130 THE HUMAN LUNGS. 



alien that happens or can happen in the wide creation. This is 

 owing to his body first, and subsequently to his mind. The lungs 

 are the divine provision which introduces and accommodates him to 

 the world of change. 



Let us then end by translating the lungs into thought and hu- 

 manity. Every principle has a first name by which we lisp it in 

 material representations. First it is an individual thing j next a 

 being with relations ; and at last it figures among the grand ends 

 of existence. The world and man are the same principles, trans- 

 lated as they rise from the ground, into other atmospheres, or into 

 more and more universal languages. Form in the lowest degree, 

 means life in the second, and love in the third, and intellect in the 

 highest; terms and things which are very diverse, and yet but one 

 principle, full of resources, and showing its face through different 

 windows of the universe. The soul, an inhabitant of all heights 

 and climates, addresses the tongue of each to the creatures of the 

 same ; and one word is a brain, another the lungs, and so 

 on through the hieroglyphical polyglot of the body. Every syl- 

 lable there has its mission, to make mind, to support mind, and to 

 alter it. Good is the interpreter of the whole, and truth is the 

 interpretation. 



What now are the lungs ? They are a yawning hollow in the 

 top of the man, the sides of which cavern are alive. The world 

 enters them bodily. Tendency to vacuum, which nature abhors, is 

 their spirit. They draw us out into more than we are, and we 

 shrink back as nearly as we can into our old dimensions. Reluc- 

 tant vegetation ceases as they open, and life is born, crying. They 

 are an engine added to the body, under whose draw it becomes pro- 

 gressive, and every space therein is enlarged, to take in more, and 

 to live more. They pull open all the solids, that all the fluids may 

 enter them ) and strain every nerve and blood-vessel into fresh ac- 

 tivities and virtues. They give room and airiness to the inward 

 parts, and set them to work in a daily larger sphere. Now these, 

 in altered phrase, are also the functions of the understanding mind, 

 which as it is opened, shows and causes new wants, and new wills 

 and ways. Our wants are so many threatened vacua, according to 

 the form of which, we open to the pressure of the truth, whether 



