THE ARTERIAL AND VENOUS CURRENTS. 183 



these large instances, in which the whole body displays itself as one 

 globule of impassioned blood, give the only analogues we can use 

 consistently with our purpose of reasoning not upon the dead but 

 upon the living blood (p. 181). The difference then between the 

 arterial and the venous blood is, in the first place, that the arterial 

 is organized, spirited or impassioned, and just like ourselves in such 

 a case, is ruddy with the fervor of a soul, while the venous blood is 

 disorganized, chaotic and aimless, and like ourselves again under 

 these circumstances, is murky in its hue and leaden in its gait. In 

 the second place, the arterial is full blood, but the venous has yielded 

 up many of its elements, and has no spirit or nerve fire, but the 

 residue of this is taken up by the lymphatics, while the apathetic 

 body of the blood is derived into the tardy veins. Such is an ap- 

 proximative organic account of the change. 



We have now treated of the use of the heart to the general cir- 

 culation, and if this were all, the heart would be a simple forcing 

 pump, as Chambers's Journal declared it to be ; " a good heart," in 

 their words, would be u a good forcing pump," and " good hearted- 

 ness" would either mean " good force-pumpishness," or nothing at 

 all. But when we glance at what is taking place around us; at the 

 subjects which are extending their limits; at the old things that are 

 again brought forward by our growing love of fairness, because they 

 have been previously dismissed without a hearing, which says no- 

 thing against them, and much against their judges; at the new 

 things which are thronging into notice in shapes that cannot be ne- 

 glected — when we glance at this we may be expected, in the face of 

 any shabby idea of nature or her Author, to propound the question, 

 Is that all? and to cut short the men who say to us, It is only this, 

 and It is only that, by a decision that no finite mind has a right to 

 palm one such only anywhere upon nature. For our part, when we 

 look at the human frame, we are always impelled to put this ques- 

 tion, and in the same breath to answer, that there is more and ever 

 more to be known about it, not in the way of niggling additions 

 and grains of scientific sand, but in great principles, in new tracts 

 of knowledge, underlying, overspreading, and surrounding that tiny 

 edifice of books and cards where we are so comfortably at home. 

 Yes, at this very hour methinks there is a good and guiding genius 



