THE UNIVERSAL HEARTS. 247 



less pulse which is the invisible architect, makes higher and broader 

 dominions, and conceals itself in its works. But from its waves 

 emerge relations and societies by the unerring laws imprinted on 

 itself. Blood knocks against nature's ribs, and seeming never to 

 come out, yet issues by avenues the widest, for man comes heredi- 

 tary out of man, and the heart fires its progeny by a life that glows 

 through every work, and streams through every pore of feeling. 

 The bonds of this second heart are another coil of loves, firmer than 

 that which begot them; more feeling and impenetrable than flesh; 

 wound tighter around their objects, with a more terrible grasp at 

 passing circumstance ; an easier and more fiery communion of pas- 

 sions; fortune's greater wheel and Providence's handle; the second 

 life of fear and of courage, of good or of evil. 



But we must not tarry in this Yulcanian or Plutonic centre, 

 which throws us forth from the mighty forge where the archetypal 

 powers are working. It is enough to look from the safe outside at 

 the ovens where God's slaves, the Fates, are hammering the natural 

 sinews of the children of Adam. Everything in those dusky ruddy 

 halls looks monstrous and delusive, and the steel of passion, lither 

 than Volund's sword, bends in white-hot waters round our ankles. 

 The glare also of living blood is an illumination past our bearing. 

 The angel of the Lord must be with us in the burning fiery furnace 

 of the passions, and even of their science, or y,q shall not fare forth 

 unhurt like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 



We conclude the subject of the heart by tracing its principle in 

 other spheres, for the vitals of man run through the world by per- 

 mission from all the natures, and the human body, as method and 

 light, is the Novum Organum of the sciences. 



That which is communion and circulation in the body, is round- 

 ness and unity in the world, and the latter are the produce of an 

 inanimate, as the former of a living, heart. The dead heart is fire, 

 which beats in the centre of things, and is the primitive out-throw 

 of space. Suns and systems arise like bubbles from an ocean of 

 glowing ether that repels them into being. Fire is the love of 

 spheres ; first it makes all things round, and afterwards gives them 

 revolution or moving roundness, or makes circular orbs into circula- 

 tions. All things are of one color in its glow; all things, too, be- 



