WHAT ABSTRACTIONS ARE. 219 



heart is contemplated. The true process of abstraction here consists 

 in taking away everything but the heart or cenfre, and regarding it 

 alone. The philosophers have made it lie in removing everything, 

 in which case it consists of words unattached to objects. Whereas 

 its essence is, to find the core of the thing in hand, in order to see 

 its relations centrally. Thus again in the case of the mind : in the con- 

 crete, the mind is the man; in the abstract, the mind is the brain; 

 the difference between the two lying no whit in bodily substance, 

 but in clothing or development. For "pure mind" is a living brain; 

 and mind, as commonly used, is a living person. It is necessary to 

 carry this ballast about, lest words should fly away with us. It is 

 especially necessary in treating of the heart, and of the incarnation 

 of the popular heart in the scientific one. But by no process of ab- 

 straction can we decompose the heart, unless indeed we find out a 

 deeper bodily centre, which is the heart of heart : which organism 

 will then be a more pure abstraction. "We have indicated this, be- 

 cause the philosophical belief that feelings are not incarnate, has 

 been a principal reason why the scientific world, duped by metaphy- 

 sical terms, has never thought for a moment of seeking the feelings 

 in the heart. 



A living anatomy then gives us the abstractions of which human 

 life presents the concrete substances ; and the science of the present 

 inner man consists in tallying the world — le monde — with the 

 organic frame, as it were checking the one by the other, and trans- 

 lating the one into the other. It does not, however, consist in 

 reasoDing upon language, but in treating language as one among 

 organic things, dipping it in the blood-streams, and setting it piece 

 for piece against flesh. 



Another point to be noted is, that as our plan is one of concili- 

 ation, we by no means wish to set up the heart against the head, or 

 to deny feelings of all descriptions to our minds. We grant, on 

 the contrary, that the whole frame or soul-house is made of nothing 

 else, but in various degrees. The man radiates from the central 

 parts, but reposes on the way at several stations, where he is refresh- 

 ed with new names and characters. That part where the grosser 

 consciousness begins, takes the credit of being the prime habitation, 

 whereas the feeling is a line with several nodes, which runs down 



