UNIVERSALITY OF THE LUNG PRINCIPLE. 129 



the voluntary moments of the machine are the breathings ; that 

 thus time is meted out in our frames, and we are introduced as 

 finished clocks of time into a world of time — of measured changes. 

 So it is that we are tuned to the universe, which exhibits the same 

 play in its furnitures through all their fortunes. And so it is that 

 we are fitted to our place in humanity, which expands and contracts 

 from epoch to epoch, from idea to idea, from institution to institu- 

 tion. All things are as cycles of not an unending but an ever- 

 during providential change. Their existence in time consists in 

 their motion and change. Merely subsisting without moving on- 

 wards, would involve their rejection into the rear, among the 

 shadows of the past. They live in the present by breathing as the 

 universe is breathing. Moreover all things have their own space, 

 their means of liberty, the play-ground of their being. And the 

 wonder of the body lies in this, that it brings man into the whole 

 order of the world, without surprise, because with full preparation. 

 If he is to be subject to day and night, there is day and night already 

 written upon his members; half his moments are a rest, even when 

 work and thought are in their fullest power; his aims and desires 

 have their gay, fresh morning, their high-flown noon, dubious twi- 

 light, meditative evening, and night of cessation or repose. If he 

 is to ride in the train of the fourfold seasons, the reins which direct 

 the procession pass through his own soul and system ; he finds that 

 there is a season for all things human ; that the body has its spring, 

 of refining delight and happiness ; its good summer ; its fruitful 

 autumn ; its winter, whether of needful rest, or unhappy torpidity ; 

 and this, on the minute scale of hours as well as in the circle of 

 the threescore years and ten. If he is to live in the revolutions of 

 his own societies, his mind and body are still at home, for they 

 themselves are nothing but revolutions. And if he is to die — to 

 expire at last — does he not die in his atoms, and expire many 

 times every minute during his longest life; and carelessly lets go 

 his breath after each inspiration, secure that the outward and in- 

 ward powers are ordered to revive him from the fast embrace of this 

 mimic death. So he is a genuine part of the series of nature ; a 

 true heir of time; a life depending on variety; amoving accident 

 of progress; a being of alternate cycles; one to whom nothing is 



