and the body is tinctured with a
stately fire, larger than its individual life. On the con-
trary, where there is no issue for the feelings, or no proper
objects to love, the breast is shut, and probably the senses
absorb the soul, and carry it out to death through their
vicious doors. The disappointments of the heart may
either break it, or wither up countenance and frame, show-
ing the picture of a man whose blood carries no live mo-
tives in its current. Moral freedom is the formula of this
kind of health, which imports that the walls of nature and
circumstance of heart, ribs, manners and laws, shall be
no hindrances to the structural affections of mankind. We
have got now to labor con amore, plus life con amore.
What next ?
III. The supply of heartiness to the heart from without.
Man is a being who lives for ever upon grounds, for ever
breathes atmospheres, sees suns, is gladdened by light and
heat, chafed by electricities, and pulled by magnetisms.
No wonder for all forms are Pan-anthropal. But the
planet which is ordered to accompany him for ever, puts
off its exuviae at every stage, and shews a fresh core or
PUBLIC HEALTH OE THE HEART. 425
surface. The heart-man does not live on mineral, but on
social grounds, breathes not airs but thoughts, is warmed
by blood heat, or affection, and drawn by living magnet-
ism, which is love. And this set of circumstances is a
true universe which environs us, and whence we get life
ab extra, as we get nature from the world. According to
the constitution then of the social world, is the supply of
the air, sunshine and waters of our existence, and we can
no more live out of the one world than out of the other.
As we have all from nature being nature's subjects, so we
have all from life as we are the subjects of life ; ourselves
alone being free, a germ of manhood plunged through and
into all things, to grow through, and to outgrow, the more
limited planets. When man is all in all in the secondary
sense, he will be in the image and likeness of God, who is
all in all in the primary. The fitness of society to every
man, is the condition of this last demand of the heart for
health. It is a mad claim : worse perhaps than that of
those sanitary reformers who would grasp the winds and
wash them clean, sweeten Leeds and purify Sierra Leone,
abolish ague or typhus from the rural districts, or drunken-
ness from all classes. We believe however that it is only
the same problem as theirs, but stated for a very exacting
organ, the heart.
How shall any of this be secured? If we cannot ma-
nage common nature, and lead it as health into our dwell-
ings, how can we sweeten this vast and terrible life, which
gives ajud takes our moral diseases, and whistles its come-
dies through our ruined affections ; which accepts the pol-
lutions of bad hearts, and the wail of broken ones, and
mixes them' in its columns to press us more heavily into
the kingdom of pain ? All that we can say in reply is,
that the heart must deserve its universe before it gets it ;
the present world is the fatal logic of its diseases, the
426 HEALTH.
other, which we have described, must be the logic of its
healths. It is an untieable knot, excepting on the prin-
ciple of a religious alteration of man, or a Deus intersit.
For if already the community depends on the individual,
and vice versd, then they are equated, and without the in-
tervention of some third power, there is no hope of im-
provement. But still, under the guidance of God, both
the man and the society step out of the fatal circle, and
acquire new duties again : and hence we cannot doubt that
in the public cause the community must be worked upon
by communal means, and the individual by private means,
and that both these will be reformatory, entering into the
spirit of Providence.
But let us reassert our claim to be map-makers, and
not travellers or colonizers". It is allowable to exhibit an
organic geography, like the physical, though on a glance
at the result, it is seen to be rather a mighty blank of
desiderata than a habitable globe. Here, we say, are ten
thousand square leagues on which no grass grows, no rain
falls, whence no rivers issue, where the oases have dangers
of their own, and where a few sparse lions haunt with hor-
rible hunger the white bones of old camels and travellers.
Here are regions where man's greatest works and his
smallest pests, fleas and pyramids, come together. Here
are the verdurous shores of pestilence, inviting as sin,
apples of Sodom whose rind is half a continent. Here are
the chilblains of the frozen zones, which cool down the
love of the sun to a senile moonlight and night-heat for
the poles as they creak and grind in their ice. Here are
the islands where elemental anger begins, and infant hur-
ricanes spin their tops. So much for the inhuman map,
and then for the human. Here are the savages, and here
the barbarians ; here man is in the fulness of his present
stature, in the manufacturing heaven of Manchester, in the
THE SOCIAL MAP. 427
Arcady of Ireland, or in the holy cities of Paris and
London. If the map has no other purpose, it shews that
the world is still round, vast and habitable ; capable of
intercommunication ; it enlarges our ideas of the field that
duty has before it. In defect of maps founded on the
spherical whole, the ancients regarded the tropics as mys-
tical fiery lands where man could not live ; and in defect
of the psychical map, we are become afraid, not without
a shew of prudence, of the richest heats of the heart,
which we regard as the realm of phantasmagoria and
monsters. Yet if tigers and snakes abound there, men
also may be found ; moreover the sugars and spices and
gold of both kinds, moral as well as physical, can come
from no other than those sunniest rings.
But in the meantime we are sure of one thing, that man
must work at his post, and not desert it, if he is to find
health for his heart. Want fools us, unless we drive it
through our daily works. Present circumstance is the top
of desert, and the means of happiness ; and it is in the
reformation of our own fields, and no others, that our
future is to come. The statesman does not emigrate to
carry out his plans. And so, in like manner, it is not new
but old industry that is to become attractive, by a new
heart given by heaven during fair toil : it is not altered
social relations that will make us contented, but a better
love in those which exist ; and it is not a new world of
men that we expect, but a conversion of the old to the
types of the commandments. The heart, as we have stated
it, prophesies how newly, under these circumstances, all
things will appear.
We now pass on to the public health of the brain, which
has two parts ; firstly, the mental and spiritual culture of
the time, and secondly, the national education.
With respect to the first point, or culture, it embraces
428 HEALTH.
the progressive state of religious and other knowledge, but
under a form established and recognized by Government
for the time being. The beginning of it is an established
church, under which comes an established or sanctioned
literature, to give the tone to the secular thought of the
year. Private churches and literatures may exist in any
numbers, and they belong to the department of the freedom
or private health of the brain ; but over them, in the order
of things, there ought to be public encouragement of the
admitted best among them, both to gain a temporary rule
of thinking, and to stimulate the individual to the greatest
possible degree. A Government loses its chief handle
when it ceases to dispense the prizes of thought ; it cedes
the courage with which dissoluteness of mind and morals is
to be repressed, when it no longer grasps the chief litera-
ture of an age. The thing to be guarded against is the
supposition, that the highest reach of thought can ever
come under patronage at the time of its attainment ; that
is not the point sought ; it is the best average which alone
any state machinery can be expected to select. The prizes
of a state will be the leading points by which the next
ages decide upon its own condition ; and progress will be
marked chiefly by the successive adoption of works and
thoughts which have been rejected, but are at length re-
ceived. Nevertheless, in this department, religion must
ever claim the first place ; that is to say, the Christian
religion through the Bible ; and we regard it as a funda-
mental to take no thought of infidelities in the council-
chambers of culture, but to proceed as if they did not exist.
Let them have their private range, according to the free-
dom of the age ; still, they can enter into no general plan,
but must be discouraged, though not violated, by the
state. By means of this laudable supervision, the govern-
ments of free nations will begin to operate upon the general
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE BRAIN. 429
thought, and with various success, according to their own
wisdom, will stimulate knowledge, both natural and divine.
Much, indeed, is done in this respect already, by numerous
corporations addicted to special walks of art and science ;
but it remains to crown the heights of the possibility by a
State adoption of what, from time to time, seems the best.
It will be borne in mind that we recognize two modes
in all these fields, the private, and the public. We do
not desire that the one should usurp the place of the other,
or that freedom should be lost by any direct action of
government upon matters not strictly required by the
commonwealth. No censorships of the press are needed :
the laurel given from above is a more effectual means of
command than any leg-locks which absolutism has devised.
And where public opinion presses, as in England, the
average best men of thought and art will be the prize-men
of their year or decade ; and more could not be expected.
Those who are before the age, can wait until their age
arrives.
We must, however, guard against the supposition, that
one establishment will have anything to do with the choice
of another, or that the clergy of the church will nominate
the clergy of literature. On the contrary, all these public
organs must spring directly from the head of the common-
wealth, or they will not possess their own souls, or be
taken as they are found. In the contrariety between the
best products of an age, lies often the balance and safety
of the state ; and the church and literature will never be
more mutually corrective than when they meet with the
rights of an equal origin around the person of the supreme
magistrate. Hence in treating of the second point, or
national education, we are in nowise tied to the order of
the first, or cultnre ; but we begin our course afresh with
existing possibilities. It is as in cultivating an estate, we
430 HEALTH.
offer prizes for the best fruits, vegetables and stock ; and
by that means, we hope to stimulate all the labors of the
various tenants ; but when we come to feed our people, we
can only give to each the best that can be had ; and if
their stomachs are full of fancies and indigestions, we must
take them at their word, and supply them with such food
as they desire. The point however is, that the state is
bound to give them mental food, and this, by a system,
not of coercions, but of encouragements. And if like
Hindoo castes, they cannot eat anything that has been
touched by those of another sect, this, too, must be re-
spected ; yet not so as to render the main object impossi-
ble. The first thing is, to make the knowledge so general
and public, that no complaint shall arise from the jealous
persons, that the waters shall not come through our
neighbours' houses, but in pipes down the middle of the
streets. The people will then feel that this is knowledge
direct from the reservoir of the age, and that if it is not
good, they cannot complain of it. We therefore regard
secular education as the only public education which is
possible ; and the public schoolmasters consequently as a
clericy of which the Queen is the head, and which must
emanate, coequally with the church itself, from the pro-
gressive State.
But the great brain-builder is action, or industry directed
by knowledge ; for real doctrine is the brilliance of good
works. The encouragement of action is therefore a depart-
ment of public health, and indeed the chiefest of all. This
occurs by the stimulation of examples, great pieces of art,
or model actions ; and the prizes of the workers have no
proper source, lower than the hand which grasps the scep-
tre. For if the cradles of the land hold the dew which is
ascending into private existence, the throne, or mountain
of the State, is the altitude whence the public rivers must
PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE MUSCLES. 431
flow. The clergy of industry, which is God's church in
the muscles, in England, in 1851, receive their first or-
dination. It is fortunate that we write in a year when
the throne is the centre of the arts : when a great prince,
faithful to the height where Providence sets him, dispenses
the provocatives of new achievements to bless the nations
of the earth ; when private selfishness and laissez faire
have been brought to their knees, and old inactions have
yielded under a royal lash of shame. It is mere desert
to say, that ALBERT is the victor in this social battle,
and that the standard which he has planted in his crystal
camp will not be plucked down again, because it belongs
to the nature of man to take the fire of his industry from
his chiefs.
The conception of public health implies the reconstruc-
tion of all the circumstances with which the organism is
surrounded, upon the model of its natural and spiritual
wants, and the presumption is, that many diseases and
vices will die which circumstances, and not the choice of
individuals, have engendered. This result itself, however,
can only run pari passu with the increase of private virtue,
and hence, as we said before, the throne to which the
whole problem perpetually refers itself, is the regeneration
of man. After any given circumstantial operation has
been effected, an intractable mass of evil will still be left,
which requires new circumstances of cure, originated by
new physicians of good. Thus the private circulates into
the public, and vice versa, and to dream of any Owenite
reform, is to postulate a state which is desirable, but by
that means, unattainable. The "best possible circum-
stances" mean the best possible brain and heart, sent by
God to the occasion. But again, on the other hand, with-
out new circumstances there is no new hope for man.
Were it worth while (which it is not) we might follow
432 HEALTH.
out the other organs in their exactions j and group the
production of man around the generative parts ; his first
endowments around the organs of the senses ; and so forth.
But enough has now been said, to shew that the human
frame is a natural method of thought, even in the social
and political spheres. Indeed, to the eye of faith it is a
great sanitary prophecy, unfilled by the mind, as the world
is unfilled by the race. And in this respect also it is an
urgence of immortality. For health, or the whole inhabi-
tation of man in the body and the world, is an expansion
and a deed so great, that no time can exhaust it, or work
out any final equation of the correspondence : the fitting
may go on for ever, not for the race alone, but for each indi-
vidual. We repeat also that each end of the chain of
health is contagious in a universal sense ; that a renewed
man and society are not only consciously, but organically
also, working for the perfection of every climate, for the
unfreezing of every ice-lock, for the fertilization of every
soil ; for the extinction of monsters and the increment of
creations; and for the birth of more men, and new men,
who come as cultivators in their seasons. The greatest
problems (pp. 271, 272, 370) are not intangible ; but it is
ordained that our little frames shall give nature the signals
of change, and ring the bells of new eras.
This body corporeal then, when the light is set shining
through it, projects into our space new social and political
bodies, one after another; the desiderata of health call
about them the planets of health, and geography and as-
tronomy are its satellites. It is none of our doing that the
subject has this shape; the sanitary reformers have to
answer for it ; for it is they that have shewn, in their first
days of existence, that man, in his body equally as in his
brain, is by nature a factory of Utopias.
