THE MUSCULAR MAN. 237 



as a law. We therefore look upon muscularity and volition as just 

 as much a part of the liver, as though the liver was itself muscular, 

 which it is not, for in an indissoluble society, all things exist for 

 each. And we notice that human inaction robs every viscus of its 

 endowments, or leaves it forlorn among animal sensibilities and mo- 

 lecular movements. Under these circumstances the man and the 

 viscera are all doing nothing; true, they breathe, but this is nothing 

 for waking man ; industry and skill, in the liver as in the person, 

 begin the human reckoning. 



The muscular system, therefore, as the organ of the progress of 

 the rest of the body, carries the body into action, and by its back- 

 stroke carries action into the body, making us like ourselves in our 

 tiniest humors, as well as in our works. Could we see a globule of 

 our blood with a fine-enough eye for character, we should find that 

 it was a chip of the old block, because it has been under the dominion 

 of our will since it was born ; aye, and inherited our will in its con- 

 ception. The muscles themselves however are a sensory, or they 

 could not have a human motory life. They are the seat of the sense 

 of power ; the verb lean, added to good pleasure, or the verb, I will. 

 The power is possessed of an instinctive sense of the compass of power, 

 by which the muscles know what they can do, according to the dose 

 of will that they receive. This sense is a meter of the will on the 

 one hand, and a meter of the commanded action on the other : if a 

 leap is prescribed, the muscular man feels exactly whether he is 

 wilful enough to attempt it, and powerful enough to carry it through. 

 It is from this sense of power that our bodies become responsible 

 agents, and flesh, a moral humanity; therefore we justly punish 

 human bodies for the sins of human souls; for by sense bodies be- 

 come souls whilst they are awake and here. The way in which we 

 manage our muscles is by ideal actions shown to this sense of power; 

 the plan of the action is held up to the moving army of the flesh, 

 and with it a command is given to execute the action, if it be easy 

 or known ; whereas the cautious mind puts in the query, Is it pos- 

 sible ? if the action be serious, or untried. The ideas thus exhibited 

 are wonderful things ; they are not only surface-pictures of the thing 

 done, or of the arm at the end of the task, but organisms anatomi- 

 cally full of the means that lead to the end; mental skins hard with 



