THE BLOOD. 187 



by which men invent the arts; but that such a wealth lies in the 

 blood the mind's eye knows, for how could the body come out of 

 the blood if it were not first involved within it ? We have now, 

 then, arrived at a certain knowledge of this manlike globule, as 

 being a group of the principles of the solid organs and tissues, 

 resolvable by disintegration as it circulates, through t^e attractive 

 peculiar doors of the organs* (p. 181), into each part to which it 

 passes. For, on its unwearied round it gives heart to heart, lungs 

 to lungs, liver to liver, kidney to kidney, and like to like everywhere ; 

 and what is left in each case, forms the venous blood, the lymph, 

 the deader heat, and the several excretions. Moreover, one set of 

 glands compounds the blood while the other destroys it, and in its 

 perpetual life, death and resurrection, it images the destiny of him 

 whose bodily existence it constitutes. 



With such views of the blood, added to what we derive from the 

 eye and the microscope, we require a vast machinery adequate to 

 produce this composition, and we are driven to look to every organ, 

 and first to those where the blood is contained, for its contribution 

 to the result. Shall the heart be excluded from the privilege of 

 blood-making ? Though a large, it is a highly complex structure, 

 full of special cavities and conduits, edged and jagged machinery 

 of tendons, and fine muscular limbs and fingers. Its two sides 

 contain different kinds and qualities of blood : is there no com- 

 munication between them, no intermediate compounds to edify the 

 little temple of the globule ? Why is there an association of the 

 sides of the heart, and a community in their substance, if there is 

 no society in their functions, and no reciprocation of their goods? 

 Are the two sides of this channel also, natural enemies ? In the 

 right ventricle there is the chyle, the venous blood of the body, 

 the venous blood and spirit of the brain : is it not rational to infer 

 that the left side of the heart furnishes model globules and middle 

 essences to unite these heterogeneous parts ? 



We must touch this matter slightly, and perhaps therefore ob- 



* We must take care not to let the vegetable idea of cells grow to any wood- 

 enness, or interfere with the animal idea of freedom and instant fluidity. The 

 cells in life are mere instant refrigerations of the steam, liable to be vapor again 

 in a moment between the strokes of the life-engine. 