In the meantime, the community of things is proved by
TRADITIONAL MEDICINE. 433
evil, if not by good ; and in bringing this to light, the
pioneers of health have already great merits. They have
shewn that nothing is lost, but that disease springs from
neglected social duties. The map of dirtiness is also the
map of disease ; the map of intemperance, ditto ; the map
of pauperism, ditto. They have afforded new force to the
truth, that all things are in the effort to be promoted into
man. Swamps and ditches, in their new rank and honors,
are fevers, choleras, and the like. If we have not dwelt
upon these subjects more in detail, it is because our voca-
tion here leads us to illustrate organization, as a means of
opening the mind itself by a just education. But for all
present purposes, we concede the palm of usefulness to
these brave sanitary enquirers.
So much for the curing of societies, which the public-
health-doctors have undertaken to superintend : we now
come to medicine in the more ordinary sense, as it proffers
aid to individuals in their maladies, according to certain
rules and methods, new and old.
The earth appears to be netted over with a traditional
healing power ; for some knowledge of herbs and simples
belongs perhaps to every race, to enable it to apply the
products of the soil to the cure of its own immediate dis-
tresses. As each land has its national music, and in some
countries almost every dale has its melodies, so each seems
also to have its national medicine, derived from immemorial
times. How the places came by the knowledge is not
often asked. We cannot but think that in this fact also,
we have traces of an ancient state of man of which history
has not brought us the records. If in the earliest national
myths there be evidence of a condition in which the facul-
ties and imaginations were more full of tact and grasp than
now ; if the first bards loved, and were loved by, nature,
u
434 HEALTH.
with a fondling intimacy to which we are strangers, there
is reason to suppose that this intimacy extended to every
walk of life, and that there was a primitive shine of know-
ledge anticipating the arts and sciences, and in which me-
dicine, and the skill of herbs, would partake. If newness
of powers is still so great a gift, that infancy is a delight
through the livelong day because the world is fresh and
sense unworn, what must have been the newness of those
first senses which opened upon the morning of time ? And
if delight is the bed of genius, what must have been the
brightness of the insights that went penetrating forth from
the eyes of the children of happiness in the beginning?
The word happiness, in its human propriety, contains it
all. Such races would happen on the needful laws of the
world, and its harmonies with their frames, and when the
first stings of sin tore them with their first physical pangs,
they would aim at cunning evasions of consequences by
arts and herbs with which they had been familiar under
other auspices. The speed of their reasons would be like
revelations compared to the slowness of ours. And thus
if we choose to call the mythologies, revelations, we must
also call medicine by the same name, so far as it has come
down from the original stem. The thought of harmony
coiToborates this view. For primeval man was in harmony
Avith his circumstances, and his mind had a fair start : he
had his own native version of physiologies, botanies and
the rest, though unlike ours ; and when he swerved to our
tree of knowledge, his child-genius, like all natural things,
could only desert him by degrees. Doubtless it hovered
over him, until it created for him the heads of that obser-
vation which is still traditive with man.
There is another version of this, but it is hardly worth
our notice : criticism, as the art of picking things to pieces,
is its parent. For they say that man was at first a savage
TRADITIONAL MEDICINE. 435
(or according to learned Vestiges, an ape), who by dint of
a toilette of some thousands of years before the mirror of
philosophy, has "titivated" himself into civilization. This
contradicts experience. The savages* are not infantile
but senile races, with no loins left ; they tend not to pro-
creation, but extinction. They have no power of imitating
the models of their betters, but where the white man comes
they die out. If the Creator had planted the earth with
such, he would have been like a Colonial Secretary peo-
pling a new continent with scum. Pretty babes these to
have appeared so soon after the morning stars congratula-
tively sung together and the sons of God shouted for joy !
The tradition of such a crew of darkness must have been a
Botany Bay and Norfolk Island reeking through all myth
and song : the arts and sciences must have smelt like dogs
and monkies from these kennels. Let alone Eden, I do not
see where Egypt and Babylon could have come from, if
skulking aborigines, and hide-dried cannibals eating their
own heads off, had been our Adams. Long before this,
not a baby would have been left to hope, but the human
form, like a boat launched with a hole in its bottom, would
have foundered on the brink of the year 1. It is according
to all analogies, to stick to the paradise of Genesis, which
gives a divine and redundant youth to man where he so
wanted it, that otherwise no human race could have grown
up. And if we know not how to reconcile every petty
circumstance to this piece of God's common sense, let us
know that it is only because our winter cannot comprehend
the spring in which His creations blossom : and let us
* We do not reckon the negro races as savages ; they are evidently
still infantine, capable of propagation and education : nay, capable of
passive conquest, by the very destinies which have enslaved them, and
which are ensuring to their posterity many spacious kingdoms on the
face of the earth.
u2
436 HEALTH.
wait until the second human spring enables us better to com-
mune with the first. We can easily receive any science,
without letting it meddle with the divine proprieties.
As then it is so much easier to fall than to rise, we have
first to chronicle the descent of medicine from old times,
when the race, like a woman's heart, had feeling and in-
sight full, and when also the schools of healing originated,
in the persons of those who in the well-distributed huma-
nity had greater gifts in this kind than their fellows.
These were the gods, from which medicine was said to be
descended, and whose powers might well appear to be
miraculous to their successors, who had lost the insight
upon which the tutum, citum and jucundum of healing
depends.
But we do not profess to sketch the history of this inte-
resting subject ; it is sufficient to know, that there are two
great classes of healers, namely, 1. The medical schools,
and their disciples; and, 2. The people itself as a deposi-
tary of mere traditive medicine. With respect to the
schools, they also contain two elements ; in the first place,
their own traditional lore, the history of medicine gradu-
ally purifying itself towards modern science ; and in the
second, the cumulative experience and induction of that
science itself. As for the first of these elements, it has
grown weaker and weaker with each generation, so that
one might say that each age of doctors never had a grand-
father ; the family likeness vanishes more and more out of
the race. Orthodox medicine in this century is a substi-
tution and not a continuation of the science of the last : it
has no right to be offended with upstarts, for it is not more
than fifty years since itself arose out of the crucibles and
dissecting rooms. In a word, it has many experiments,
but almost no traditions. Each fresh version of our Phar-
macopoeia carefully weeds out old simples, and fills their
THE MEDICAL SCHOOLS. 437
I
places with chemicals, exterminating this and that to
make room for the last new compounds.
With regard to the second, or scientific element, we do
not find that it has placed physic upon any basis but that
of experimentation ; and that, not integral, but chemical
experimentation. If the body were a pure acid, or alkali,
housing nothing but affinities, it could hardly be more
industriously tested by all the new products of the labora-
tory, to see what they will do with it. And when the
perilous experiments have been made, no law comes out
of them, excepting that mankind, u having suffered many
things of many physicians, and spent all, and being rather
worse than better," is wearied in the end and worn out in
the process. This is to be expected, where the most acrid
substances which art can wring from nature, are put in large
quantities into the living frame, on nothing more than an
experimental hope. It is furthermore to be expected from
the course which physiology has taken in the rearing and
breeding of medical men. For it teaches them to think
chemically of man himself; to imagine him not as a human
being with a spirit inside, but as a plaster- statue of nucle-
ated cells, whose life is manifested in composition and de-
composition. There can be no common sense in treatment,
where thought wanders into this chaos of petty prisons :
indeed one feels that if man is such a compost, blue pills
and black draughts are fit stuff, not only to medicine, but
to feed him. In the meantime, however, what becomes of
the treatment of disease ?
The consequences of this system, in which nearly all
but the chemical side is neglected, have been seen by its
orthodox adherents, and if we remember aright there is
even a school calling itself " Young Physic," which recog-
nizes the probability that medicine does more harm than
good, and that the secret of the superior success of parties
438 HEALTH.
to be mentioned presently, depends upon their good fortune
in "doing nothing." This protestantism of theirs de-
mands a few words from us, for really the thought occurs,
Whether, experimentally, we know how soon diseases
would cure themselves, if they were left to nature ? No
observations have been made upon sick people visited by
the physician, who has made up his mind to have nothing
to do with them, but only to use his grey eyes.
It is a mistake to think that there is such a thing as the
natural history of disease ; it has none but a human history
either benignant or terrible. Man as he lies stretched
on his pallet, is still both a soul and a body ; he does not
grow, or shew, like insensate wood or bark, in any direc-
tion. If you are there to heal him, he takes good out of
your frame, sympathy and skill, even though you pour
bad out of your bottles ; he feels the warmth of a brother,
present as the envoy of one of the arts of heaven. And if
you give placebos, you are still acting upon him by the in-
evitable medication of your person. But if he find you at
his bedside, to watch him for cold experiments' sake, that
his life, death, or throes may figure in your statistics, do
not suppose that you are innocuous, for you are a potent
poisonous drug, calling forth sorrow, despair, fear, and
other destroyers, and aggravating the sensibilities of his
organs. The best feeling that you can cause tinder these
circumstances, is indignation, which, as it rouses the life,
may be remedial in your teeth. But there is an absurdity
involved in the question, What would be the course of
disease if left to itself, because it never can be left to itself
without a breach of manhood ; and even if it occurred on a
desert island, the mind of the sufferer would play an im-
portant part in determining the illness towards either death
or recovery. The brutes know better than to resign them-
selves to doing nothing under natural afflictions : they
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISEASE. 439
lick their sores, and seek their herbs ; and the domestic
animals bring their sorrows of this kind to man, and as-
sume a kind of patience under the treatment that he enjoins.
The record of cases requiring care, and yet to which no
care was given, would constitute, so far as it could exist,
the unnatural and inhuman history of disease.
We therefore reckon that any medical practice which
has had a few precedents to correct it, is better than that
profession of nothing, to which some of our brethren have
directed their hopes. Yet it is equally true that many
cases would have recovered better by simple watching, and
the application of a few obvious means mostly suggested
by the patient's feelings, than where a large apparatus of
drugs has been employed. Nevertheless, in every social
state, the physician, in some form or other, is indispen-
sable, whether he be called priest, magician, friend,
mother, or by whatever name that has authority over our
mind and matter.
But after all there is great necessity to do nothing re-
latively to what has been done ; for we have been on a
wrong track, and must change it ; and by a common law
of our nature, the new will seem nothing to the old, so
long as the old has not new eyes to see it. Buried, as the
existing medicine is, among fuming acids, sharp stimuli,
chemicals and caustics, it cannot believe in the power of
gentleness, or the first smallness of good causes. Widely
extended, though it be, we must pass it by ; but not with-
out the recognition, that it is the chaotic mother of children
fairer than itself, and on their account deserves to be re-
spected. But now that these have come, it only keeps
them out of their fortunes by lingering too long above
ground, and cumbering the earth with its age and in-
firmities.
The first considerable child which it has born, is that
440 HEALTH.
science which HAHNEMANN delivered we mean HOMEO-
PATHY, or the treatment of " likes by likes," which was a
legitimate fruit of the previous drug medication. For in
the whole, the idea of medicine itself is homoeopathic ; it
does not give health-producing agents to engender health,
but poisons which would issue in disease : it is, therefore,
the general application of the law, by which like is to be
cured by like. It is in the particulars that medicine does
not recognize the application of the Hahnemannian formula ;
and thence, whenever it comes into details, it is in contra-
diction with its own idea. It is homeopathic in theory,
and allopathic in application a house divided against it-
self. And in the matter of doses, it is subject to the like
remarks ; for no one gives physic in the same quantities
as food, but a few grains of calomel, or a few fractions of
a grain of arsenic, are considered sufficient even by " he-
roic practitioners" of the old school. Why is this, but
that there is a working in these poisons, which takes them
out of the category of the ordinary materials which we put
into our mouths ? And if a grain will produce results upon
a man of fourteen stone weight, where is the absurdity to
end, without experiment, which may choose to shew that
the millionth or decillionth of a grain will have even better
results ? I marvel how men who lift fourteen stone by the
equipoise of a skilful grain, can sneer at other men who
do the same nice balance by incalculably lesser weights.
For it is evident that all medicine is on this railway of
smallness, and is more perfect and harmless for every
fresh terminus that it reaches. If the allopathists were
accustomed to give calomel porridges, their wrath against
small doses would be consistent ; but when they are them-
selves reduced to grains, why should they cavil at other
healers, who, by experiment, have found out the value of
grains of grains.
HOMCEOPATHY. 441
It was Hahneinann to whom all the world is indebted
for the scientific deepening of medicine in both these fields.
He, first of men, saw, that if poison in genere is given to
disease in genere, the aim will be more neatly hit if poison
in particulari be administered to disease in particulari.
This conception of his, involved the working of a very pe-
culiar " science of correspondences " between the effects of
drugs and the symptoms of diseases, so as to discover ex-
actly what poisons, and what order of them, would answer
to the symptoms and flux of special maladies. In the
ideal of this great sportsman, each shot in the gun was
cognizant of its own part of the prey, and the line of sight
was the science which brought poison level with disease.
