TIIE UNIVERSAL SKINS. 285 



our collectedness or presence of mind. The inner organs within 

 this skin, each of which has its own covering likewise, are memory, 

 imagination, thought, will, wisdom, and the parts of the mental 

 body which find their stay in consciousness, and from consciousness 

 run back into their deeps. For surface makes things doubly large, 

 and adds the height and show of the outside to the gauge and secret 

 of the inside. Consciousness too is porous, and much escapes it : 

 within it there are humanities that it does not hold, and without it, 

 minds and persons that it does not see ; but as its grain gets closer, 

 and the rays of its woof finer and more feeling, it girdles more of 

 mind, and brings new invisibles to light : thus ever and anon it puts 

 its knowing films over new worlds, folds in sciences, and gains fresh 

 wisdom for its organs. For whatever it embraces is straightway in 

 its body. Consciousness also defends the mind, for what is self- 

 evident or known is our invulnerable part, in which we travel 

 through the unknown; it holds against harm our tender and un- 

 grown wisdom and thought. This is the me of which the philoso- 

 phers inorganically speak, and which has the not me inside it for 

 its vitals, and outside it for its society; for our substantive faculties 

 are not me, and are wise in proportion as the skin of me is thin and 

 pellucid. Consciousness also is an organic sieve, and clears the 

 mind ; being the theatre of mental elimination • for the mind tends 

 to consciousness or show,* and no sooner are we conscious of any- 



* From the ground of these generalizations we may give a clearer rationale 

 of some functions of the skin. For in tracking any subject into the mind, we 

 come to self-evidence, the mind being the arithmetical quantity of which other 

 things are algebraic symbols. Or, to use another figure, the mind is a banker 

 that cashes the notes of physics into its light and life, the gold currency of the 

 sciences. But then we must know the equivalence between the notes and the 

 gold, or we cannot check our receipts. 



Now the skin, as the love of show and self-knowledge, is an attraction to- 

 wards the surface. This is exerted upon the body, and calculates upon a love 

 of manifestation inherent in the organs. The love of show is the heart of the 

 living skins : seemliness is their body : when the former propels any particles 

 into the latter, they are at once judged in this court, and excreted, purified, or 

 reabsorbed. This magnetism, of the love of show, or of coming to light, ex- 

 plains the determination of fluids to the skin; and as the organic light judges 

 them, we have here a self-evident account of the phenomena of perspiration and 

 excretion. If you ask further, Why? we answer, Why do you like seemly and 

 beautiful things ? Because they are pleasant. If then it be said, Why do you 



