152 ASSIMILATION AND ITS ORGANS. 



the freedom of the atmosphere; finally, the brain is the governor of 

 assimilation, and compasses on our behalf the ethers and spaces of 

 the mundane system, introducing us to the illimitable spheres. The 

 human body, as Pan's last flock, crops every nature that it touches. 

 The highest organization also coincides in this with the lowest, that 

 it is an omnivorous stomach, which has the senses and faculties of 

 human kind domesticated as tastes in its comprehensive cellwork. 

 And so by a just divination, the word taste is synonymous with what- 

 ever is refined and of good fashion in the objects of our knowledge. 

 And in the process of assimilation, and the parallel process of 

 nutrition, we are to consider that day by day, and year by year, the 

 spiritual essence is assiduous to constitute the body in its likeness ; 

 this being the reason of the vast series of materials supplied by the 

 earth and the atmospheres; of the various influences brought to bear ; 

 of the manifold changes and purifications that occur momentaneously 

 in the body itself; of the stupendous chemistry and growth carried 

 on there : — all with a view to bring forth, and support, a piece of 

 nature, which shall availably correspond to the soul, to which, how- 

 ever, nothing in the world can more than conveniently approximate. 

 This ever-nearing, ever-distant correspondency of the soul, is the 

 human body, whose form or plan is spiritual, or from the spiritual, 

 and only the matter of its seeming is material. 



It is wonderful indeed how this correspondence is maintained dur- 

 ing our quickest variations. We sleep and wrestle, work and play, 

 weep and laugh, with the same body, which answers equally to all 

 these states. Every passion, as a human extense, uses the person 

 of this dramatic frame, in which all that we do, or can do, is con- 

 templated from the first. This is notorious from the countenance, 

 which assimilates with the momentary spirit. The world also and 

 circumstance are as flexible and correspondent: according to our 

 wants, they feed us with good or evil, and bend about to the whole 

 exigency and gladiatorship of the spirit. The soul distils the food 

 not into chemicals and gases, but incarnations of its moods. Anger 

 sops in the same dish with love, and both are confirmed at the one 

 supper. This rapid ensoulment of the alimental chain is especially 

 marked in the saliva, which as we noticed before is a running com- 

 missary between the mind and the food. The soul glitters down 