May we not extend the metaphor, and say, that man in
sickness is like two men, each wrestling with the other ;
and that the physician comes to shoot the worser man to
death, without a grain of the charge touching the better :
in this case, the homoeopathic dose will not hit the strug-
gling health, because the shot can wound nothing but
disease ; whereas the allopathic bullet, having no scientific
specialty in its projection, generally riddles both the men,
and leaves mere death or its antecedents on the field.
The matter of doses depends upon the fineness of the
aim. In everything there is a punctum saliens so small,
that if we could find it out, a pin's point would cover it
as with a sky. What is the meaning of that invisible
world which is especially versed about organization, if
there be not forces and substances whose minuteness ex-
cludes them from our vision ? We have not to batter the
human body to pieces in order to destroy it, but an artistic
prick a bare bodkin under the fifth rib, lets out the life
entire. Nay, had we neater skill of deadliness, a word
would do it. The sum of force brought to bear depends
upon precision, and a single shot true to its aim, or at
u 3
442 HEALTH.
most a succession of a few shots, would terminate any bat-
tle that ever was fought, by picking off the chiefs. If
our gunnery be unscientific, the two armies must pound
each other, until chance produces the effects of science,
by hitting the leaders ; and in this case a prodigious ex-
penditure of ammunition may be requisite ; but when the
balls are charmed, a handful will finish a war. It is not
fair to count weight of metal when science is on the one
side, and brute stuff on the other; or to suppose that there
is any parallel of well- skilled smallness with ignorance of
the most portentous size. The allopathic school is there-
fore wrong in supposing that our "littles" are the fractions
of their " mickles ;" the exactness of aim, in giving the
former a new direction, takes them out of all comparison
with the unwieldy stones which the orthodox throw from
their catapults.
But again, there is another consideration. Fact shews
that the attenuation of medicines may go on to such a
point, and yet their curative properties be preserved, nay,
heightened, that we are obliged to desert the hypothesis
of their material action, and to presume that they take
rank as dynamical things. A drop of aconite may be put
into a glass of spirit, a drop of this latter into another
glass of spirit, and so on, to the hundredth or the thou-
sandth time, and still the aconite-property shall be availr
able for cure. Here then we enter another field, and deal
with the spirits of things, which are their potential forms,
gradually refining massy drugs, until they are likened to
those sightless agents which we know to be the roots of
nature, and feel as the most powerful in ourselves. How
can such delicate monitors be looked at from the old point
of view, or assimilated to the violence that is exercised
by materialistic physic ? If the latter would stir the man,
it does it by as much main force as it dares to use ; whereas
HOMOEOPATHY. 443
the former moves him by a word, through the affinities
and likings of his organization.*
It would be curious to consider how it is that medicinal
substances so attenuated are still true to themselves, and
exert their properties upon the body ; for the fact is beyond
question. Although we cannot resolve this enigma, yet
there are analogies which somewhat domesticate it in our
understandings. In the body, for instance, a grain of any
substance, or a spot of any feeling, is participatively pre-
sent throughout ; a dose of calomel influences the frame,
and if we may use the expression, calomelizes it ; the
wound inflicted by a needle point gives a sensation to the
man, or hurts the great body itself. It is not that the
agent is materially everywhere ; but the patient is set in
the attitude of the effect, and feels it universally. We
may therefore look on organisms as universes that vibrate
from one end to the other with every force that assails
them ; and thus in their own way become the magnitudes
* There is something unfair in the manner in which the public cri-
ticises cases that do not recover under homoeopathic treatment. None
of our systems will cure every disorder. Nor is it to be expected
that an art which is in its infancy, can do more than greatly surpass in
safety and virtue the Hippocratic medicine of 2,000 years' standing.
Yet, whenever a death occurs under homoeopathy, the neighborhood
argues and acts as though homoeopathy had invented death, which was
a phenomenon unknown until Hahnemann brought it from the infernal
regions ! Why ! the bills of mortality since Hippocrates are the bills
of allopathy. And in most cases, let the worst that can occur, it is
no worse, and no more, than happens daily under that practice. But
if the patient dies under allopathy, he dies by precedent, and there
is no responsibility ; if homoeopathy is at his bedside, he departs
unsanctioned, and the survivors have to answer for him to public
opinion. This must be borne until the battle is further fought, and
those who are not prepared to endure it had better not dabble in
homoeopathy.
444 HEALTH.
and propagations of the force. This is plainly shewn in
contagions, which engrafted upon the smallest part of the
body at first, in the next place run morbidly through it,
and ferment the frame into a new but greater vesicle of a
morbid kind; after which the social propagation begins,
and a continent may be infected from that first grain of
disease, thus shaken and dynamized in human body after
human body, and not diminished but aggravated by its
propagation. In this we have a clear image of the dyna-
mization of medicinal powers, which received in any vehi-
cle (e. g., alcohol), and properly vibrated, seem to convert
it into their own likeness, just as if it were an organism
capable of transmission of effects or community of feelings.
But let our explanation stand for no more than it is worth,
and be considered as a word to those only who like to see,
not merely that the fact is so, but that besides being true,
it is also not improbable.
Whatever be the hypothesis of the properties of drugs
in infinitesimal doses, the fact remains the same, and
Hahnemann has the credit of testing pharmaceutical sub-
stances with a rigor of which his predecessors had no con-
ception. The vagueness of medical practice disgusted him,
offending intellect and conscience alike, and for a time he
retired from a profession in which he had so little faith.
His own discovery that like is to be cured by like then
came forth, and by an easy process the whole strangeness
of homoaopathy developed itself. The diminution of the
doses took place by degrees along a road of linked facts,
in which there was little room for fallacy : there is no case
in inductive science in which experiment was more minutely
perfect. Cures followed, and have ever since followed, on
a scale to which the orthodox medicine was a stranger :
the statistics of homoeopathy, taken in Government hospi-
tals, and under military strictness, shew a lessened mor-
HOMOEOPATHY. 445
tality as compared with the tables of its rival. And
wherever it is fairly practised, the same average results
occur ; so that in spite of much opposition, it spreads from
the healed to the sick, and the rumor of its beneficence is
stronger with a sensible public than the diatribes of a very
active and influential profession arrayed against it.
The practical blessings of the New Medicine are depen-
dent, as we conceive, firstly upon the science of correspond-
ence, which bringing poison and disease together with a
completer fitness, poisons the disease, and kills it ; and
secondly, upon the smallness of the doses, or we would
rather say, the use of the spirit and not the body of the
drugs ; which use gains its cause by no destruction of our
tissues, but by giving the body an attitude that neutralizes
the disease, and then itself ceases after a certain duration
of effects. Drugs given in the latter way are more like
ideas than material bodies, and when they have served
their purpose, they either vanish of themselves, or may be
countermanded by their appropriate antidotes.
I suppose it is impossible to overrate the consequences
of Hahnemann's life. Even the negative results are vast
for our future well-being. How different, for example,
from the pale faces that we note in every street, will be
those which belong some day to undrugged generations !
What vigor may we not expect from the later posterities
of those who have not hurt mind and body by supping on
material poisons ? How much better those childhoods will
be, whose parents and grandparents have neither been bled
nor salivated secundum artem, but who have kept their
own current in their veins, and given it entire to their
race ? And on the positive side, what another gain it will
be, when hereditary maladies begin to be displaced, and
the crust that hides man drops down from his skin by
degrees ! What virtues may we not expect, when with all
446 HEALTH.
higher helps to good, the body itself seconds the monitions
of the soul ! What talents also, and what happiness, when
the frame is set in parallelism with the order of things !
For though we do not attribute everything to body, yet a
sound body has consequences which make it needful to
speculate upon it in all views that concern the advance-
ment of our species.
On the theoretical side, Hahnemann has approximated
drug-healing to the pure sciences ; and by instituting
experiments on the healthy body, he has expanded the
properties of each medicine to a human form of symptoms,
naturally, by that form, applicable to man. I think of
medicines now as curative personalities, who take our shape
upon them to battle in us with our ills. The testing of
their characters is also capable of being carried to the
utmost exactitude ; for drugs maybe "proved" upon many
persons in different places and at different times, and their
symptoms curtailed, sifted, and if we may use the phrase,
pared and sculptured down, until only their essential and
nude form is left. When we get these heroes on their feet,
they, and not their discoverers, will be the great men of
an ever-young physic.
It is hard to imagine how any profession can disregard
the service that Hahnemann has begun, in the constitution
of a rational pharmacopoeia. When we look to what was
known of medicinal properties before his time, and then
compare it with the state in which he left the subject, the
difference is like that between light and darkness. No one
had imagined that each drug ran through the frame, and
evoked fresh symptoms from organ after organ ; nor indeed
without the similia similibus curantur would any applica-
tion come from the fact. But it is an attestation of that for-
mula, that it leads to a knowledge of drugs infinitely special
and diversified compared with the science that preceded it.
HOMOEOPATHY. 447
The number of superstitions also that Hahnemann slew,
entitles him to the gratitude of all those who dislike to be
frightened by unreal shapes which a strong man can walk
through. He made the true experiment of doing relatively
nothing in medicine (p. 438), and found that it was abun-
dantly successful and humane. Purgatives were one nasty
superstition which he banished. Bleeding was another of
these vampires. Long before we met with homeopathy,
we wondered why we bled our patients in inflammations,
according to the common practice, when yet the attack
struck in a moment, and there was no more blood in the
body after than before it occurred ; and we thought that it
was but a wrong distribution which caused this rapid assault
upon life, and not a plethora of blood ; and that skill would
lie, not in butchering the disease, but in restoring the
harmony which was lost. We had seen some of our best
beloved friends sacrificed to the murderous lancet, and our's
was the hand which let out their life, though under the
legalizing sanction of the most accredited physicians.
Would that we could recal the dead ; but they sleep well !
Who has not had similar experiences ? And who, in the
long run, will not reproach himself, if he does not accede
in an inquiring spirit to the New Medicine, which has
availed to exorcise this host of killing superstitions ?
Among the other benefits of homoeopathy, we reckon
this also that it tends to make us think more worthily of
our bodies. I defy any man to be a physiologist who is
in the habit of bleeding, purging, and poisoning the human
frame. The body abhors him, and dies rather than tell
him its secrets. What idea can a man have of life, if he
is accustomed to take blood, which is the soul's house, in
pint basins from the frame ; and to think that he is doing
nothing extraordinary ? What notion of living cause and
effect can any one entertain, if he deems that such an
448 HEALTH.
abstraction of our essences can ever be recovered from so
long as we are on this side the grave ? What imagination
can be felt of the music of man, by one who orders purga-
tive pills pro re nata to play upon our intestine strings, in
the delusion that their operation is temporary, and confined
to the first effects. I see in the whole of physiological
science the large written evidence of these stupid san-
guinary methods ; the doctrine has followed the works
with a vengeance, and the science has been purged and
bled away until nothing is left but chemical dust on the
one hand, or germ-cells on the other. This has gone so
far that it is doubtful now, whether the medical profession
has any further power of pursuing human physiology ;
doubtful whether that great knowledge must not pass to
the laity and the gentiles, and become a non-medical
science. Certainly, the hands that have least been crim-
soned in the bowels of the living man, seem by nature most
fit to receive his tender and amazing secrets.
Another department also is that of mental effects, in
which homoeopathy stands preeminent. If each drug
evokes symptoms throughout the body, it also affects the
mind wherever it touches the organs ; and hence the new
pharmacopoeia groups around it mental and moral states so
far as they depend upon the body. In this respect homoe-
opathy opens a field which was untouched before, and in-
cludes the healing of moods, minds and tempers under the
action of medicines. How valuable this is as an adjunct
of education, will suggest itself at once to all fathers and
mothers ; and how new a power it is, those best know who
have become converts to homoeopathy after practising the
old system of medicine.
It is, however, in the eradication of chronic diseases and
hereditary taints, that homoeopathy promises perhaps the
greatest of its benefits. On this subject the views of Hah-
HOJ1CEOPATHY. 449
nemaim deserve the attention of philanthropists of every
degree, whilst at the same time they are highly interesting
to the medical philosopher. Nay, there is a touch of the
sublime about them, such as only comes into the scientific
spirit in its happiest moods. As Hahnemann teaches us
of the trine contagions that have come down with man
from early days, we seem to hear echos of every mythos
that has struck us with significance before, from the Par-
see dualism of Ahriman and Ormuzd, to the blue-white
Hela of Scandinavian faith ; nay also we are let into the
understrata of that evil which throws out sulphurs and
geysers in the human and inhuman worlds : and we cease
to wonder that no cure comes, when the pit of disease is so
deep. What a chasteness of genius too in Hahnemann,
that instead of swerving to speculation, he forced these
conceptions through the outlets of his method of cure, and
thought nothing sacred enough for his attention, but the
recovery of the body from its ancient pests. If there be
such a thing as bodily disease distinct from psychical,
then he was right in his devotion, and is rewarded already
in contributing to the whole sanity of his kind.
