THE LINKING OF ORGANS TO LIFE. 245 



the body, or breathe it in by measured stages (pp. 108 — 126); 

 whereas the heart domineers, beats with quick impatient messages 

 at the doors of every organ, and terminates its problems by the im- 

 mediacy and hot pressure of its blood. The lungs are the motives 

 which draw us from without, but the heart is the force that actuates 

 us from within ; or in other words the lungs are the sense of under- 

 standing (p. 130), but the heart is the sense of will. Translating 

 the organs into these known figures, and abolishing the algebraic x 

 y z of matter and physics, it is easy to see the reason of the diverse 

 rhythm between the heart and the lungs. If the breath could coin- 

 cide with the pulse, the body would act out every purpose of the heart, 

 without individuality, pondering or consideration on its own part ; 

 the man would be shot to his ends with faster than tiger pants; his 

 eyes would gleam and glitter in the darkness of his faculties; he 

 would become like the vision of the bloody child which rose from 

 the cauldron before Macbeth, and would enter into the golden age 

 of hell, and speedily into that terrible foetal state which is called the 

 second death. On the other hand, if the pulse coincided with the 

 breath, caution and the slowest life would become the standards of 

 the movements of the inner will ; the candles of life would be made 

 of ice, and burn frore ; slugs of blood would crawl up and down in 

 our veins ; we should learn to walk by the science of anatomy, de- 

 monstrate the existence of God by mathematics, postpone making 

 love until the knowledge of magnetism was complete; and in short 

 be as hoary as Stonehenge before our first down had grown. To 

 guard against this preponderance of either heart or lungs, will or 

 understanding, the movements of either are different, limited, and 

 inviolable ; the heart strokes play one tune, and the breathing lungs 

 another ; the tough pericardium isolates the heart from the pulmo- 

 nary engine, and on the other hand the pulse is broken by the angles 

 of the vessels where they enter the organs : thus the heart closes its 

 circle, and lays down its sceptre, at the cool feet of the lungs ; and 

 the lungs terminate their deliberations at the outside of the fiery 

 palace of the heart. For will is meant to rush through us in its own 

 way, to give life and zeal, but slow understanding is to limit the 

 will, to adopt the part of it which consideration approves, and to let 

 the rest go elsewhere, or back to the will, with the intelligence that 



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