COSMICAL RELATIONS OF THE BODY. 299 



verse. That is to say, as the plant grows by the unfolding of the 

 seed, according to the climate and soil, so the body grows from its 

 own ensouled seed, according to its soil and clime, which are the 

 mundane system. The soul commences with the commencement of 

 nature, and flies down, weaving and constructing, through all her 

 kingdoms. The brain is the home that it makes on its own plan, 

 of the solar fires, and the brain is the soul of the body anew, and 

 the sun of the microcosm; the principles of the world are the beams 

 of its chambers, and it lives like the eagle unharmed in the glory 

 of its native pavilion. The nerves are the next construction of the 

 dramatic soul, where it brings the imponderable forces and fluids 

 into a beaten highroad of human life, making ether and magnetism 

 into pathways for the processions of thought and will; for the 

 nerves are the horses of the sun, which carry out the decrees of the 

 revolving brain from the east to the west, and from the morning to 

 the evening, of the microcosm. Next the soul is victor of the air, and 

 poised amid the whirling winds, she knits their filmy stuffs into obe- 

 dience; and lo ! a fabric huge rises like an exhalation — it is the lungs, 

 the temple of xEolus, the shrine of the powers of the air. There 

 is the first house of liberty, the free place of elections, the Campus 

 Martins of the understanding. Accordingly the breathing lungs 

 are the barometer that indicate the peace, or the power, or the storm, 

 of the soul : all the passions swing and swim, and find their golden 

 liberty, in that aerial sea : there they rock, and waft, and sail, in 

 gilded barge, or pompous balloon, or happy skiff, or dark boats of 

 Erebus. But the progress continues. The work of ensoulment is 

 carried on through the animal, the vegetable and the mineral. The 

 heart and viscera are the stations of the soul in these uttermost 

 regions. The abdominal organs are the garden with its trees and 

 inhabitants, where bread and salt, fruit and flesh, are presented to 

 the soul; and the heart is the animal man himself, the sovereign of 

 the tribes, appropriating their tributes, and making the body an as- 

 semblage of the universals of the earth. Then, as nature moves by 

 immense attractions from space to space, or is always making new 

 spaces, and worlds to populate them, so the soul will do the like; 

 and out of the moving mechanism of things she builds the limbs of 

 human kind, which are as a new liberty; and the legs are the be- 



