176 THE HUMAN HEART. 



all others. The essence of man is that mind which he possesses in 

 disco mniunity with any animal ; the essence of his lungs is their 

 idealization by that mind, and the peculiar physical structure which 

 capacitates them for this becoming ; the essentialness of his heart 

 is thus likewise. Hence it is unscientific to regard the spine as the 

 essential part of the nervous system in any animals but those in which 

 the spine is the highest part ; or the heartless circulation as essential 

 in any but acardiac systems . Cerebrate organizations are created 

 for a brain, and long for a brain, and acephalous monsters, though 

 they may exist, cannot continue; so also organizations fitted for a 

 heart, though they may maintain life for a time with a defective 

 heart, yet cannot become adult, or travel on the road of ends, for 

 their essence has failed them. This is not a matter of words, but a 

 difference of ends and methods, involving the question of whether 

 the sciences shall be founded upon distinctions or upon confusion ; 

 of whether they shall walk upon their feet, or stand upon their 

 heads; and of whether the high, the moving and the intelligible 

 shall give the cue to induction, or the stationary, the occult and the 

 low. 



And here we may remark that in organizations it is the additions 

 ab extra that become of all importance in the long run. Thus 

 nature, at first vertebral and serpentine, becomes capital and human 

 by the addition of parts which snakes and tortoises can dispense 

 with. And these extraneous organisms, not at first necessary to 

 mere existence, but necessary to the ends of existence, become the 

 essentials of useful knowledge, because they show the aims of facts, 

 or the ends of all developments. On the other hand, the basis 

 which nature supplies to be built upon, is of no importance except 

 for the building, just as the vertebral column is insignificant except- 

 ing for and to the head. Precisely in the same manner, the magnetic, 

 sap-like, and even animal forces of the circulation, are of no import- 

 ance in our bodies excepting as the ground upon which the last 

 essence, the human heart, is to be built and chambered. Man at 

 any rate is a distinct subject, and that which is manly in his heart 

 is all that belongs to its human physiology. The rest is animality, 

 vegetable physiology or general physics, and had better be sought 

 after in its purity among the beasts, the plants, or the loadstones. 