In a strictly medical point of view, the Hahnemannian
theory of chronic disease comports with principles which
are beginning to be admitted on all hands. The multipli-
city of diseases and epidemics is suspected to be the mask
of a unity of which so-called distinct maladies are but
symptoms ; just as on a large range, different languages
are but dialects of some common stem. Whether Hahne-
mann has hit the central forms of malady of which the rest
are the procession, it would be presumptuous in us to say ;
but at least he has put us upon the search, and indicated
that the confirmation of what he has deemed, or the sug-
gestion of something truer, will grow, as his own views
did, out of the bosom of practical healing.
450 HEALTH.
Moreover, his science of medicines has the advantage of
springing from both the roots of the past (p. 436), for as
we said before, it germinated from the scholastic side ;
and as it grew, it took in, and retains, the traditional
medicine which is found among the people. In fact, the
homoeopathic law gives specific justification of the popular
usage of many herbs and simples, which accordingly now
reappear as parts of a scientific system, affording new evi-
dence of the probability that should be acceded to practices
which are immemorial and of world-wide acceptation.
And in another respect, it unites with the instincts of ani-
mals, as well as with the pharmacy of the " old wives,"
in prescribing simples and not compounds, in order that
pure operations may ensue, and causation or cure touch
the ailment with a finger-end of tact, and not with a rude
indiscriminate hand of confusions. The homoeopathic law
also accounts for the cures that have taken place under the
other practice, and shews that they are owing to a latency
of homoeopathy in the common sense of its predecessor.
We are indeed convinced that the law of treating like
with like, is the one intellectual formula to which the
healing art has attained. Nevertheless, we do not assert
that at a given time any art is prepared to stake itself
completely upon practice dictated by science. The genius
of man walks willingly with positive knowledge, but there
come times and cases, when he falls back upon the unwon
chaos, and trusts for instinctive revelations there. We
would not therefore cut connexion with allopathy ; because
there will be a certain number of instances where there is
no knowledge, and where chaos is a resource. When
these arise, it is a comfort that they can be committed to
that respectable body, the old medical profession, which
to do it justice, has its own stars in its own night. We
think however that it is a mistake to call its art, allopathy ;
HOMOEOPATHY. 451
it should be termed chaopathy, because it is without a for-
mula, and welters down time by that set of falls which are
vulgarly known as good and bad luck.
Homoeopathy requires many changes, and new brains of
the Hahnemannian order, before it will do itself justice
according to the conception of its founder. I know no set
of problems which would better repay severe thought
founded upon observation, than the properties of the drugs
quoad the human body. It is not routine practice, but
penetrating investigation, which will introduce the next
highly necessary improvements. New views of the human
frame are requisite before the science of pathogen esy can
attain to any degree of perfection. Among the first of
these, we reckon that natural pafhogenesis which the powers
intrinsic to the body daily exercise upon it: viz., the
powers of the mind, soul, and the inner man. By eliciting
this, we shall get at the leading idea of pathogenesis, and
also obtain rules for the succession of symptoms and states
as welling from a single fountain head. Otherwise, unless
our eyes be thus armed by these greater knowledges, the
various symptoms that drugs evoke in different parts of the
frame, will seem to have no connexion with each other,
and the memory will be unable to retain them, at the
same time that they will lie as so much incoherent dust in
the way of the intellectual powers. The subject is so impor-
tant that we must take leave to illustrate our remarks in
a few words.
If the effects of medicines should be decided upon the
healthy body, it will be conceded, that the knowledge of
the healthy body itself is the canvass upon which our medi-
cinal science must be drawn. But the body is tenanted by
various lives, each of which pervades it ; and hence these
also come to be the subjects of any physiological investiga-
tion which seeks wholeness as its aim. We may liken the
452 HEALTH.
powers of man to drugs that produce symptoms all through
his frame. These symptoms are the basis of the science of
health, and of the corresponding art of healing. But who
has ever studied so much as one of them ? Where is the
natural pathogenesy which is the foundation of the morbid
pathogenesy in the body itself? It is not yet extant in
science. But we must strive after it, or verily we do not
know the human subject to whom medicine is to be applied.
There is a brilliant mine to be worked here, and one which
in giving a deeper basis to our art, will also constitute a
knowledge of psychology such as the world will be glad to
receive.
In our Chapter on the Heart we took occasion to trace
the passion of Fear through some of its pathogenetic states.
Let us explain our present meaning by following some of
the symptoms of Grief in the same way. First, what is
the index- symptom here, of which the bodily state is the
sequence? Weeping from the eyes is the finger that
points to all the other signs : the falling tear is the begin-
ning of the propositions of grief. The voice wails, and the
sentences fall out of the mouth through plaintive lowering
cadences which end in sobs. The head is depressed, and
the hair weeps over the face. The chin falls, and the lips
melt as if they were big drops of sorrow ; the saliva also
trickles forth as though the mouth cried. In children the
mouth does cry, and sobs, like tears of tone, roll heavily
forth ; the lungs weep out both words and breaths. The
blood and excretions are wept away, and pallor and loss of
bodily spirit are manifest; and in long grief, the body
itself pines or falls away. The arms hang at the side, the
knees totter as though they would trickle down, and the
frame droops with willowy sadness. In extreme effects,
no tear flows, but the spirit weeps itself out ; just as in the
last cases of fear, the man runs away not outwardly but
HOMCEOPATHY. 453
inwardly (p. 212). Now the points to be noted in this
slight outline of the pathogenesy of fear, are twofold : in
the first place, the mind, the body and the organs are each
affected in their own manner by the emotion : in the second
place, the cardinal phenomenon gives the cue to the other
signs, and we find that in grief the whole man weeps.
We have, therefore, the best known term of all to interpret
for us the kingdom of grief. The like is attainable with
regard to the bodily train that accompanies every other
passion, and in each case the head sign will run through
the entire phenomena that belong to it. This is what we
mean by the pathogenesy of the inner man.*
Now apply this to the action of drugs, and observe that
it demands two conditions, only one of which is at present
fulfilled. For not only are all the symptoms to be recorded
and grouped in their places round the organs, but a head
symptom must be found which is their common denomi-
nator ; a principal fact from which the remainder flow.
When this is done, you will have in your mind a portrait
of the drug, as the painter has with him an instinctive
limning of the faces of the intellects and passions ; and you
will then become acquainted with your pharmacy, be ena-
bled to divine symptoms by insight without cumbersome
catalogues of them impossible to remember, and to apply
them with something like genius to the moving facts of
each case as it arises. Until this be accomplished the
heart of our drugs is unrevealed to us. First, however,
we repeat, it will be better to begin with the study of the
* Perhaps our meaning will be best explained, if we say that we
desiderate a new JAHR to give the symptoms of health instead of those
of disease ; in other words, a pathogenetic psychology and physiology,
which shall stand to homoeopathy, as the existing chaotic physiology
stands to the old system of medicine.
454 HEALTH.
healthy body and mind, and with the effects of healthy
agents, not only because this is the prcesuppositum of a
knowledge of diseased manifestations, but because the
mind's actions are so much more intelligible than those of
drugs, and the easiest lesson should be learnt first. After-
wards, when we have accustomed ourselves to the new
mode of working, we may approach the drug problems
with a little more chance of success.
By this means we hope to see that difficulty of practice
which is the chief opprobrium of homoeopathy removed,
and the handles of the instruments of cure placed in the
hands of medical men. This is the more imperative upon
us, because our morbid states of mind have the effects of
true poisons upon the body, and must be regarded as
spiritual drugs, each having a pathological history of its
own. Can we doubt, for example, if ignatia or any other
medicament be homoeopathic to the effects of grief, that
were the pathogenesy of grief itself worked out by a law
of order, the application of the drugs allied to the state,
would become infinitely more precise than at present?
What form the science will take under this development,
we cannot prophecy ; but that it will hold more light and
more readiness, we very much foresee.
Here we close our remarks on homoeopathy, as the basis
of the medical sciences. It is the intestine system of medi-
cine in its finest form, and cures as it were by touching
the beginning of the body in taste and the mouth. The
law, however, is not confined to drugs, but has an appli-
cation we do not know how extensive. Some glimpses of
it will still be seen as we proceed to speak of other organa
of the healing art.
We have said nothing on the vexed question of the doses,
for very little is known about it. The effect of a millionth
differs so little from that of a trillionth, that in the existing
HYDROPATHY. 455
state of the science we cannot make any available distinc-
tion. Fine points are the last to be settled in any depart-
ment. In a contagious disease, which spreads from a single
person to a town, we know almost nothing of the differences
that are caused by the transmission, or of any altered
manner in which the last occurring cases radiate their
effects upon susceptible people. Nor in infecting new por-
tions of spirit with a drug, have we the wit to see what
the several dilutions* signify. It is sufficient for this time,
that acute and temporary disorders are most amenable to
the dilutions that are nearest to the matter of the drug,
while chronic maladies are chiefly touched by those high
" potencies " in which only the spirit seems to be present.
Very different from homoeopath}^ or the cure by specific
drugs, is HYDROPATHY, or the cure by water as a general
element. The former appears to contend with bodily dis-
eases in their material strongholds, searching them, and
forcing them to quit their poisonous grasp of the organiza-
tion. The latter, or hydropathy, is not medicinal but
hygienic, and operates by stimulating or depressing the
natural processes of the system. Fluid, either in the shape
of vapor or water, exists everywhere in the active organ-
ism ; whatever part was dry, would be also dead. And
temperature accompanies the frame in the fluids as vehicles.
Now the water cure is allied to the natural moisture every-
where, and applies itself specially to the universal skin-
system (p. 312). Whatever relief can be obtained for suf-
fering, by means of the perspirations, is carried to the
greatest degree by those parts of the water treatment which
so powerfully favor perspiration. Whatever benefit can
* In preference to dilutions of drugs, we would rather term the
higher potencies, transmissions.
456 HEALTH.
come from the tone which cold water so instantaneously
arouses, is heightened in the plunge bath, the wet sheet,
and the douche. Whatever calmness and coolness can do
for the irritations and heats of the body, is brought about
in an extraordinary degree by the cold quietude of the sitz
bath. In short, the water cure is the exaggeration of the
hygienic processes, until they come to be powerful agents
for changing morbid conditions. There is nothing like the
action of specific medicines in this method of healing ; for
though the actions and reactions of the body are quickened
and strengthened, they remain true to themselves, and
assume no toxicological phase. Water is not a poison any
more than alcohol (pp. 170, 171), though both of them
stimulate and depress to an alarming degree, if their use is
abused.
It is hardly necessary to enter the lists in defence of the
water cure : the public has derived from it so much benefit,
and withal has acquired so much knowledge of the subject,
and caution in the knowledge, that the art and science of
PREISSNITZ may be considered as established things. The
water cure takes a capital stand among the bases of a
common- sense hygiene, and while fountains bubble and
rivers run, it will not be abandoned by those who love the
welfare of their bodies.
Though hydropathy be not medical in the drug sense,
yet it is impossible to say without experiment what num-
ber of diseases it can cure. We have no certain discrimi-
nation of those maladies which arise from stoppage of the
natural processes, or from over or under stimulation of the
frame. And although every loss of the balance of health
depends upon defect of the whole organism, which is too
weak to protect itself against circumstances, yet the symp-
toms of that loss may be combated by circumstantial means.
Cure is another thing, if by cure be meant that restoration
HYDROPATHY. 457
which provides against relapse : such cures are unhappily
rare. But for the curation of present ills, the water treat-
ment is often singularly prompt and apt ; and as we said
just now, experience alone can shew how wide, or how
limited, its powers in this kind are.
We incline to consider energizing as the formula under V
which its effects come. Of course we are now speaking of
the cold water cure ; for the formula of the hot is the very
reverse. It is true that the application of cold produces by
reaction, glow and heat, but this is an energetic glow,
and its perspirations break out with force. On the other \
hand, the warm bath leaves a sense of coldness, and its
sweats are languid and profuse ; the chilliness that is in
them proves that they trickle out of the weakness of the
containing parts. The energizing of the cold treatment
proves itself in two ways, firstly, by bracing the body
itself ; and secondly, by bracing, that is to say, increasing
in power and quantity, the secretions. Both these effects
depend upon reaction ; whence, if the energies be not ex-
cited, depression is the result ; and of this latter state,
which is desirable where excitement already exists, the
water-cure doctors have made great use. The drinking of
cold water in considerable quantities, operates upon the
internal organs somewhat as douches and wet sheets upon
the skin ; but with this difference, that the viscera are
more constant in their reactions, and under the direction
of life, are more able to recover their tone than the skin.
