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 
 
 K 2 
 
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, 
 
 K3 
 
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 
 
 L 2 
 
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 
 
 L 3 
 
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. 
 
 Walton & Mitchell, Printers, 24, Wardour Street, London 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO ^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. 
 
 Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405. 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 31986 
 
 UNIV. 
 
 a 
 
 S 
 
 <> 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
YB 
 
 .. I I. 
 
 I