THE USES OF THE CIRCULATION. 181 



next to all ; where the toughness of vegetation is a disease, and 

 where fresh formations are extemporized with mushroom rapidity, 

 and dissolutions take place with equal speed. Cells in this case 

 melt like mist into their original currents, and the only set of ana- 

 logues which do not fail us, are the changes of the mind itself, whose 

 velocity belongs by transference to the body in its higher and 

 healthier moods. Thus the organs are nourished as well and rapidly 

 as though the blood was forced into them by the pulses, but in 

 those moments of moments they have deliberated, judged, chosen, 

 and lastly acted, by shooting forth a cellular gauze, wise to let in 

 the exact quantity and quality that they require. 



The rule then is, that the heart and its powers act only to the 

 door of the organs, and no further, after which the organs take from 

 the proffered blood their own demand. This is true, as we showed 

 in speaking of the lungs (p. 102), of the largest tissues of the body; 

 it is true, as observation shows, of the smallest parts of the tissues. 

 In a word, attraction is the law; and it exists between all the fluids 

 and their respective destinations and uses; it is a true animal mag- 

 netism; and in this high form there is a manifest propulsion or 

 heart to second it on the one side, and a manifest invitation or 

 lungs to create it on the other : to which we may add, that the fluid 

 itself is so natured as to run of its own accord away from the parts 

 which do not want it, and away to those which do. Thus, in this 

 system of divine convenience, where every tendency is trebly grati- 

 fied, the blood propelled to any organ is no longer the heart's, or to 

 be denominated from the heart, but it belongs to the organ, part, or 

 particle, wherever it may be ; it is always sailing upwards and in- 

 wards to deeper purposes, and taking new names and new liberties; 

 just as sensation rises from the eye into the brain, is adopted into 

 intellect and faculty, and walks at last, unknown to the lower scene, 

 in the breadth and color of the sky. It is thus, that the red blood 

 from the heart mounts into the region of the capillaries and organs, 

 that new world where the nervous system hangs its ethereal expanse 

 over the vascular. 



The third use of the circulation consists in giving life or nervous 

 fluid to the tissues. This presupposes that such a fluid proceeds 

 from the brain through the nerves, and is shed perpetually into the 

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