NECESSITY OF THE PULMONARY MOTION. 99 



But again, if the organs are alive, the operations that they per- 

 form upon the blood demand a general motion on their part. If we 

 are to regard them as dead sieves or filtering stones, then it may be 

 sumcient 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 con- 

 ception proper in a body overrun by spirited nerves, which in pro- 

 portion 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 particular motions neces- 

 sarily 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 his skill; in the partial 

 man or the organ a corresponding management performs its functions. 

 Without precise means set in real motion, you have no art and ma- 

 nufacture, no saliva and no bile. These latter are the most mar- 

 vellous of fabrics; the body is the most stupendous of factories. 

 Our commonest thoughts upon such subjects are the way to the best. 

 Destruction, then, is in a manner compatible with rest, but construc- 

 tion never. 



The sap is indeed distributed in plants without any apparent ex- 

 pansion 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 meaning of animal as contradistinguished from vege- 

 table, 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 vegetable tissue could asso- 

 ciate in the body of life, but it would be the sport of activities which 

 it could not share or reciprocate. A liver that was merely vegetating 

 would be pressed to death in a body that is ceaselessly animating. 



