60 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



the surface, which in time fold and branch into gills; finally it is 

 absorbed more rapidly from the air through the perfect lung of 

 bird and mammal. Eespiration seems the special mark of the 

 rising animal, and comes to be the most important function of 

 all. Eating may be omitted and the sustaining system lie idle 

 for days ; but not breathing. Consciousness may be suspended 

 and the regulating system deranged ; but the respiration must 

 go on. From respiration, too, come the warmth and energy of 

 higher life. The contrast between the torpid reptile and the 

 frigate bird which, as Michelet says, " takes his breakfast on the 

 Senegal and dines in America," comes largely from the contrast 

 in breathing powers. Even that higher life we call spiritual is as 

 closely linked with the breath as its name implies. Foul air dulls 

 and fresh air quickens the thought. Even moral excellence seems 

 somewhat dependent on good breath. '' Let everything that hath 

 breath praise the Lord," says the Psalmist, and probably nothing 

 else will. The old fabulists were wise to figure Satan as a dragon, 

 — a poor-lunged creature, perhaps one of the extinct gilled hali- 

 saurians. High life comes with breathing. To the sustaining 

 and distributing systems of the vegetable, must be added a re- 

 spiratory to make the animal ; and it seems strange that Mr. Spen- 

 cer should have omitted this from his parallel. 



We may not be able to trace the social gills and lungs or any 

 details of the respiratory structure, but the respiratory function is 

 plam in society. Eespiration means consumption. Breathing is 

 burning, and the different methods are only so many ways of 

 keeping the fire. Gills furnish a poor draft ; perfect lungs show 

 pipes, chimney, and heaving bellows at the bottom, and keep the 

 animal well burnt out. Stomach and lungs balance each other. 

 Stomach feeds and lungs eat ; stomach accumulates and lungs con- 

 sume. The tree gathers and keeps, and so grows bigger every 

 year; the animal gathers and spends itself, turns its fiber into 

 force, warmth and action, and so after a little does not grow big- 

 ger, but grows better, ever burning out the old and keeping 

 itself renewed. Eespiration means consumption of old tissue. 



Society shows this process, — not the mere consumption of which 

 the political economist speak, but the deeper consumption of the 



