110 THE HUMAN LUNGS. 



less play between inspiration and expiration ; and that sight and 

 hearing, concurring often with suspension of the breath, live above 

 the lungs in the airless cairns of the brain. Touches and tastes 

 we breathe in ; smells we scent, or breathe in and out ; and sights 

 and sounds we do not breathe, but see and hear, athwart the air, 

 either in spite or in the absence of its proper motions. 



Thus much for the passive immission of the material or pulmo- 

 nary senses. The senses however have an active condition in which 

 their sensations are perceptions. In this state they partake of the 

 common law of the two higher senses, and are awake and efficient 

 at the times of suspended respiration. For active sense is a breath- 

 less power, and does not draw in body, but puts forth soul. Thus 

 touch as a mental product is tact: it turns the tables upon its 

 objects, makes itself critically harder than they, and resists and 

 rejects, picks and chooses their impressions by deliberate inquest. 

 The breath awaits while the steady-fingering thought explores, and 

 then inspires, not whatever comes, but precise information. Let 

 the reader observe himself when he is feeling for such information, 

 and he will find his curiosity rejoicing in periods of suspended lungs. 

 In active taste the same rule obtains. We no longer draw in the 

 pleasant flavors by mouthfuls, but disparting the tongue for special 

 acts, we make little sucks and respirations of the palate upon speci- 

 men morsels; we fill the decent sense with judgment, taking small 

 account of pleasure ; and holding the general breath, we calculate 

 the result, undistracted by the lungs, in its smallest figures. last- 

 ing, then, as contradistinguished from taste, is carried on in the 

 intervals of common breathing. So also is smelling, which works 

 its problems upon minute quantities of odors, shutting away the 

 volumes ; actively we exert our smell upon mere snatches of scent 

 made to run hither and thither in the inquisition of the nose. 

 And as we said before, we hear best in breathless attention, and see 

 most observantly when the eye-thought gazes, unshaken and un- 

 prompted by the lungs. 



It is also to be noticed that the voice, which consists of percep- 

 tions freed from the mind, and launched into the air, is made of the 

 material of the expirations. The mind is breathed out into the so- 



