THE WORLD ON THE HEART. 197 



together. But feelings have, moreover, tongues, and are the best of 

 talkers; they are notorious for hitting the nail upon the head; they 

 make all men into their poets, and are the authors and founders of 

 languages. The words which convey and assign the feelings are 

 masterpieces of justice and felicity, and hold the sheer perceptions 

 of our brightest moments. They shine with suggestion from age to 

 age. In language, therefore, feeling becomes a staid and intelligible 

 substance, and when the feeling is past, we note what it was by the 

 hearty words that it uttered. Moreover language is a common pro- 

 duct, and chronicles the feelings of the world; for the soul talks to 

 be heard, and therefore speaks by a vocal compact. It is therefore 

 no solitary sound, but the voice of mankind to which we now listen, 

 and which identifies the heart with the feelings. 



There is no point on which language is more trustworthy ; for the 

 heart itself is physically as well as feelingly at the bottom of the 

 wells of language. So near is it to the lungs, that the words in 

 which it signalizes itself are like the bubblings of its own blood. 

 If the heart were wrong in every other synthesis, we should still 

 expect it to be right here. And so when a chorus of nations and 

 tongues chimes forth that their hearts have feelings, we believe from 

 a triple persuasion that those hearts know best about it, and have 

 made them say it; and we take them at their word. 



So far, therefore, the case proceeds upon the joint testimony of 

 feeling and speech, and we may now say, upon the witness of the 

 heart and lungs themselves speaking from the life. They were not 

 summoned to give their testimony, but it was extant in their exist- 

 ence. Gesture and speech, which are heart and lungs marched into 

 the world, without hesitation identify heart and feeling. 



It is on the same grounds that we aver the whole of what we 

 know best respecting the living body; as that the body contains the 

 soul; that the mind is in the head, and then in the brain; and that 

 the senses are in their organs. And in truth, to doubt of these 

 inhabitations or connections would depopulate the physical frame of 

 its lives, and striking out common sense from the scientific faculties, 

 would float the body away from its cables, without a crew, a pilot, 

 or a destination. 



Pathology also, or the science of disease, is equally clear upon 



17* 



