212 THE HUMAN HEART. 



Hence life is added to life, and the four " vital principles" of the 

 heart are simultaneously in the adult blood. It is amusing to con- 

 sider how any philosophers can have sought for the vital principle 

 in so many-lived a creature as man. The vulgar, in assigning to 

 the cat " nine lives/' have shown an example of common sense, 

 which might well have been applied towards a being whose vital 

 principle is as organic as his body, and has its very parts over again, 

 or how could the body be alive ? Hence in the right auricle, the 

 blood-child is one-lived, or is in the parental leash ; in the right 

 ventricle, the blood-youth is double-lived, has received a second 

 squeeze of passion, or represents friendship's hand in hand ; in the 

 left auricle, the blood-lover is treble-lived, or is lover, friend and 

 parent in one, the three being inseparable ; in the left ventricle, the 

 blood-man is in the service of the state, which is the public ordina- 

 tion of all the feelings, or the carrying them out into the body. 

 Hence the left ventricle does not so much alter the blood as receive 

 it all, and give it high public fire. We now then see what it is 

 that the heart confers on the body, and that it is the same set of 

 endowments, only organic and infinitesimal, that the same heart 

 gives to the man, and to the society. 



Such is our equation between the heart of feeling and the heart 

 of flesh, which are the same heart, only in different powers. The 

 blood-heart = V heart; the love heart = heart 2 ; the heart itself 

 being that invisible pulser which we feel under our ribs, and the 

 knowledge of which can only be filled by a conjoint corporeal and 

 social anatomy, or a hearty exploration of all death and life. "We 

 have indeed drawn out the parallel on only the most general grounds, 

 and know far too little of the feelings on the one side, and of the 

 heart on the other, to enter into details. But if the learned will 

 bring dead hearts, and the simple their living ones, to a fair com- 

 parison, we can now no longer doubt that each will adopt the other 

 with most specific joy and claspings. 



Our hearts, we have said, grasp at their objects, and we have 

 tacitly assumed that they get what they grasp. But how is this, 

 if they simply drive the blood away, and pump it into circulation ? 

 In this case life would be not a substance but a mere stimulus, a 

 perpetual alcohol of illusions. Let us remember that we are treat- 