The water cure is invaluable for those persons who are
the slaves of long habits of ease and indulgence, and whose
constitutions are breaking down from the sheer repetition
of these imprudent courses. They go to Malvern, and the
axe is laid to the root of their tree of evils. Their impos-
sibilities are made possible for them by the rigorous phy-
sician, who endures no remonstrances in his house. In an
x
458
HEALTH.
hour they throw down the accumulated baggage of years,
and determine to do penance for having carried it so long.
Early hours, long walks, long-forgotten beauties of nature,
reacquaintance with the crystal springs whose Naiads had
been neglected for " old port," sweet sleep hours before
midnight, and the sense that they are clean human beings,
or on the way to such, all these means carry health to
the men who are jaded with business or pleasure, but not
yet struck for death. The cold water is the central mor-
tification of the flesh ; it has caught them buried in care or
luxuriousness, and like the " cold pig" which their school-
fellows once emptied over them in their boyish beds, it
makes them start to their feet, and touch the ground of
realities once more. We attribute much of the water
power to the frigid morality which it inculcates ; to the
shock which it gives to the dreaming man, and his lazy
organs. For it tells him very plainly that there is to be
no comfort in bed or board, but that warmth must be moral
and come out of work.
But if this be so, then the capacity which the body pos-
sesses, to be shocked into its functions, will depend upon
the resource of morale in the patient, or in a word, upon
the capabilities of his faith. All that I have seen or read
of the water cure, strengthens me in this conviction. It
appears to me, that humanly speaking, there is a certain
amount of life and reaction in the upper parts of every
man, which may be drawn upon as occasion requires.
How much there is, we have probably but little idea ; for
each means of calling it down each syphon that we put
into the reservoir only runs its own kind of life. The
quantity of this fluid spirit is therefore practically limited
enough, though perchance other means might open a new
vein when the old sources dry. But so it is with the water
cure ; it taps the life and morale in its own direction, and
HYDROPATHY. 459
obtains wonderful supplies. We think it is not well to
exhaust these, or to allow them to flow until their lees
mix with the current ; for when they are once gone, there
is no more to be had from that tube of arts. It must not,
therefore, be supposed, that the second and third resorts
to the water cure will have the like success with the first ;
the life which was obedient then, has been partially or
perhaps wholly spent. And if the penances are kept up,
they become severe macerations; the faculties are not
roused but chilled, and the lamp which might have lasted
for a quiet while, is besieged by cold to death. In one /
word, the limits of the water cure are the limits of personal /
vigour, which, after a certain point, is wasted in the strug- '
gle of this treatment for health.
It is necessary to bear this in mind when we are dealing
with an agent whose effects are so powerful and immediate.
However, our reading on this subject convinces us that the
prudences which belong to the water cure are well attended
to by its best advocates in this country ; and what we have
said applies rather to the public, who require to know that
this treatment, so often valuable, is limited in its results ;
and that in diseases proceeding from irregular habits, the
first cure is likely to be more satisfactory and innocent
than any subsequent one. As moral imbecility grows,
from whatever cause, the physical benefits of the water
cure will become less and less.
The system of Preissnitz belongs to a group of sciences
which include the whole of the four elements of the ancients,
and apply them to the healing art. Earth, air, fire and
water are the basis of outward hygiene, and are all repre-
sented in some sort under the notion of climate. The
acclimation of patients resembles the water cure in many
respects ; only that it produces the desired elevations and
depressions of the body by influences which are less visible,
x 2
460 HEALTH.
though not less striking in their effects. To be bathed in
the light and heat of a new sun, and washed with the winds
of a fresh sky ; to feel the steam of an unwonted surface of
earth, and the tension of a different magnetism and elec-
tricity to that to which we are accustomed, are important
elements in the recovery of health, particularly where
moral circumstances also are favorable. The hygienic map
of countries, gathered, as it might be, from the physical
character of the inhabitants, or from susceptible tempera-
ments on the spot, would be a guide worth having in the
direction of patients to localities' of specific benefit. In
this respect we require something more precise than the
guide books which have been written by the climatic phy-
sicians.
But medical systems, like the departments of public
health (pp. 411 431), follow the organs and faculties of
man, and in the nature of things are as numerous as the
latter. The intestinal system of drugs, or homeopathy,
is the basis (p. 454), and belongs to the alimentary tube :
hydropathy and its kindred appertain to the general cir-
cumstantial system, and specifically to the skin as the
organ of tone and continence : we have now to turn our
attention to the muscles of medicine, or to that method of
cure which only lately has appeared among us, under the
designation of KINESIPATHY, or the Swedish Medical Gym-
nastics, and which already ranks among the most impor-
tant means of removing chronic symptoms of disease.
For the modern development of artificial analytical ex-
ercise, as applied to the treatment of disease, we are in-
debted to Ling, the Swedish poet, whose system has now
been practised with success for more than thirty years in
his own country. This Ling was a stern but versatile
genius, worthy of the Scandinavian name worthy of the
KINESIPATHY. LING. 461
land of Eddas, Sagas, Gustavuses, the world's best iron,
and its Swedenborg. He had read in the ancient lore of
his country the record of a mental and bodily prowess of
uncommon virtue ; the doings of kings, Jarls and vikings in
the olden time, when the sea rovers sallied forth with the
summer, and astonished the effeminacy of the known world
with their strong arms. And the thought occurred to him,
that it was possible by knowledge well directed in practice,
to combine the muscles of ancient heroism with the civili-
zation of to-day, and in the physical frames of his Swedes,
to re-enact the days of Snorro and Hakon Jarl in those of
the fourteenth Charles. In short, taking his cue from
classic Greece, he sought, by gymnastic exercises, to com-
pensate for the bent backs and dwindled muscles that mo-
dern pursuits and common-place existence have produced.
He stood in the age like a kind of human Hecla, remi-
niscent of the valour of a thousand years, and pouring forth
a flood of incentives to his race, to emulate the strength of
their sires. His verse breathes with a Homeric spirit of
combat, with a delight in the good science of the strokes,
as well as in the death of the foe. It has the harshness
and boldness of a muscular rhyme. His harp was " strung
with bear's sinews." But it is not with his gymnastics in
general that we can meddle, but only with their medical
part : we have touched on the other, because the subject is
less known than it deserves to be in England, and our sign
post may direct the curious on its way.
It is told of Ling that, when a youth, on one occasion
he was weary of life, and like a bad boy he wandered
slowly on a biting winter day, as thinly clad as possible,
half a Swedish mile into the country, in the hope of catch-
ing a chill which would terminate his existence, without
his being guilty of the immediate sin of suicide. He, how-
ever, only took a common cold in the head, which led
462 HEALTH.
him to his first reflexions on the human frame, and the
means of rendering it hardy.* On another occasion, when
suffering from rheumatism in the arm, he instinctively
rapped the part with a ruler which he held in his hand,
and found that he cured the pain : this natural experiment,
it is said, was the occasion of Kinesipathy.
This art consists in applying external motions, passive
and active exercise, to the body ; and in rendering these
so special as to operate on the various inward organs, or
on parts of them specifically. Posture, friction, percussion,
motion, are all made use of ; and already as many as two
thousand different movements have been devised for the
purpose of operating upon the failing powers within.
There are languages of nudges, to remind brain, liver,
spleen, and all, of their neglected duties. The effects
produced approve the plan, and stamp it as an art and
science. It is admonition, contact, exercise, pursued into
details, whereby disease is literally handled.
Perhaps there is no malady but tends in some way to
alter the bearing, posture or general status of the body.
In acute cases this is plain. We groan, writhe, wriggle,
wince, shake, crawl, creep, dance, and so forth, with our
agonies and discomforts, shewing that disease is a complete
posture master and very good serjeant, whose drill is for
the purpose of relief and cure. Very small areas of disease
have corresponding to them large movements in the system ;
and if we understood the movements, we could by reaction
play upon the parts and particles of the organs. If a spe-
cial wince or twist arises primarily out of some one place,
then by comprehending the twist, and producing it arti-
ficially, we get at that place exactly, were it no bigger
than a pin's head. Here is precise gunnery, hitting
* Atterbom : Intrudes Tal i Svenska Akademien, p. 21.
KINES1PATHY. 463
disease with a fine arrow. Again there are instinctive
movements of the hands towards afflicted parts of our
frames. We rub ourselves with organic pity like dumb
animals where the deep flesh is ill. This is nature work-
ing for us, and shewing us the beginning of a manual
science of soothing, traction, nudging, and so forth, the
detail of which is kinesipathy.
We have been greatly struck with the common sense
which dictated the Lingian art, and with the excellent
unexpected results which flow from such simple means.
Exercise is often demanded, not so much for the whole
frame, as for particular organs. For instance a sluggish
liver may refuse to resume its functions under the general
stimulus of a walk. The kinesipathist exercises the liver
itself: by his jerks and suggestive poking, he commands
it to make bile ; and sure enough the liver does make it.
By a like preciseness of application he cures sluggish
bowels. He exerts the physical force of cure with the
gentleness of art and science. He strengthens special
muscles by adequate ingenious exercises. He cures hot
heads and cold feet, by briskly rotating the feet upon the
ankles, steadying the limb by grasping its lower part.
And so forth. This is evidently the ultima ratio of treat-
ment in chronic diseases.
In paralytic cases, where the nervous derangement is
only functional, kinesipathy is found to be an effective
mode of cure. Its doctrine here, as we read it, commends
itself to our acceptance. Where a power has been lost,
but its potency is left, it is as though the power had never
been developed. A palsied man of this kind has forgotten
the art of the use of his limbs, and has to learn it afresh.
He is an adult in those parts where his power lies ; a baby
in the paralysed tracts. The medical gymnast undertakes
to teach the latter, first how to creep, and then how to go.
464 HEALTH.
He commences by passive movements, nursing, fumbling,
and so stimulating, the helpless large infant limb ; and by
degrees a little reaction against him is perceived. He
then makes more extensive movements, stretching the
muscles, and producing further reaction ; and finally he
commands the resistance of the patient, and then by his
superior force slowly overcomes it : in all these processes
steadily keeping in view the end, of educating the limb
into self-reliance, or as we term it, sense of power (p. 271).
Many an old paralytic is cured by these apparently trivial
means ; the mind and will which had alienated themselves,
are coaxed back into his arms and legs.
Like all real agents, kinesipathy is capable of abuse.
It appears to be contraindicated in nearly all acute dis-
eases, and we should also say, in those where rest, and not
motion, is demanded. But it seems probable, from the
obviousness of the method, that neither the gymnast nor
the patient would be likely to persevere to any great mis-
chief with the treatment.
The results which have followed this art, are so great
as compared with the slightness of the causes set at work,
that some have suspected a mesmeric effect from the ope-
rator to the patient. It may be so ; but at any rate there
is a moral cause involved which we think is to be taken
into account in all such procedures. The patient feels that
something is being done for him , that another human
being is active and anxious on his behalf, and does not
disdain to toil for his bodily restoration. To many a sick
man this is an element of health ; so that the bad pun by
which I have heard Kinesipathy changed into kindly sym-
pathy, conveys a serious truth. I even deem that the
dumb hidden organs know the touches of a brother's hand
and heart, and are organically comforted by them ; for they
all have feelings of their own, and spirits ; as we have
KINESIPATHY. 465
shewn in many places in these Chapters (pp. 255 257,
264268). This points to a defect in mere drug medicin-
ing : a physician writes a prescription and leaves it : he
has done nothing ostensible to the sufferer, still less to the
viscera and vitals of his patient ; and the rapport between
the two persons is very feeble, and by no means of that
fraternal warmth which is curative wherever it is truly
experienced.*
Ling's system has the merit, a great one in our eyes, of
continuing practices that have existed in nearly all nations,
from India to Sweden ; for rubbing, shampooing, and va-
rious forms of gymnastics are almost as widely diffused
as language itself. Nor until of late ages has gymnastics
disappeared from formal medicine. Kinesipathyf replaces
it there, and in such a shape that we are emboldened to
* The following works give a general notion of the Swedish Medical
Gymnastics, though specific movements are difficult to describe, and
should be witnessed in order to be comprehended.
Ling, Gymnastifcen's Alm'dnna Grunder. Upsala, 1834, 1840.
De Betou, Therapeutic Manipulation. London, 1846.
Georgii, Kinesitherapie, ou Traitement des Maladies par le Mouve-
ment, selon la Methode de Ling. Paris, 1847.
Kinesipathy, or the Cure of Diseases by specific active and
passive Movements. London, 1850.
H. Doherty, Kinesipathy, or Medical Gymnastics for the Cure of
Chronic Disease. London, 1851.
f Ling's aim was nothing less than the physical education of man
corresponding to the mental. This branch is deserving of an attention
which it has not received. To our mind, no school ought to be with-
out a physical inspector; if official, so much the better. In the
plastic period of youth, physical defects and awkwardnesses may be
corrected, which are past relief at a later time. The bodies of boys
and girls ought to be developed by inspection, instruction, and emu-
lation, and especially by the universal means of dancing, fencing, and
the politer movements. Nor should such trifling matters as biting
x 3
466 HEALTH.
hope from what we know of itself and its advocates, that
it will never cede its place again.
