73 Phre7iology. 



Surely, not from the eye itself, although it is the most perfect 

 and beautiful of optical instruments ; not from the fibres of the fa- 

 cial muscles ; not from the bony skeleton of the face ; not from the 

 air cells and blood vessels of the lungs ; still less, from the viscera 

 and limbs ; and with equal certainty, not from the cavities, the 

 valves, and the strong muscular fabric of the heart itself, which is 

 only the grand hydraulic organ for receiving and propelling the 

 blood, in its double circulation both through the entire body to 

 recruit its waste, and through the lungs, to receive the beneficent 

 influence of the oxygen of the air, withont which, in its next 

 circulation through the body, the altered blood would prove a 

 poison. 



Most persons are startled when told, that the physical heart 

 has nothing to do with our mental or moral manifestations. 

 What ! does not its quick pulsation, its tumultuous and irregular 

 throb, when fear, or love, or joy, or anger animates our faculties — 

 does not this bounding movement, shooting a thrill through the 

 bosom, nor the attendant blush, or death-like paleness of the fea- 

 tures, prove that the heart is a mental or moral organ ? Certainly 

 not ; these phenomena only evince that by means of our nerves, 

 the divine principle within electrifies us, as it were, our muscles 

 and thus accelerates or retards the current of the blood through 

 the arteries, as well as the movement of the muscles themselves, 

 and especially of the heart, which, in relation to the circulation 

 of the blood, is the most important of them all. The physical 

 heart is no more to the mind and the aflections, than the hose of 

 a fire engine is to the intelligence that works the machine, whose 

 successive strokes impel the hurrying fluid along, in a manner not 

 unlike that which attends the circulation of the blood in the ar- 

 teries. 



Where then shall we look for the seat of the mind ? We are 

 seriously assured that some persons have believed the stomach to 

 be the favored region. The stomach, with its various coats, its 

 innumerable nerves and blood vessels, its muscular tissues, and its 

 gastric secretions, is a mere cavity for the reception of aliment ; it 

 is alternately distended with food and fluids, or partially collapsed 

 by inanition, and although exquisitely sensible, by its nervous ap- 

 paratus, both to external and internal injury, all that belongs to it 

 is obviously required for the discharge of its appropriate func- 

 tions in the reception and digestion of aliment : no office by it 



