THE VISCERAL SYMPATHIES. 233 



pathize with weather, moons and tides, because our vitals feel them 

 as our skins feel the objects of touch. Hence come innumerable 

 moods that vibrate towards the will, and instigate states of con- 

 sciousness, and corresponding colors in our trains of action. The 

 instincts of the day and the hour are so many, that ever-shifting 

 nature only can produce, and Grod alone can regulate and know 

 them. Sunshine and shade, moist and dry, the east wind and 

 Zephyrus, thunder and frost, and the influences of climate, play 

 upon us thus; some through the mind, some direct through the 

 strings of the vitals ; and hence the reactions by which we add to 

 nature, give a new beam to her beams, or deepen her gloom by our 

 brows. Man in this way inhabits his circumstances by a thousand- 

 fold cunning of sensories : he palpates vapors, winds, magnetisms, 

 and climates, with fingers finer than tact, and himself is a divining- 

 rod which points to everything, whether in earth, ocean, or air, or 

 in the inward streams that build the crystals, and carry the mes- 

 sages of nature between her poles. 



Man acts upon man by the same way, and the presence of persons 

 is felt viscerally even before intercourse commences. Thus a sym- 

 pathy grows up, by which those whom we meet, act upon our special 

 organs. Do not our hearts burn within us when some men look 

 and speak? The presence of others again is choking and oppres- 

 sive. The piteous and sentimental, if we be not too steely, act upon 

 our intestine tenderness, and call it into yearnings. The unhappy 

 give us indigestions, and the mad confuse us, and tend to make their 

 keepers mad. We do not often perceive these influences viscerally, 

 unless the mind be excited and call the sensibilities into play. But 

 from a few plain cases we may argue, that our fellows, according to 

 their predominant character, affect us in all ways, organically as 

 well as mentally, by their vibrating substance and stuff as well as 

 by their actions and words; and that every man is ranged for us in 

 a peculiar organic classification. The brain-men play upon our 

 brains, and the heart-men on our hearts ; the men of pity touch our 

 strings, and so forth. 



The influence of the mind upon the visceral man is very well 

 known. There is not a state of mind however produced, but the 

 body feels it, and responds to it. Our conscious pleasures, or pains, 



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