112 THE HUMAN LUNGS. 



plight of love, bereft of its delicious sighs?* How could pride exist 

 without its hardened chest and swollen throat ? Or rage without 

 his choking breaths ? Or anger without his tempests ? How should 

 our poor weariness endure, if it had never a yawn to console it ? 

 And how would joy and gladness fail if their healthy bosoms did not 

 swell with trembling airs of the clear blue firmament, eager to re- 

 ascend in songs? But these are only a few of the presents that the 

 lungs draw from the mighty winds to bestow upon their brethren, 

 the passions. The law is this. Each infant or dawning passion 

 disports itself first in the brain; attitudinizes there to the top 

 of its bent in the chambers of imagery ; observes and admires its 

 goodly appearance in the mirrors of fancy, and is king uncontrolled 

 in its own little cortical spheres. Then as the lungs are plastic as 

 air, it descends into the theatre of resistance through their conve- 

 nient mid-way, and shapes and crystalizes the wind for the moment 

 into hardness and strength, softness or gentleness, sighs or fulness, 

 or any of the other forms which the dramatic occasion requires, or 

 the muscles and limbs demand as a ground for peculiar action. For 

 each emotion it hews the body into a different block, wherewith the 

 emotion pushes its way in the world. In a word, the lungs are the 

 bodily arena of the passions; they give shape to our impulses, in- 

 crease and deepen them, and begin to carry them into works. In 

 inward gestures and deeply silent murmurings they first imprison 

 the words and deeds that are at last to resound through history, and 

 push the nations to their goal. 



But to trace the special inhabitation of the passions or brain spirits 

 in the breaths or lung spirits, will require a volume. f It may how- 

 ever be noticed that the inspiring passions concur with the pleasant 



* Here we may remark that the spirit of the passions and actions, nay, of the 

 states of man generally, may receive its formula from the breath of the lungs ; 

 for the breathing is a representative phenomenon, and is to action what words 

 are to thought, and what tones or music are to feeling. If we hear the breathing 

 of those whom we do not see, we infer to a certain degree what they are doing, 

 and their general tranquillity, or the reverse. And this is a walk of observation 

 that may be cultivated to almost any extent. In very susceptible persons, the 

 inferences drawn from the breathing of others are wonderful. 



f We have made some progress with such a work, but the field is of an un- 

 expected magnitude. 



