128 On the Structure, Distribution, and Functions of the Nerves. 



eye-brows elevated, and the eye-balls largely uncovered ; or 

 why, with hesitating and bewildering steps, his eyes are rapidly 

 and wildly in search of something. His mind we know is 

 intent upon the objects of his apprehensions, and manifests a 

 direct influence upon the outward organs. If we observe him 

 further, there is a spasm at his breast; he cannot breathe 

 freelv ; the chest remains elevated, and his respiration is short 

 and rapid : there is a gasping and convulsive motion of his 

 lips ; a tremor on his hollow cheeks ; a gulping and catching 

 of his throat ; his heart knocks at his ribs, while yet there is no 

 force in the circulation, the lips and cheeks being ashy pale. 



The same phaenomena are presented by grief: indeed the 

 respiratory nerves of the trunk, in like manner as those of the 

 face, are the instruments of expression, from the smile upon 

 the infant's cheek to the last agony of life. It is when the 

 strong man is subdued by the mysterious influence of soul on 

 bodv, and when the passions may be truly said to tear the 

 breast, that we have the most afflicting picture of human frailty, 

 and the most unequivocal proof that it is the order of func- 

 tions which we have been considering that is then affected. 

 In the first struggles of the infant to draw breath, in the man 

 recovering from a state of suffocation, and in the agony of 

 passion, when the breast labours from the influence at the 

 heart, the same system of parts is affected, the same nerves, 

 the same muscles, and the symptoms or characters have a 

 strict resemblance. 



Upon a careful review of all that has been said, the author 

 has made it appear, that instead of the par vagum being the 

 only respiratory nerve, it is in fact the central one of a system 

 of nerves of great extent ; and, further, that the vital organs of 

 circulation and respiration do not, as has been supposed, de- 

 pend chiefly upon the influence of the sympathetic nerve, but 

 that they have an appropriate system ; which, extricated as it 

 now is from the confusion that encumbered it, may be seen to 

 be superadded to the common animal attributes of feeling and 

 agency : through this system we see as it were engrafted upon 

 and superadded to the original nature, higher powers of 

 agency corresponding to our condition of mental superiority : 

 these are not the organs of breathing merely, but of natural 

 and articulate language also, and adapted to the expression 

 of sentiment, in the workings of the countenance and of the 

 breast, that is, by signs as well as by words. So that the breast 

 becomes the organ of the passions, and bears the same rela- 

 tion to the development of sentiments, as the organs of the 

 senses do to the ideas of sense. 



XX. On 