We now come to another part in the organism of heal-
ing, namely, MESMEKISM, or what we might term Anthro-
popathy, as it cures by the application of man to man.
Of its virtues in cases that have resisted all other means,
there cannot be a question : its facts are established not
alone by rigid experiment, but by deeds worthy of a mural
crown, because they have saved the lives of many citizens.
It is for this reason, and also because our organic philo-
sophy, which knows no fear, demands it, that we pass on
to Mesmerism, although a storm of hatred rages about it,
and every step of its advance is a fight.
It would be interesting in the history of science to
canvas the reasons why certain large classes of facts have
been rejected from time to time : why, for instance, the
Church of Rome felt peculiarly aggrieved that the earth
should go round the sun, and not vice versd ; why certain
moderns dislike to live on a planet which took more than
seven days for its creation ; why sceptics have a call to
blink all evidence for spiritual communications, and after-
wards opening their sockets widely, complain of the ab-
sence of facts ; and lastly, why the medical profession
fumes and shivers whenever mesmerism is brought for-
ward. In all these cases, as we deem, it is the instinct of
self-preservation that like a skin (p. 327) defends the
parties against the reception of the facts. They know in-
stinctively that the limitation and eggshell of their state is
in danger, and that if the obnoxious point be admitted,
nails and picking noses be tolerated. Greek and Latin are of less
importance to youth than a corpus sanum out of which all manifest
unseemliness has been weeded.
MESMERISM OR ANTHROPOPATHY. 467
they will have the trouble of building a new house on a
larger scale. At present the pill-boxes are arranged in
pretty rows; but allow this mesmerism and its conse-
quences, and how they would rattle aad dance, what a
long period of confusion and elimination they must pass,
before any second order as neat as the first could be esta-
blished I It is the dread of death, that shabbiest of fears,
that everlastingly hates truth, because truth leads to death,
future states, or integral enlargements, of which there is
no end. Such is the motive of this very poor kind of con-
servatism, though there are as many pretexts as there are
ingenious lazy minds who fancy that they have an interest
in a well-arranged stagnation of the arts.
As we have said already, mesmerism stands upon its
facts, which, in proportion to time, are as numerous and
rigorous as those of any other science. But the facts ap-
pear so strange, and so little in the order of our know-
ledge, that they want at least the support which associa-
tion of principles gives. Those who cure and are cured
obtain a grasp of the facts from mere gratitude and service ;
but the public require also something like a rationale in
order to steady their minds. Hence, though the facts are
the main thing for those intimately concerned, yet a view
of the facts is quite necessary for the fixation of mesmerism
in the scientific sky.
Nor on the principles of this Book do we find much
difficulty in tracing the mesmeric mechanism and its
results. If herbs, waters, airs, fire and motion, which are
such remote kindred to us (p. 363), will cure our ills,
surely man himself, who is comparatively own brother to
every man, will go home to disease with a directer rela-
tionship of beneficence. If ever it has been good to be
under a course of mercury, shall it not be better still to be
under a course of humanity ? We have seen throughout,
468 HEALTH.
on disintegrating man, that he is full of human fluids
which no more cease with his surface, than his voice ceases
with his lips : that his influence is a combined physical
and moral fact whose lengths and durations can hardly be
measured. We also find that he subsists in an equilibrium
of which his own will is the centre, and that his sphere of
radiance, and swoop of powers, depend on the pulsations of
his will. According as this heart (pp. 284 287) is little, or
large, his world is a nutshell, or an empire. In mesmerism
the equilibrium is voluntarily ceded, a human vacuum or
obeisance is created, and the radiance of the mesmerizer or
active power rushes in to fill the space. A pressure of
fresh spiritual air goes right through the frame. This
alone is the greatest of alteratives, more than travelling,
more than the difference between hot and cold, clear and
misty, winter and summer. The organism breathes with
another life in all its parts. For the time, every sense, in
stomach, spleen, liver, heart and brain, and every idea that
travels in the fluids (pp. 39, 162164, 222253, 416),
is changed ; self is voluntarily absent ; and the functions
go on minus their old routine of habits. The nerves and
arteries which are secreting a morbid growth, a tumor, for
example, and which have got to think that they must lay
stone to stone of this vice, and build a fresh piece of it
every day, suddenly lose their habitude in the interest of
a new spirit, change their minds, set the absorbents to
work to remove the architecture of evil, and pursue their
daily course for their legitimate objects. The better man,
in short, is persuasive upon the worser, inside just as out-
side : it is no senseless odyle or fluid that causes the effect,
but a human although molecular operation. Fluids, unless
they are men also, illustrate nothing, nor will any explana-
tion satisfy, unless it be a rest, and exclude the call for a
second explanation.
MESMERISM. 469
Mesmerism emphatically gives new or other life to those
who need it ; and it does this by the mere form and atti-
tude which the agent and patient assume relatively to each
other. The human world is full of powers in a state of
balance and indifference. Change the posture of anything
therein, and the whole has to readjust itself to a new
balance, a rush of forces takes place, and currents pass
to and fro until the equilibrium is recovered. The moral
and the physical are both under this statical law. Hence,
if you desire to produce forces, you have only to find the
neighborhood of the fluids or spirit powers, and by creating
a low level on the one hand, you also make relative height,
and have a deeper fall for your forceful waters to descend.
These remarks are too brief to be called a theory of
mesmeric cure, nor do they touch manifestly upon those
parts of mesmerism that are most liable to be discredited.
We labor however under want of space to develop the sub-
ject as it deserves, and we can now only say, that out of
the same law of Correspondence which is the master-prin-
ciple of science, it is easy to deduce the explanation of the
marvels of clairvoyance and transmission of thought, and
in short the psychical phenomena of mesmerism. But
then under this view, our world and our matter so change,
that we are counting upon admissions which few readers
can make, but without which we cannot proceed many
steps. Let it suffice then to say, that man in the posture
of giving up himself, becomes a bodily representative of
the powers of unselfishness for the time being ; that miracle
haunts him, because unselfishness is a miracle ; that he en-
ters upon universal sight, second sight, third sight, and
more sights than you please, because unselfing is the core
of all wide vision. That he dips his body into vigors and
cures by the same abnegation, because unselfishness is the
tree whose leaves are for the healing of all men. This
470 HEALTH.
comes, just as the soul comes to the body : the due circum-
stance or posture of affairs is there, and by the law of cor-
respondence, whereby the equilibrium of creation is main-
tained, its spirit is "in the midst of it" (pp. 276 279,
343 350). The very theatricism of what is good, true
and unselfish, is healing to the scenework of the body.
We have no certain knowledge of the limits of mesmerism
as a curative agent, nor of the conditions which should ex-
clude cases from this treatment. In functional disorders of
the nervous system it is especially indicated, and as a
number of diseases even seemingly organic spring from
this root, it appears that it has a large field of applications
here. Hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy, and those other mala-
dies in which the visceral motions predominate over the
rhythmical or rational motions of the lungs, come very
markedly under its benefits. But it is not in our power to
lay down any rule for the distribution to it of cases gene-
rally ; and therefore we wait upon experiment, which shows
that the utilities to be derived from its employment are
very extensive.
Like drugs, cold water, movements, and stimulants,
mesmerism is capable of abuse in many ways. Ill-disposed
persons may use it to acquire an influence for bad ends.
It is however probably more often abused by the patients
than by the agents, being resorted to as a kind of opiate to
compensate for the want of moral determination. In this
case it keeps up a pernicious valetudinarianism that saps
the foundations of resolve in the patient, by causing him
to rely upon others where there is strength sufficient, were
it exerted, in his own organization. A fatal mistake is
made whenever we treat with petting and coddling, in
our own minds, or in others, states which we ought to
discipline with a moral lash ; and this mistake, I fear, is
often committed by mesmeric patients. They must know
MESMERISM. 471
that there is no patent outward means that can be a sub-
stitute for sanity of will ; that sooner or later they must
exert themselves, and waken from their delusions; and
that every dose of their mesmeric opium over and above
what was required, is the vehicle of a weakness which it
will cost them a fresh struggle to conquer, whenever the
time when they must arise shall come.
We had almost forgotten to place to the credit of mes-
merism its introduction of a painless surgery, which is
among the most brilliant discoveries of the age. The doc-
tors were totally incredulous of this matter, until ether and
chloroform came and did the same thing in a grosser shape.
If there were shame in the world they must have felt it,
when they found how easy their impossibilities of a fort-
night before had become. They doubted the testimony of
honest men where mesmerism was concerned; they ac-
cepted the same facts when chloroform produced them. It
was like them to believe in bottles, and to disbelieve in
man. But let them pass. This discovery of extinction of
pain has no end of results, moral as well as physical. The
least it does is to annihilate severe material sufferings ; its
next fruit is in time to strike out their dread, which is the
great body killer. It is plain also to see, that as an idea it
is veiy penetrating, and suggests a painless moral surgery
among the ends of man : that all operations in which our
dear properties are taken from us, shall be like the first
abstraction of Adam's rib, performed upon us in mercy's
" deep sleep."
In quitting mesmerism we notice of it, as we also ob-
served of the Lingian movements, that it gathers up under
its banner a number of practices that have existed from
time immemorial in most parts of the earth. This is to
say, that it communicates with a wide common sense.
And although we do not choose to call everything mes-
472 HEALTH.
merism which is strange or mysterious looking, yet we
recognize a certain family likeness between it and many
things which are even venerable. There is however no-
thing divine in it, and it has no relation to miracles and
revelations, excepting that it imitates them afar off, and
like all other things in the world, has a common connexion
with God.*
Very different from mesmerism, and yet suggested by
it, is the process discovered by JAMES BRAID of Manchester,
and by him called HYPNOTISM. This is probably but one
of a number of arts to which we shall give the generic
name of PHRENOPATHY, for it produces its effects princi-
pally as actions of mind upon mind.
Being unsatisfied with the pretensions of mesmerism,
and sceptical of its truth, Mr. Braid entered the field as
a disprover, but soon witnessed phenomena which appeared
to him to be real, though susceptible of another explanation
than the mesmeric. It struck him that the facts were the
result of abstraction or attention carried to excess, and he
accordingly tried the experiment of causing patients to
stare at any object secured or held above their foreheads,
so as to make the stare assume the attitude of intense con-
templation. Success attended this mode in many instances,
and sleep was induced in a few minutes. Mr. B. usually
selects some bright object, as a silver lancet case, held in
the mid-line between the eyes, and the patient gazes there-
at with fixed stare until the effects are produced the
"double internal squint" upwards being the most poten-
tial direction of the eyes for the purpose. Soon the eyes
* The Zoist, a quarterly journal, in its ninth year's existence, affords
the best history of the progress of mesmerism as a branch of the
healing art. We refer our readers to it as an evidence of what
mesmerism is good for.
PHRENOPATHY. 473
shut, and a state is produced, varying in depth from mere
somnolency, to double consciousness, or catalepsy.
The preliminary state is that of abstraction, produced
by fixed gaze upon some unexciting and empty thing (for
poverty of object engenders abstraction), and this abstrac-
tion is the logical premise of what follows. Abstraction
tends to become more and more abstract, narrower and
narrower; it tends to unity, and afterwards to nullity.
There then the patient is, at the summit of attention,
with no object left a mere statue of attention a listening,
expectant life ; a perfectly undistracted faculty, dreaming
of a lessening and lessening mathematical point ; the end
of his mind sharpened away to nothing. What happens ?
Any sensation that appeals, is met by this brilliant atten-
tion, and receives its diamond glare, being perceived with
a force of leisure of which our distracted life affords only
the rudiments. External influences are sensated, sympa-
thized with, to an extraordinary degree : harmonious
music sways the body into graces the most affecting ; dis-
cords jar it as though they would tear it limb from limb.
Cold and heat are perceived with similar exaltation ; so
also smells and touches. In short the whole man appears
to be given to each perception. The body trembles like
down with the wafts of the atmosphere ; the world plays
upon it as upon a spiritual instrument finely attuned.
This is the natural hypnotic state, but it may be modi-
fied artificially. The power of suggestions over the patient
is excessive. If you say, What animal is it ? the patient
will tell you it is a lamb, or a rabbit, or any other. Does
he see it ? Yes. What animal is it now f putting depth
and gloom into the tone of now, and thereby suggesting a
difference. " Oh," with a shudder, " it is a wolf." What
color is it? still glooming the phrase. " Black." What
color is it now 1 giving the now a cheerful air. " Oh, a
474 HEALTH.
beautiful blue," spoken with the utmost delight. And
so you lead the subject through any dreams you please, by
variation of questions, and of inflections of the voice ; and
he sees and feels all as real.
