72 Phrenology. 
Surely, not from the eye itself, although it is the most perfect 
and beautiful of optical instruments; not from the fibres of the fa- 
cial muscles; not from the bony skeleton of the face ; not from the 
air cells and blood vessels of the lungs; still less, from the viscera 
and limbs; and with equal certainty, not from the cavities, the 
valves, and the strong muscular fabric of the heart itself, which is 
only the grand hydraulic organ for receiving and propelling the 
blood, in its double circulation both through the entire body to 
recruit its waste, and through the lungs, to receive the beneficent 
influence of the oxygen of the air, without which, in its next - 
circulation through the body, the altered blood would prove a 
poison 
‘Most persons are startled when told, that the physical heart. 
has nothing to do with our mental or moral manifestations. 
What! does not its quick pulsation, its tumultuous and irregular 
throb, when fear, or love, or joy, or anger animates our faculties 
does not this bounding movement, shooting a thrill through the 
bosom, nor the attendant blush, or death-like paleness of the fea- 
tures, prove that the heart is a mental or moral organ? Certainly 
not; these phenomena only evince that by means of our nerves, 
the divine principle within electrifies us, as it were, our muscles 
and thus accelerates-or retards the current of the blood through 
the arteries, as well as the movement of the muscles themselves, 
and especially of the heart, which, in relation to the circulation 
of the blood, is the most important of them all. The physical 
heart is no more to the mind and the affections, than the hose of 
a fire engine is to the intelligence that works the machine, whose 
successive strokes impel the hurrying fluid along, ina manner not’ 
unlike that which attends the circulation of the blood in the ar- 
teries. 
Where then shall we look for the seat of the mind? We are 
seriously assured that some persons have believed the stomach to’ 
be the favored region. The stomach, with its various coats, its 
innumerable nerves and blood vessels, its muscular tissues, and its 
gastric secretions, is a mere cavity for the reception of aliment ; it 
is alternately distended with food and fluids, or partially collapsed 
by inanition, and although exquisitely sensible, by its nervous ap- 
paratus, both to external and internal injury, all that belongs to it 
1s obviously required for the discharge of its appropriate func- 
tions in the reception and digestion of aliment; no office by it 
