150 Human Physiology. 



come into this world when and in proportion as women are 

 made or even permitted to be pure. 



The life of society is as real a life and force, as the life of the 

 individual. In marriage, it is said, the twain become one ; in 

 society many individuals partake of one life. This constitutes 

 the character ot societies, nations, or races. It is the spiritual 

 basis of what we call public opinion and public sentiment. We 

 see the action of this element at times very distinctly in a pub- 

 lic audience warmed into a common enthusiasm, or a great 

 excitement of rage or admiration; in the feeling and conduct 

 of a mob when thousands of persons lose their own individu- 

 ality, and act under a common impulse; in such vast popular 

 movements as the Crusades; in the esprit de corps of armies, 

 and in the strange panics to which they are liable; in religious 

 revivals; in such united feeling and manifestations of pity and 

 loyalty as attended the death of the Prince Consort, and the 

 dangerous illness of the Prince of Wales. These are real 

 phenomena, and they have a real cause and principle of 

 action. 



The individuals who compose a human society are all miked 

 together in a common life, as are the organs and atoms that 

 form our own bodies. When separated from our kindred and 

 country, and cut off from their sustaining life, we suffer from 

 nostalgia, or home sickness, as real a disease as fever, and one 

 which is not seldom fatal. Love of country, love of kindred 

 and home, are not mere ideas, but facts of our physical life ; a 

 life that we feel sustaining us, as the circulation of the blood 

 sustains our bodies. Sympathetic peoples, like the French, 

 have this feeling more intense than more phlegmatic or mixed 

 nations like the English, which is the reason why the latter 

 make better emigrants and colonists. The Italians and Swiss 

 scarcely emigrate at all, and always pine to return to their 

 countries, or rather to their countrymen, or the strong element 

 of sympathetic nationality in which they have their being. The 



