THE C1RCULUS VITJE. G7 



tures: 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 constant — 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 immaterial 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 con- 

 fers on the organization, first, thoughts and plans, wise as the soul, 

 loving or unitary, and irresistibly organic : secondly, the cosmical 

 and physical kinsmen of these, which are dramatically what the first 

 are really, or which confer mundane efficacy upon the principles of 

 thought. And thirdly, the body of the body, or the primal incar- 

 nation. These three, or life, nature, and body, are one in the nerv- 

 ous 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 rational 

 light; full of understandings and judgments \ full of stupendously 

 reasonable deeds ; and materially an incarnation of the soul. This 

 is what the brain is empowered to give; the brain being the com- 

 mon 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 arte- 

 ries, whose fine twigs, inserted into the cortex, are the vense cavse 

 of the cortical hearts. The secretion 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 



