THE BREATH OF THOUGHT. 115 



effort, is gained by the descent of a ladder of expirations, and the 

 body dies down into intelligence by this scale : the best of such per- 

 ceptions come from the confines of expiration and the grave, which 

 lies at the bottom of the lungs. Intellect, therefore, in this light, 

 is the capacity of standing and expiring, and living still ; death to 

 the body governing the body; an infinitesimal immortality into which 

 thought expires and expires, to brighten and brighten its lives. To 

 the senses, suspended animation is suspended consciousness ; to the 

 intellect suspended animation may be life, thought and supreme 

 wakefulness. For it lives when the body is gasping : its chosen 

 sons, as they drag the world onwards, are verily at their list gasp, 

 in the acceptance of their own mortal immortality. The intellect, 

 then, through the lungs, puts the body down under its palm ; 

 whispers to the sea of delirious sense, "Peace, be still !" and plays 

 its melodies in the charmed air upon the whitest keys of silence. 



Intellect touches so near upon trance, that the highest cases of 

 either involve common phenomena, and exist in the same persons. 

 But trance is complete suspension of the breath, sometimes foi long 

 periods. This suspension of the breath of the lungs involves the 

 standing of the spirit of the brain, and the stand of this is tie gaze 

 of the intellectual eye, whose final and hard victory is to sie. In 

 some subjects, if the lungs are fixed, including the brain, tie body 

 can wait for breath and spirit for an indefinite time. It stll lives, 

 because there is a standing spirit in the body and a standing breath 

 in the lungs, which partake of the fixity, or are charned and 

 entranced. These are cases in which life stands, and tie proper 

 spirit can go and return, because the animal state is safe md fixed. 

 Nay, the time of the trance or separation counts for nothing. We 

 do not know a limit to the duration of the body under tiese condi- 

 tions ; it is as a day miraculously prolonged, when our sun stands 

 still upon Mount Gibeon and our moon in the Valley of Ajalon. 

 Nor do we know a limit to the excursions of the intelbct on these 

 holidays, when it visits its celestial birthplace, secure cf finding its 

 lungs and factories ready to start into reciprocation at a moment's 

 notice on its re-arrival.* 



* The reader will notice that scientific experiments maybe nude by whoever 

 pleases, upon the concurrences of the lungs with the mind and ttebody ; and that 



