118 THE HUMAN LUNGS. 



movement ; and they intellectualize the body, or contribute their 

 share towards constituting its peculiar humanity. 



If sense, passion, and thought are in a certain dependence upon 

 breathing, so also is action to at least an equal extent. All fineness 

 of work, all that in art which comes out of the infinite delicacy of 

 manhood as contrasted with animality, requires a peculiar breath- 

 lessness and expiring. To listen attentively to the finest and least 

 obtrusive sounds, as with the stethoscope to the murmurs in the 

 breast, or with mouth and ear to distant music, needs a hush that 

 breathing disturbs; the common ear has to die and be born again, 

 to exercise these delicate attentions. To take an aim at a rapid- 

 flying or minute object, requires in like manner a breathless time 

 and a steady act; the very pulse must receive from the stopped 

 lungs a pressure of calm. To adjust the exquisite machinery of 

 watches or other instruments, requires in the manipulator a motion- 

 less hover of his own central springs. Even to see and observe 

 with an eye like the mind itself, necessitates a radiant pause. For 

 the negative proof, the first actions and attempts of children are 

 unsuccessful, being too quick, and full moreover of confusing 

 breaths ; the life has not fixed aerial space to play the game, but 

 the scene itself flaps and flutters with alien wishes and thoughts. 

 In short, the whole reverence of remark and deed depends upon the 

 above conditions, and we lay it down as a general truth, that every 

 man requires to educate Jus breath for Ms business. Bodily strength, 

 mental strength, both lean upon our respirations. 



The co-operation and state of the lungs in mental effort is repre- 

 sented on a large scale in their strain during parturition, in which 

 they let out the air in groans from the relaxed and almost closed 

 larynx. This, which is the type of all labor, as child-bearing is the 

 image of all productiveness, is carried on by holding the breath, and 

 determining it not towards the air but towards the obstacle ; the por- 

 tion of air whose spirit is broken by the effort escaping immediately 

 afterwards in the form of a broken breath or groan. The air, 

 which exercises everywhere a universal pressure, exerts in the body, 

 when compressed by the muscles, a universal push, and is a medi- 

 um in all our fruitful pangs, whether those by which children are 

 born, or those by which thoughts, which are the mind's children. 



