114 THE HUMAN LUNGS. 



the expirations. During such imagination, accordingly, the head is 

 held up, and the breathing tube to the very mouth levelled like a 

 barrel : words fly forth with arrowy straightness; the inspiration is 

 inaudible though sufficient, but the man pants audibly towards the 

 unseen, and each pant externizes more of the breath on which the 

 faculty pulls and feeds. When the breath-palace is built, the laws 

 of gravity bring it to the ground; whence air castles, as the frequent 

 beginning of earth castles, are not to be despised; imagination being 

 the proximate architect of the arts and sciences. We may formulize 

 the respiration of this faculty by saying, that during its exercise the 

 lungs take their airs to themselves just as the imagination repre- 

 sents its objects to itself externally. This lung conceit is one means 

 by which the body holds its own sphere, and protects it amid the 

 great fluctuations. 



Respiration has also a peculiar relation to the intellectual pro- 

 cesses, which lie, it will be found, in fixity of breath, proper state 

 of lungs, or suspended respiration. Among other reasons for this is 

 the fact, already pointed out, that inspiration is a means of drawing 

 up the bodily sensations to the brain ; for the body is as a sponge 

 let down into the world, whose attraction upon the waves of mate- 

 rial sense is exerted by pulmonary inspiration. But in proportion 

 as these lower influences are admitted, often in the same proportion 

 intellect is drugged, and sleeps in the cortical beds. We speak of 

 a familiar fact. But because the mind has power over the lungs, 

 it can handle the senses by their means, and prevent the floods of 

 worldliness from penetrating to the upper sensoria. So also can it 

 stop the mounting passions. This it does by suspending the breath, 

 and cutting off" the supplies of sense and animality. Or, to speak 

 more anatomically, the brain at such times refuses to be invaded by 

 the blood, which contains the turmoil of the lower life : the cortical 

 spherules keep it at arm's length : for it is to be remembered that 

 the brain expires concurrently with the lungs, and when the latter 

 shut off the blood, the brain does the like. Hence it is that thought 

 is still, and contemplation breathless: each involving, first, fixed 

 breath, and second, a small expiring; and so on, until the thought 

 is traversed, or the effort ends and begins anew. Deep thought, 

 then, where not given directly by heaven, but conceded to human 



