THE CONSPIRING OF MANKIND. 121 



exceptional facts and moments in which neighbor comes close to 

 neighbor, and man hangs as a lover upon the breath of man. 



Indeed it seems remarkable that the influence of the vegetable 

 world upon climate, and of electricity upon the atmosphere, should 

 be admitted, and that no influence of the human world of a similar 

 but higher kind, should be suspected. Are the thought-movements 

 and the will-movements sooner absorbed than the sound-movements ? 

 do they pattern and sculpture the air with less efficiency? or in what 

 do their modifications end? Is the music of man's brain and lungs 

 of no Orphic power in the tenseness of God's created harmony? 

 But the time is not yet for these and similar questions; they are how- 

 ever as doves which float already in the poetic air, and the dry land 

 of science is about to appear, upon which they can alight. 



Quitting this consideration we have to say, that not only the mo- 

 ments but the lifetime are parted into breathing spaces; for the first 

 breath and the last are the bounds of this existence, and the ends 

 shape the means, or constitute the career itself into a series of breath- 

 ings. These larger lines of breath consist of habitual modes of 

 respiration answering to the tone of life, and constituting pulmonary 

 morals, manners and customs. They are determined by the mixture 

 of the four terms already specified in various proportions, and by 

 the velocities and spiritual qualities which are carried into these. 

 In this way the lungs move and associate individuals, as we before 

 noticed that they move and associate the organs (p. 106); for only 

 those who conspire or breathe alike are together in thought and in- 

 tention ; and the society of persons tends to last only so long as they 

 have common respirations. The attempt to prolong companionship 

 beyond these limits disarranges the springs of the organs; the pre- 

 sence of heterogeneous persons straitens our breath, or as we say, 

 dispirits us. But we shall have to recur to this subject, of discord 

 or want of tune in breathing, when we speak of Public Health, which 

 means public association on the principles of the organs. 



In mechanical cooperation the unanimity of breathing among the 

 workmen is essential to oneness of effort. Hence the rude cheery 

 work-shouts that sailors extemporize in weighing anchor, masons in 

 hauling up blocks of stone, and so forth; and hence the adjunction 

 of music to battalions, which require to have one spirit and step. 

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