208 THE HUMAN HEART. 



of the cheeks when life is in force is due to the same cause as the 

 glow of the arterial blood (p. 182). Powerful healthy feeling is 

 red and burning; and is the true blood and the only animal or 

 living heat, to which nature, with deep architecture (p. 89), adds 

 mineral or dead heat, itself also red, as we see in the fire. Cheeks 

 and fires are the reasons why blood is red ; inanimate countenances 

 and cinders are the reasons why it is dark and Venous. Why do 

 we glow but because we are alive with some public spirit or motive ? 

 and why does the blood glow, but because it is alive with that 

 public spirit the air, and bound thenceforth to act according to the 

 pressure, and to assume the mission of the universe ? We are not 

 insensible to the pleasant weakness of this theory, but we are 

 treating of the circulation and twisting reasons into circles. To 

 exhibit it let us say, that the arterial blood is red because the pas- 

 sions are red, as witness the face while they inflame it; and on the 

 other hand that the face is red because the impassioned blood is red. 

 Truly a circular logic, and dear to the heart therefore. We should 

 despair of understanding any organ if we could not feel with it 

 and follow it ; and to follow the heart, drives us into self-supporting 

 axioms. For the heart is a proposition that never goes beyond a 

 bare statement, but pumps through us the substance of self-evidence, 

 which is the body of our body. The truths of blood and feeling are 

 the ipse dixits of the heart. 



We have now left the private or venous passions, whereof the 

 first, the family life, ancestral house or right auricle, represents the 

 impetus of time, causing all the movement of man and blood by 

 the descent and tradition of generations ; while the second venous 

 passion, the friendly and philanthropic home, or right ventricle, 

 represents the indiscriminate brotherhood of man, which gathers up 

 the race in the second and highest of the private bonds. Both of 

 these, as we say, are private or venous ; domestic in the narrow or 

 the wide sense : in their largest cases it is the private sphere expand- 

 ing itself ; for a whole clan is private and immiscible still with the 

 rest of the community, and the largest friendly reunion still con- 

 templates privacy or intimacy, and would cease as such the moment 

 it were touched by the laws of another love, or of social rank. 

 Both these loves are hot — black-hot, or red-hot; but neither of 



