FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN FORM. 321 



"And all must love the Human Form, 

 In heathen, Turk, or Jew : 

 Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, 

 There God is dwelling too." 



But if the parts of the human form have functions, the whole has 

 functions too. A new problem therefore occurs, and we now ask 

 what is the physiology, not of brain, heart, or skin, but of the human 

 form as an organ? 



In order to answer this question, we must know what the human 

 form is; for its functions cannot be told until we have it before us. 

 In the lowest consideration then it is life, Icing or substance. For 

 in fact it is the end of creation, and the end is also the beginning, 

 and supports the means, or lifts them into standing. The end also 

 justifies the means, or gives them solidity. The human form* is 

 therefore the living Caryatides of the world; or more properly, in 

 revelation it is the I am, Who not was but is in all time and nature. 

 Its function accordingly is the gift of substantial life to those whom 

 it includes; ay! and of comparative life and substance to all its 

 images and types. In the lap of this sustaining form, we receive 

 the seals of fact, and are bound to be real : we have no escape into 

 nothingness any more, but existence is our fate. Herein then we 

 are in the essential organ of life; and as the body in the form re- 

 ceives life, so its function or necessity is, to make life. 



In the second place the human form is use. For man in fact is 

 the creature who can surmount himself, and elect the universal use. 

 He has a spirit above his nature, or can breathe for the common- 

 wealth of heaven. Born into this human form, it presses its indus- 

 tries upon him, and commands him to good works. Its signal before 

 all his battles is, "The Lord of the universe expects every man to 

 do his duty." "Thou shalt eat bread in the sweat of thy brow all 



* That Indian myth, that the world rests upon a tortoise, and the tortoise 

 upon an elephant, though deficient in ground for the elephant, involves a deeper 

 thought than the metaphysical conception of substance, and stands many degrees 

 nearer to a true answer than the barren pantheism of Spinosa. For elephant and 

 tortoise have good broad backs of their own, unlike metaphysical abstractions ; 

 and moreover they are analogues in the series of humanity, and in this degree 

 approach the true answer. The conception of substance belongs to the skin, 

 principles of thought (p. 287), and is the epidermis of the conception of support 

 whose inner parts, as we have given them above, are, 1. Being; and 2. Life. 



