THE HOPES OF THE HEART. 223 



not regurgitate, it is driven into circulation. Hopes then are the 

 doors by which the little cavities of desire and imagination commu- 

 nicate with the great cavity where light shines in a superior degree, 

 and into which life courses, upon the principle of all fluids, which 

 run where there is the least resistance. This it is that gives its uni- 

 form direction to the current of time; to the little rivers of our 

 heart's blood ; to the stream of experiences from infancy onwards, 

 and to the career of humanity from Eden until to-day ; the heart 

 being the fleshly atom that is involved or evolved in all these courses. 

 The law is the same for them all. Wherever time or blood is to 

 run, a present is constituted, a valvular state runs back, and hope 

 becomes doubly open from the impossibility of retrogression. 



Desire then is the heart-void or cavity, imagination is the heart- 

 wall, our present state is the heart-valve, and our hopes of the 

 future are the heart-orifices. Thus the heart of feeling and the 

 heart of flesh are identical in their parts, and each is the other's. 



It would be useless at present to carry the analysis and synthesis 

 further, for the subject would run into subtleties if it were approached 

 prematurely. Let us be content with the above generalities, and 

 bide our time for further localization ; for the soul, long estranged, 

 will not come to live in the body all at once. 



We may however here obviate an objection, viz., that in the 

 above views, we have taken no account of the anatomical elements 

 of the heart j but have attributed consciousness and feeling to mere 

 flesh, when yet it is known that these are the attributes of nerves 

 and nerve substance. We do not deny it. But we observe in 

 reply, that although anatomically animals live in their nerves, yet 

 the common view is deeply right, that the animals themselves, with 

 their skin, bone, and flesh, are alive also. And we are now looking 

 upon the heart's four bodies as four entire animals, each animated 

 by its own life. In obedience to this point of view, we study the 

 natural history of the heart-animals, in their habits, functions, 

 actions, and not in their nerves ; we study them alive, and know of 

 no distinction into structures, but only into forms, as it were faces, 

 limbs, head, and the like. This study does not deny the other, but 

 postpones it so long as we are making a separate object of the na- 

 tural history of the heart. 



