ESSENTIALNESS OF THE HEART. 175 



round, and how slight the resistance is, where all the parts contri- 

 bute in their places to reciprocation and equilibrium. Under these 

 provisions the smallest touch awakens the organism into its beauti- 

 ful motions, emulous so far as nature can be, of everlasting exist- 

 ence and immortal life. 



But if we delve a little under the human organism, we shall 

 find that the circulation of the blood by the heart, is based upon a 

 natural or spontaneous tendency to circulation in the blood itself, 

 and that as in the case of the nervous system (p. 31), there is an 

 automatic life at the foundation in every part, the fluids as well as 

 the solids, to which higher stories or more measured powers are 

 afterwards superadded. Thus the sap circulates in plants, and the 

 blood in many of the lower animals without any heart to propel 

 it. The fluid runs by attraction to the spot where it is wanted, and 

 forms an uninterrupted fibre of supply, which is continually wound 

 off into the loom of the organs ; and it is indifferent whether we look 

 upon it as fluid or solid, for the one end draws the middle and the 

 other end, as if the current of life were a series of coherent 

 threads; while on the other hand the portions wanted for deposit, 

 drop out of the chain when and whither the want pulls them ; for 

 want itself, in its phases in this sphere, is their magnetism and their 

 string. 



The heart, nevertheless, though based upon all that is hearty, 

 magnetic or occultly impulsive in the animate and inanimate worlds, 

 is itself the essence of the human circulation, just as the supreme 

 or rational brain is the essence of the human nervous system with 

 its animation. We may indeed say that there are two essences to 

 every progressive being, the beginning and the end of it, or the germ 

 and the ideal. The germ gives the body and the ideal the spirit, 

 which latter is to alter the body, made already with a capacity to be 

 altered, into its own likeness. The ideal, or what is the same thing, 

 the uppermost addition, as in the vascular system, the heart, in the 

 nervous system, the mind and the cerebrum, become the essence of 

 their respective orders; for in a progressive nature, it is not that 

 which is, but that which becomes, that comports with the moving 

 series, or comes into the view of ends. Moreover, the essence or 

 peculiar capacity is that which distinguishes each organization from 



