THE BREATH OF THE SENSES. 109 



accompanied with full breaths, sometimes running into deep sighs if 

 the sense be peculiarly grateful ; and in extreme cases of the kind, 

 inspiration almost obliterates expiration, which survives only in 

 gasps and murmurs. Painful contact on the other hand strait- 

 ens the lungs, 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 resolute- 

 ness 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 proceeding, 

 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 con- 

 sciousness. At meals, however, we breath with satisfaction, for the 

 circumstances are inspiring; and tending, as they do, to enlarge 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 opera- 

 tions. Air and scent are inseparable companions. To breathe 

 therefore involves to smell, the one function swallowing the other 

 up into the brain, and down to the bottom of the lungs. The 

 motives to breathe furnished by these three senses make inspiration 

 deeper and larger than it would otherwise be (p. 94), for pleasure 

 takes great lungfuls ; thus they animate 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 siylit, 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 system. For hearing and sight, 

 so far as they are essentially 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 connection with the lungs, that touch and taste browse in 

 the fields of inspiration ; that smell, a winged sense, flits with cease- 

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