Another curious study is the influence of the patient's
postures on his mind in this state. Double his fist, and
put up his arm, if you dare, for you will have the strength
of your ribs rudely tested. Put him on his knees, and
clasp his hands, and the saints and devotees of the artists
will pale before the trueness of his devout actings. Raise
his head while in prayer, and his lips pour forth exulting
glorifications, as he sees heaven opened, and the Majesty
of God raising him to his place ; then in a moment depress
the head, and he is dust and ashes, an unworthy sinner,
with the pit of hell yawning at his feet. Or compress the
forehead so as to wrinkle it vertically, and this little atti-
tude of gloom, glooms the whole mind, and thorny- toothed
clouds contract in from the very horizon ; and what is
remarkable, the smallest pinch and wrinkle, such as will
lie between your nipping nails, is sufficient nucleus to crys-
tallize the man into that shape, and to make him all fore-
boding ; as again the smallest expansion, in a moment,
brings the opposite state, with a full breathing of delight.
Raise the head next, and ask, if it be a young lady,
whether she or some other is the prettier ; and observe the
inexpressible hauteur, and the puff sneers let off from the
lips, which indicate a conclusion too certain to need utter-
ance ; depress the head, and repeat the question ; and mark
the self-abasement with which she now says, " She is," as
hardly worthy to make the comparison. In this state,
whatever posture of any passion is induced, the passion
comes into it at once, and dramatizes the body accordingly.
Moreover, the patient's mind directed to his own body
does physical marvels. He can do in a manner what he
PHRENOPATHY. 475
thinks he can. Place a handkerchief on a table, and beg
him to try to lift it, observing, however, that you know
it to be impossible, and he will groan and sweat over the
cambric as though it were the anchor of a man of war ; on
the other hand, tell him that a fifty-six pound weight is a
light cork, to be held out at arm's length on his little finger,
and he will hold it out with ease. Tell him that a tumor
on his body is about to disappear, and his mind will often
realize your prophecy. Of the following case Mr. B. him-
self informed me. A lady who was leaving off nursing
from defect of milk, the baby being thirteen months old,
was hypnotized by him. He made passes over the right
breast to call her attention to it, and in a few moments
her gestures shewed that she dreamt the baby was sucking.
In two minutes, the breast was distended with milk. She
was awoke, and on being questioned whether any part of
her frame felt differently from the rest, she perceived the
state of her bosom, and mentioned it ; to which Mr. B.
replied that the baby would soon settle that. The infant
was nearly choked with the rush of milk. In three days
she came back to Mr. B. and complained that he had dis-
figured her, for she was protuberant on one side. He pro-
mised to take the swelling down; hypnotized her; but
drew the other side also by the like means ; and she nursed
her child from an overflowing bosom for twenty- two months ;
being nine after the hypnotism.
A patient in the full state obeys all motives in the most
natural direction. If the arm is placed up, there it will
stay : but a waft of air will cause it to fall down. Why ?
Because it is already up, and the new motive changes the
direction. If the arm be down, another waft will raise it.
If down, and prevented from moving up, the impression
will send it side ways. When the frame is erect, a touch
behind in the bend of the knees, will send it into genu-
476 HEALTH.
flexion, which will at once suggest prayer, as noticed
before, &c.
An interesting question arises : In what does hypnotism
differ from mesmerism, and from common sleep ? Are the
two former identical ? We think not. We recognize the
three as the main trine of sleep, each depending on its first
principle. The atom of sleep is diffusion : the mind and
body are dissolved in unconsciousness ; they go off into
nothing through the fine powder of infinite variety, and
die of no attention ; common sleep is impersonal. The
unit of hypnotism is intense attention, abstraction, the
personal ego pushed to nonentity. The unit of mesmerism
is the common state of the patient, caught as he stands,
and subjected to the radiant ideas of another person : it is
mediate ; or both personal and impersonal. Neither sleep
nor hypnotism can exist in the presence of a second person,
without partaking more or less of mesmerism. The sleep-
brain is fluid, the hypnotic brain moveable-pointed, and
the mesmeric brain elastic. Sleep = influx ; hypnotism =
efflux; mesmerism = afflux.
Patients can produce the hypnotic effects upon themselves
without any second party ; although a second will often-
times strengthen the result by his acts or presence ; just
as one who stood by, and told you that you were to succeed
in a certain work, would nerve your arm with fresh confi-
dence.
We presume it is evident to the reader, what a power
Mr. Braid has methodized and called into play for the
treatment of diseases. As a curative agent, hypnotism
contains two elements, each valuable of its kind:
1. Where it produces trance, it has the benefits of the
mesmeric sleep, or furnishes so strong a dose of rest, that
many cases are cured by that alone. But 2. The sugges-
tion of ideas of health, tone, duty, hope, which produce
PHRENOPATHY. 477
dreams influential upon the organization, enables the ope-
rator by this means to fulfil the indication of directly
ministering to that mind diseased, which always accom-
panies and aggravates physical disorders. We have a
direct proof of the continuation of the mind through the
body, in the way in which suggestions directed to the
mind respecting the organs, operate upon the latter. By
touching the abdomen over the colon, and suggesting the
effect, we can, in susceptible persons, produce the results
of aperient medicines, and abolish constipation for years.
This order of facts has an important bearing upon the ori-
gin as well as cure of disease, rendering it probable that a
large number of ills come directly out of the patient's
mind ; for if alteration of fancy heals, this suggests that
fancy first engendered, the complaint. Viewed in this
light, many physical changes of structure may be regarded
as organic insanities or spells, which only require the right
word from the physician to dissipate them ; and although,
if they went on, they would kill by their virulence, yet
are they curable by a simple impression from without.
Next to the self-control of the patient, which is the top of
mortal medicines, we may justly reckon this control of the
doctor, who makes use of his own health and knowledge
to give faith in the moments when it can be received.*
* Mr. Braid's process consists in fixing the eyes, or rather the
attention, which itself fixes the eyes. After the patient has gazed
steadily for one or two minutes, the lids are closed by the fingers of
the operator, should they not previously close by themselves. This
is to prevent straining, which might produce headache, or cerebral
disturbance. In case the sleep is not produced, Mr. B. still keeps
the attention awake by bending the patient's arm and setting it up-
right, and also by putting out the legs at right angles to the body.
The effort to maintain these positions energizes the will, and fixes the
patient's mind upon the operation. Where volition is weakened, this
478 HEALTH.
Shall we then say that here we have a stream from the
ancients' arts of phrenopathy or pistopathy* and a dawn-
ing recognition of the spirituality of disease and of cure ?
I do think that loss of faith and the other inward graces
is the tap root of bodily sickness ; and that fears, apathies,
hatreds and self-seekings are the sowers who go forth to
sow poison through our frames. On the other hand, the
renewal of faith,-]- even when impressed from without,
is sometimes an excellent means of again bringing it into the organism.
In cases of paralysis, patients can frequently move in this state where
they have no power in the ordinary one. It is known that the emo-
tions will move limbs that are palsied, although the will has no effect
upon them ; and that afterwards the will frequently retains the powers
thus conferred. In the hypnotic state, the operator can play upon
the emotions by a variety of suggestive means ; and in this way give
power to impotent parts, and hand them over to the will. Mr.
Braid's devices for these ends, stamp him as a man of inventive
genius, and we are surprised that such a piece of combined intellec-
tual and scientific sagacity as hypnotism, has not placed him long ago
in the first rank of metropolitan physicians.
The titles of Mr. Braid's works are as follow :
Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep. London, 1843.
The Power of the Mind over the Body. London, 1846.
Observations on Trance, or Human Hybernation. London, 1850.
* Uia-ns, faith.
f With respect to the operation of medicines upon and through the
imagination, and to the operation of charms, this belongs to the per-
sonal side of the art of healing, and medicine cannot relinquish it,
without quitting its hold upon some of the principal departments of
man. When incantation ceased, and was exploded by newer thoughts,
its principle should have been carefully investigated, and the virtue
and goodness, if any, which lay at the core, should have been retained.
But in acting upon the imagination, one objection may be noticed,
which has had a large, perhaps the principal share in banishing this
kind of hygiene from practice ; and yet which rightly considered, is
no objection at all. The patients, so the doctors tell us, no longer
PHRENOPATHY. 479
handles the organism as the will handles the muscles, and
if we may use the expression, converts and Christianizes
believe in imagination-treatment ; and because they do not believe,
the treatment will have no efficacy. We reply, it makes little matter
whether they believe, or not. And the reason is clear. For belief is
twofold : first, educational or scientific, but second, fundamental or
organic. To illustrate my meaning, I will relate an anecdote which
happened to myself with a friend who was a person of strong faculties,
and deeply imbued with current modes of philosophizing. We were
discussing the reality of ghosts and apparitions, and my friend argued
with honest stoutness that they were flimsy illusions, and had no claim
on the attention of strong-minded people. But being as candid as
he was strong, he presently added : " I don't know how it is, but
when I talk of such things, I feel a cold stream down the back."
Here was a case in which the same good man was plaintiff in one
part of his body, and defendant in another : he denied ghosts with
his lips, and believed them with his back-bone : and fortified as he
was by such arguments negative as could be had, he was still, by
witness of the " cold stream," as capable of receiving a dose of fright
as if he had been " a sick girl." His body, which is substantial,
credited more than his soul : Balaam's ass saw the spirits which
Balaam could not see. This is merely an illustration of the existence
of a corporeal faith, when the mental faith is deficient ; and of the
efficacy of the corporeal faith in producing bodily alterations. Thus
it is that charms, personal suggestions, mesmerism, minute doses of
medicine, &c., &c., act upon the conscious man without the active
concurrence of his reason, nay, often in spite of it. For the body
itself knows bodily what is true and influential, whether the mind
knows it mentally, or not. We have therefore every ground, despite
the absence of faith in the higher sense, to persevere in the remedies
of faith, which will not cease to cure though we be unfaithful. Thus
it is well known that warts can be charmed away where their owner
has no faith in the process ; and for this reason ; that though he has
no educational belief in the charm, his imagination, as a body and a
structure, is capable of being influenced by it, and of operating its
own lordly removals and avaunts upon the warts : for in imagination,
what you seem to have, you have ; and the body is, among other
things, full of imagination. Nevertheless, where the two faiths coin-
480 HEALTH.
the body, that is to say, heals it. The virtue of hypno-
tism, where it succeeds, is just this, that for the moment
it unweeds the human soil so completely, that whatever
faith is impressed, can work and grow. It surely points
to human agency all through disease, when we find that
monomanias can be given, or removed, in a moment, by
the suggestion of another from without ; it points to a
scientific theory of the influx of ideas from other men, visi-
ble and invisible, as an account of the outward supplies of
life.
We regard hypnotism as the most intellectual pheno-
menon which has yet been produced by the phrenopathists,
and as suggestive of a new personnel in the bearing of the
physician. It seems to show that there is scarcely a case
in which the latter should not do something actual besides
the administration of drugs ; for the sick organism expects
to be handled. It also proclaims to us what an artistry
should be cultivated by those who practise medicine ; what
tact should electrify their fingers, what resolve should ver-
tebrate their words, what cordials should drop from their
mouths, what airs of reassurance should surround them,
and how ease and cheerfulness should radiate from their
presence, as they move from bed to bed. To simplify all
this to them, they must verily believe that medicine is the
cide, the effect will be more rapid ; and they are always tending to
coincide, either by the conversion of the mind to the catholicity of the
body, or of the body to the principles of the mind. A good instance
of this is seen in Nicolai's ghost-case, where hi spite of seeing and
hearing, Nicolai, being a considerable philosopher, discredited his
ghosts, and cured them by the application of leeches^: his body be-
came as philosophical as his mind, as much bent upon seeing nothing,
and was emptied of its spiritual instincts. In this case Balaam and
his beast were both orthodoxly one-sighted, and trudged the common
high-road of the bookselling business, each as wise as the other.
THE PHYSICIAN. 481
daughter of heaven, and that they live to be inspired, and
to inspire.
We do not mean that the character of the good physi-
cian should be the corollary of any juggle, however useful
for a time, or that he should cure ultimately by impressing
imaginations upon his flock. We only use these as signs
pointing to a truth. What the physician should be, 1 dare
not attempt to sketch. But I see that already he is called
out of the ranks as the most humane man of his time. I
see that he wants the largest faith, in addition to the larg-
est science ; gentleness and sternness also moulded toge-
ther, as the lamb with the lion. Nor can heroism using
all the rest as a resource, be dispensed with, to the very
brink of death; for while there is life there is hope.
Perhaps without attempting more we may sum him up in
saying, that he should be the model of the health of the
age.
