126 THE HUMAN LUNGS. 



head. To be bom alive, is to be born -with a germ of mind related 

 world wards J to have such a spark, is to have a rhythmical motion 

 of the brain directed bodywards, which motion cannot subsist or 

 be promoted without a seconding rhythmical action of the lungs. 

 There is no need of any other principle than the harmony of the 

 lungs with the brain to account for the first act of breathing, which 

 in fact, is the beginning of our life. We take the first breath be- 

 cause we choose, and we take the ten thousandth for the same 

 reason ; and when we do not choose, as in sleep, it is as if we did, 

 because Providence backs our wills with similar wills of His own, 

 then called souls, which fill up our intervals, and make our lives 

 coherent.* Before all inquiries into the causes of beginnings in 

 the body, there stand two inexorable axioms: 1. The soul; and, 2. 

 The consentancousness between it and the body. After this, the 

 explanation of any given first effect, as, e.g., breathing, lies in our 

 knowledge of the functions of the effect, which account for our using 

 it. The argument of the human body is like the body, living; or 

 every physiological problem may be put thus : Why does the soul 

 do so and so? 



Before concluding, we revert (p. 95) for a moment to the statical 

 function of the lungs, to remark how these organs distribute life 

 into strata. The vulgar call the lungs lights, and so they are; for 

 the belly gives us gravity and links us to the ground, but the lungs 

 give us levity, and lift us towards the air. Erectness of attitude 

 (p. 103) begins in the chest; we give ourselves the airs by which we 

 strut, first in the breaths and last in the muscles. The second 

 power of erectness is flight, such as we see in birds and insects, 

 which conspire with the air so well, because their bones and tissues 

 are open to it ; besides which they can rarefy the air, both by their 

 heat, and by the cupping action of their powerful muscles upon the 

 closed cavities of the frame. Their feathers too are outward air 

 cells, answering to the universality of their lungs within. Man 



* Here it may be noted that the lungs correspond to both the cerebrum and 

 cerebellum. For their breathing- may be either involuntary or voluntary. In 

 this respect they combine in a single organ the functions of the accidental and 

 permanent life, or of the will and the nature (p. 70). They therefore cement 

 the bond between the two brains by a marriage of their motions in the body. 



