224 THE HUMAN HEART. 



Nor is our attribution of consciousness to the heart without the 

 most vast suffrages in its favor ; indeed we may state broadly, that 

 every organ is conscious, as the whole animal kingdom is conscious; 

 and that the human consciousness is nothing more than the collect- 

 ive consciousness of all parts of the body. In general the whole 

 field of consciousness is cast into the shade by the solar or central 

 consciousness of the brain, which we call our mind ; yet at all times 

 our human form as an outline full of life, is more or less present to 

 us, and makes us embodied men. And in particular conditions, the 

 consciousness of any part may be raised, and as it were detached 

 from the rest ; the viscera may take on humane proportions, and 

 open their eyes upon the scene ; the magnetic animals of which we 

 are made up, may be separately excited, and powers of an animality 

 co-extensive with nature may spring to light in the dark chambers 

 of the flesh. This is because life is like itself in every part, and 

 the body is all heart, or all eye, when the proportions are varied in 

 which ordinary wakefulness and sleep are mixed ; thus when the 

 sun of the brain goes down, the other organs may come forth, and 

 show their ruddy lustres. For we cannot too often repeat, that the 

 human body consists of nothing but expanses of life, all of which 

 are ensouled, conscious or alive. 



Upon the circulation itself, as contradistinguished from the com- 

 munion of the heart, it only remains to repeat, that it stands in 

 analogy with the five senses, and that its passage through the heart 

 represents the active touch which rolls the wheel onwards. The 

 arterial blood is the life going forth to work ; the venous blood is 

 the return circuit ; and the difference between them can be best 

 likened to the man full of resolve and affairs going forth to his call- 

 ing in the morning, and to the same man who has laid care and 

 tension aside, and is returning to his own fireside, to enjoy relaxa- 

 tion in the evening. The difference is in the bodily vigor and the 

 mental polarity. Everything is distributed into arterial and venous 

 in something of the same way; into arterial on the active side, 

 venous on the passive : the day itself and all which it includes, is 

 arterial from the morning to the evening, and venous from the even- 

 ing to the morning again. 