We use the pronoun "he," leaving it to progress to say,
whether our own sex has exclusive rights in the healing
art. We cannot settle that question ; but at all events we
know, that the better half of the health of the world de-
pends upon the partners of our toil. It is clear to us, that
in no long time, the various organic systems of medicine,
(many of which have still to appear, being due to the
organs of the frame,) will necessitate the constitution of a
tribunal for distributing cases under their proper treat-
ments. Perhaps it may then be found that there is a
female side to this as well as to the other arts. Certainly
many of the qualities of the physician seem to belong pre-
eminently to woman. Instant presence of mind, fine tact,
observation quick and subtle, instinctive promptings often
surpassing science, might, it seems, sit at the bedside in a
female form. Or is it that the nurse-function is to be so
far educated and elevated, as at length, without trenching
482
HEALTH.
upon professional titles, to touch the heights of the physi-
cian's skill? The urn of events must speak for us, for here
we are at fault.*
But after all our systems of health, public and private,
many in number as they are, though not enough, there is
one means remaining, which we should be guilty of much
base terror, as well as historical neglect, if we did not dare
to bring forth. In all the branches of the New Medicine,
we have seen the united principle of faith and works
assuming an additional importance, as we have risen from
the administration of drugs stage by stage to the phreno-
pathic art. In the means to which we have alluded, and
which is linked with our common faith, this principle be-
comes all in all. Of course we allude to the healing powers
exerted ' by Christ and His apostles, and by Him be-
queathed to the race of man. As we read the Gospels, we
see how the Divine Man was also the Great Physician ;
how he went about healing all manner of sickness and all
manner of diseases among the people ; and how as many as
touched the hem of his garments, were made whole, every
one. He also commanded his followers to do the like, and
founded cure as the grand evidence of the Christian religion.
His proofs of his mission were sound bodies ; the deaf,
hearing ; the dumb, speaking ; lepers, cleansed ; the dead,
raised ; those who before were blind, now they see. The
channel of this was no learned science, but a simple com-
mand in His name who has all power in heaven and on
earth. Where is the lineal priesthood of this great re-
storation? Where are the claimants for this substantial
* In the meantime our brave friend, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, has
run the gauntlet of the world's prejudices, and taken perhaps the first
medical degree bestowed upon a woman. May success go with her in
her attempt to open up a fresh avenue of occupations to her sex !
CHRISTOPATHY. 483
apostolical successorship ? Where are the layers on of
hands who give man to himself by casting out his devils,
and increase the prime wealth of the earth as the sign and
seal of the advent of the kingdom of heaven ? Where is
the clergy to whom sickness makes its last appeal for
health, when doctors have pronounced the death words,
No hope ? We find them among the fishermen of the first
century, but not among the prelates of the nineteenth :
in mean-clad Peter and Paul, James and John, but not
under the lawn of any right reverend bench. Our pontiffs
say that the age of miracles is past ; but no New Testa-
ment ever told them so ; Christianity, as we read it, was
the institution of miracle as in the order of nature ; and if
the age of miracles is gone, it is because the age of Chris-
tianity is gone. The age of mathematics would be past,
if no man cultivated them. On the other hand we aver,
by all our honesty to our faith, that for every reason we
can perceive, a duty is neglected here which is a main
cause of irreligion and scepticism among men. As in the
sciences, which are the kings of these late days, let this
mode and matter of healing be fairly experimented. It
belongs to the priesthood. Let them turn out into the
inclemencies of society, and try their adjurations against
the storm of physical evil that exasperates the nations to
their core. Let them put on the proofs of the apostolic
power. Let them peril all in this great attempt. Let the
weak excuse of their age of virtue being past, be exchanged
for a godly resolve to bring it back again. If they fail, it
will be because they are not Christian, or else because
Christianity cannot bide its own proofs. If they succeed,
there will be no need of missionaries any more, but man-
kind will sit in a right mind under them, and bless their
privilege, and their Master's name. The vis medicatrix
Y 2
484 HEALTH.
Christi will be the physical demonstration of the life of a
Christian church.
Under all these means, co-working for good, shall not
the body be redeemed, and evil begin to lose the footing
that sickness gives it? By heaven's law the sick have
claims which the healthy have not, and there is more joy
over one man cured, than over ninety and nine who are
sound. This is a test of every society how it speeds, or
how it lags, in administering to its sick. They are the
weakest parts of our common body, and care and thought
turn to them with longings that are the flesh of the physi-
cian's heart. And the more that are healed, the more
concentrate is the love upon those who suffer still ; so that
at length the world's whole skill and tenderness shall
surround with arts and healing tears the bed of the last
sick man.
Yet are we all to die, though in time neither by the
sword of war, nor by the violence of disease. The embryo
passes without fear into a larger world, which is meant to
be kinder than the mother's womb. The man is to be
born again, with as little pain of sense and thought, into
the next expansion of the spirit. Death is the angel to
the irremediable. prceclarum ilium diem I Let us set
our houses in order, make our wills, and take our leave
of all things every day : we shall be wanted among our
fathers afar off on the morrow.
APPENDIX.
Note top. 111.
THROUGHOUT this work we have been anxious to register
the cases in which the body expresses the soul j for we
have a conviction that such effects go deep into the nature
and theory of our corporeal incarnation. If the outward
universe be a manifestation of spirit, it is a fair question
whether in the human sphere the realm of expression be
not the essence of manifestation. And as expression is
either self-evidently intelligible, or nothing, so it amounts,
when fully traced, to a complete exposition of nature in its
universal principles. It is but another name for symbolism
and correspondency. Hence to our mind the importance
of the gestures of the body, in expounding the functions,
and the ultimate structure, of the organs. For example, if
the liver, as bile maker, be the wise organic anger of the
frame, then the whole personality of anger, traced through
every part, from the furies of the face, to the violences of
the arms, and the stampings of the feet, come to be put
back into the liver, and indeed into the bile, which is thus
a wrath full of human significance, and thence capable of
acting, with due terror- strikings, upon the society of the
T 3
486 APPENDIX.
body. So too the manifestation or gestures of love go into
the heart, and shew what it and the blood are doing in
their auricular privacies, &c., &c., &c. We therefore deem
that there is no more important subject in psychology, than
this of expression, or organic Words. And as we indi-
cated before (p. 452), it is the plainest symptom of all
that gives the clue to the expression, all whose parts follow
that bell-weather as its flock.
Note to p. 179.
Trace whatever department we will, we find that ASSO-
CIATION is the new world of this century, whose symptoms
have been long preparing ; growing up, like little coral
apices, the germinating points of future islands and con-
tinents. One early dot of this kind which arose from the
ocean of vagueness, was the doctrine of the association of
ideas, seized by the strong common sense of Hobbes, and
afterwards methodized and mechanized by the genius of
Hartley.
That the human mind stimulates itself into action in
certain lines of ideas, and that there are trains, regiments
and bands of thoughts ; that pleasures and pains determine
the formation of these intellectual cohorts, is a fact in which
there is but little novelty ; and yet when it is seized, and
taken as a stand-point, it leads by these very regiments,
into new kinds of operation. It gives militariness, and
march, and in high cases music to the soul, preparing for
conquest under strategical principles ; for the discipline of
thought, whether discovered as nature's, or commanded
by man, has the same results upon science, as the drill of
armies upon material warfare. We therefore lay it down,
that the doctrine of the association of ideas, when set in
motion, invades every subject with fresh force, and witl
APPENDIX. 487
the new element of breadth of attack. This is not in-
deed a department important in practice : we cite it rather
from its smallness, as shewing that the associative air
has permeated even into the minute sphere of individual
thought.
One step larger, and we come to the material sciences :
and what has been the process here ? Every victory has
been gained by looking at subjects not in themselves alone,
but as connected with their neighbors. How barren each
thing is while it stands upon its own individuality ; how
its properties one by one die down, as we cut it off from
the influences of the surrounding natures ! The association
of single things with each other in a common knowledge,
is what brings them under the grasp of a particular science ;
which is no sooner constituted, than we feel that it too is
unfruitful in itself; and that it begins to yearn, like a young
maiden, with strange desires for conjunction with some
other whole science. The two together are more than
twice either ; they are three at the very first ; they have
a progeny which may rise to any numbers. At the points
where they unite, they must of course fit ; to fit, they must
be of cup and ball construction ; in other words, there must
be a likeness or likingness between them, and this likeness,
when studied, becomes a science of analogies. When the
marriages of a dozen sciences have been observed, they all
begin to group upon each other, and the thought strikes
us that all the sciences fit to each, or that analogy is uni-
versal. Everything likes everything. This sends our
curiosity abroad, and we come upon the thought of uni-
versal organization, and then we find that certain parts of
nature, as vegetables, beasts, and men, are shining lights
of organization ; that flesh, for instance, loves its parts so
well, and that they embrace so closely, that nothing can
488 APPENDIX.
come between them without pain, or destruction. Thus
we only get to individuality as the result of a compact
of sentient beings whom God has so closely linked in
liking, that they cannot be sundered without mischief. The
scientific individuality thus obtained, illustrates our com-
mon individuality, and we are constrained to think is a
true statement of one part of its ground.
From this point our thoughts become organic, and we
are sure to make organization or association into a rule of
judgment, and a method of discovery ; insisting, by faith
and science, that the whole world is covertly what the
highest things in it are manifestly. We have found that
the best and most speaking bodies are disposed in mutual
order and helpfulness ; we dictate downwards, from the
heights of nature, that this is the case with the other parts ;
and that their imperfection consists in nothing else, than
the fact that they do not so openly express the everlasting
order. The plants are poor timid things which cannot tell
us what they have in them ; the beasts have better voices ;
and mankind are different over again, precisely according
as they can display that association and organization which
is the lesson of the whole. The best men indeed are still
markedly individual ; but why ? Only because they are
the general officers of regiments or armies, and not because
they have no world under them. They are dependent on
much larger and broader bases than other people. The
apex of the pyramid has a free point, but of all the parts,
it rests at last the most heavily upon the ground.
Knowledge displays the associative power in its width
not less than in its height. Observe the new light that
comes simply and solely by putting things together ! This
act constitutes the strength of modern attainments. A re-
markable instance of it is presented in the law of storms,
APPENDIX. 489
as developed by Mr. Redfield and Colonel Reid. In our
incoherent days storms were thought to be gusts more
capricious than our tempers are now thought to be. They
pitched one ship on its beam ends to the south, swooped
another to the east, and sucked down a third into a per-
pendicular grave. At length came a man, who entertained
the notion, of putting the bits of a storm together ; and
he soon found that the pieces fitted ; that one side of the
cup of windy wrath looked east ; others, north, west and
south ; and that there was a hollow in this, as in other
cups. The man found practically that a whole storm was
quite different from the conception of separated parts, and
that it was made up of associated parts. He began to
think that storms " obey regular laws." The world is
now beginning to think that all things do the same ; and
will henceforth look down from that summit which this one
hardy man, by strong efforts, gained.
So too, in physical geography a science consisting
purely of the association of our observations of the world
into one globe of observations. How differently intelli-
gible does the planet become simply by being all repre-
sented, and with its parts in harmony with themselves.
And here another blessing of associative over isolated
thought may be characterized ; the former is pictorial ; the
latter invisible, and made only of wandering points. So
soon as you get fine surface knowledge, picture is painted
thereupon; the white memory then puts itself down on
nature's press, and the soul pulls an impression, which is
durable, nay, everlasting, like other print. The imagi-
nation is the sharp type of this very memory ; and man
becomes thereby an everlasting possessor of the world ; he
takes it with him wherever he goes ; and from its plans, in
the portfolios of his own nature, he can govern the old
estate, let him be roaming among the fixed stars, or safely
490 APPENDIX.
moored in his final kingdom of the heavens. We may
surely deny that the isolated thought has any pretty pic-
tures to show; has anything in it to remember, or can
last through successive hours ; much less, after death has
thrown the lumber away for ever. Not so, however, the
organic and colored thought which is shelled off by every
thing when once we see how much all things love each
other.
And is not this to be applied to practice, and to higher
thought? Will not man, when put together, be found
to be the variegated landscape of a new earth? Will
not his chances then first be developed? Will not his
problems become parts of a pictorial human life, which in
point of reality, and unquestionableness, will take rank
with land and sea, with the skies, and the verdurous earth ?
We dare not answer the question in the negative, until the
experiment of association, successful, so far, in every other
sphere, has been tried in this crowning matter of human
development and happiness. Observe, however, that the
putting together of man, is not a mechanical, but a human
or religious act.
Note to p. 449.
It seems very evident that disease has as many centres
in the human organism, as there are great spheres of its
powers. There are diseases which spring from the body,
and others that emanate from the mind. In short, as there
are hepatic, pulmonary and cerebral complaints, both idio-
pathic and sympathetic, so there are others of the reason,
imagination, senses, equally following this twofold distri-
bution. It is probable that disease can only be cured by
attacking it in its own centres : bodily disease by drugs
and bodily means, and spiritual diseases by their appro-
APPENDIX. 491
priate administrations. Thus where a disease from the
mind is sympathetically felt in the body considered as the
extremity of the mind, phrenopathic means will cure it :
but these can only relieve the mental symptoms, not the
root of the mischief, if the malady be primary in the body
itself.
FINIS.
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