202 THE HUMAN HEART. 



in which the play of the feelings may be detected ? If so, we 

 shall make matters of feeling into fresh objects of sight and sense. 

 Let us try. The attempt is one of synthesis, or the putting to- 

 gether of the pieces of language and passion on the one hand, and 

 of the pieces of heart or blood on the other, in one doctrinal 

 machine. In such a composition, it is manifest that fittingness will 

 be the test of truth ; and that if the love-heart interlocks with the 

 fleshly heart by the dove-tails of a just analogy, what we at present 

 propose will be accomplished. We shall see the veritable clasps by 

 which the two are grappled in word and in fact. 



Certainly the heart shows all the signs of loving the blood, which 

 is the fearful and recognized symbol and casket of human life, for 

 it grasps at the blood eighty times every minute. With quadruma- 

 nous hands it clutches the passing life-stream. If the life is indeed 

 the blood, and is in the blood, as the Bible says, then the heart 

 grasping the blood, is the very love of life, and in our case of human 

 life. Its eagerness is apparent from its work, as the busy hands of 

 men show that they also are con amove in their occupations. And 

 if we love the blood of our race and kindred, and embrace it 

 through the skin and outworks of their bodies, much more does 

 the heart love its own blood, which it squeezes hot and naked with 

 its ruddy fingers. Our own affections, which we interpret from 

 their actions, are far-off types of this affection in the heart ; which 

 moreover shows an answerableness to love's common signs, such as 

 no other organ testifies. There is a fiery and as it were abstract 

 purity in this passion of our bosom's lord. If we love ourselves, 

 the heart loves the life which is the self of self; and this love it 

 shows by grasp after grasp, by a zeal which never sleeps, by fresh 

 manipulations of the blood with every varying feeling ; in short, 

 by all the signs which show that we ourselves are in active and im- 

 passioned pursuit of our objects ; but these signs, raised to a con- 

 stancy that belongs to no will, but only to nature, or the fatal will 

 of will ; and exempted from that fatigue which makes night and 

 day into the blessing of mankind ; for the heart is its own day, 

 and works in the fire-factories whether the outward man be turned 

 from it, as in sleeping, or revolve round to consciousness of its 

 influences, when his morning feelings seem to rise. The heart then 



