246 THE HUMAN HEART. 



if has not been received. And however harmonious the two become, 

 still will is wilful and understanding deliberative, or to speak by 

 nature's algebra, the heart still strikes or pulses, and the lungs still 

 breathe, because their difference is safety and friendship for both. 

 Thus we may say politically, that the white monarchy of the brain 

 through the lungs is founded for ever upon the red republic of the 

 heart. 



Hitherto we have treated of the heart from the analogies of the 

 individual feelings, but it is plain that nothing less than a human 

 race is the prophecy of the blood. For in every two beats, less than 

 two of our seconds, the heart runs through an entire life, and con- 

 structs relations that deployed in a line are seventy years long. It 

 marries and has children in setting one foot down ; it binds all into 

 intimacy, and establishes the state as the other is put forward. The 

 broad sheets of Society write out but a fraction of the momentary 

 news of a single heart. Of all the human lives, the hearts are the 

 least in duration and the greatest in intensity; the smallest answer- 

 ing to the largest sphere. The social man here is a mote and an 

 ephemeris, most wonderful of all, since a click of time and a grain 

 of space contain him full-limbed and perfect-lived. The heart then 

 may justly be termed human nature, which is true to itself in its 

 smallest parts : and it stands in the grove among the beginnings of 

 things, in the place where the stem of the world-tree grows fine 

 towards God. The nature of all things is their very heart. This 

 it is that comes into the world a new essence with every mind and 

 man, and works in restless agitations, aiming to govern the whole 

 earth from that spring of power. The spirit from above, and the 

 universe from without, environ, chastise and endow it, but still it 

 remains, for ever inviolate, the fated well-head of human life. And 

 as with individuals so with nations. Nature is at the bottom there 

 also, inevitable nationality is there ; character improvable but inde- 

 structible; destined to endure, but free for better or for worse; sub- 

 stantial as granite, though fluid fire of the passions; a rough and 

 tough material, but fit to be hewn or twisted into the humanities. 



The powers or issues of the heart are homogeneous throughout. 

 Feeling upon feeling arises out of its bosom, and humanity is built 

 up like coral continents into the red light of the suns. The cease- 



