EVEN BREATHING. 123 



But in speaking of the four parts of breath we have separated 

 qualities which are not incapable of union. Thus we have regarded 

 expiration as of spiritual significance, and inspiration as of sensual, 

 whereas these two may be balanced, and the just lungs in consecu- 

 tive moments may show them to be equal weights. Pleasure indeed 

 makes inspiration, and energy and resolve animate expiration, but 

 pleasure and energy are sometimes united in the joy of ivork, and 

 then the inspiration and expiration are at one, and the man breathes 

 con amove. Thus in what we call happy moments, when we do our 

 little miracles, put in our least imitable touches, and sing our best 

 songs, we breathe as if we breathed not; there is no greed on the 

 one side of the lungs, or effort on the other, but levelness of taking 

 in and giving out : the gold of inspiration is minted with the die of 

 action, and it passes through expiration without a challenge, and so 

 expiration itself becomes plenarily inspired. In this state both sides 

 of the Janus of breath, peace and war, pleasure and energy, are 

 combined in happiness. The highest moments and emotions are of 

 this balanced order; innocence, peace, and the perfect qualities, pro- 

 duce equality on the two scales of the functions of the lungs. Man 

 inhabits the world aright, in this equilibrium between his passions 

 and his actions, whose hours are as the immortality of his childhood 

 and the genius of his life. And innocence, peace, and all the sweet 

 even-breathers glide down through a variety of states into that which 

 is their compound atom, sleep, the fountain into which they descend, 

 and from which again they arise like love born fresh from the morn- 

 ing ocean waters. In this sleep there are many depths of the level 

 breathing; the child's, which scarcely stirs the surface of his tiny 

 lake of breath;* the man's, which goes deeper, but always accord- 

 ing to justice and equation. Thus in the fair proportion of the four 

 terms, we locate the model states of waking and sleep : even-mind- 



* The laws of the diffusion of gases are adequate to produce the function or- 

 dinarily assigned to expiration ; but the motion of expiration, and its constant 

 variations, are additional to this function, and to be looked upon as livingly me- 

 chanical, or, in other words, psychical phenomena. Moreover, the chemical 

 impregnation of the air with the breath, is a different thing, both in regard to 

 space or extension, and time or permanence, from the vital impregnation of the 

 air with motions : for the material breath falls in dregs which soon pass away, 



