And now we are in a condition to appreciate the truth which was confusedly expressed in the ancient doctrine respecting the heart as the great emotional organ. It still lives in our ordinary speech, but has long been banished from the text-books of physiology, though it is not, in my opinion, a whit more unscientific than the modern doctrine respecting the brain (meaning the cerebral hemispheres) as the exclusive organ of sensation. That the heart, as a muscle, is not endowed with the property of sensibility—a property exclusively possessed by ganglionic tissue—we all admit. But the heart, as the central organ of the circulation, is so indissolubly connected with every manifestation of sensibility, and is so delicately susceptible to all emotional agitations, that we may not improperly regard it as the ancients regarded it, in the light of the chief centre of feeling; for the ancients had no conception of the heart as an organ specially endowed with sensibility—they only thought of it as the chief agent of the sensitive soul. And is not this the conception we moderns form of the brain? We do not imagine the cerebral mass, as a mere mass, and unrelated to the rest of the organism, to have in itself sensibility; but we conceive it as the centre of a great system, dependent for its activity on a thousand influences, sensitive because sensibility is the form of life peculiar to it, but living only in virtue of the vital activities of the whole organism. Thus the heart, because its action is momently involved in every emotion, and because every emotion reacts upon it, may, as truly as the brain, be called the great emotional centre. Neither brain nor heart can claim that title exclusively. They may claim it together.
From The Month.
THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.
[Concluded.]
§4.
SOUL.
But hark! upon my sense
Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,
Could I be frighted.
ANGEL.
We are now arrived
Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl
Is from the demons who assemble there.
It is the middle region, where of old
Satan appeared among the sons of God,
To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.
So now his legions throng the vestibule,
Hungry and wild, to claim their property,
And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.
SOUL.
How sour and how uncouth a dissonance!
DEMONS.
|
Low-born clods Of brute earth, To become gods, By a new birth, And a score of merits, As if ought Of the high thought, Of the great spirits, The powers blest, Of the proud dwelling Dispossessed, Who after expelling |
They aspire And an extra grace, Could stand in place And the glance of fire The lords by right, The primal owners And realm of light, Aside thrust, Chucked down, By the sheer might Of a despot's will, Of a tyrant's frown, Their hosts, gave, Triumphant still, And still unjust, Each forfeit crown To psalm-droners And canting groaners, To every slave, And pious cheat, And crawling knave, Who licked the dust Under his feet. |
ANGEL.
It is the restless panting of their being;
Like beasts of prey, who, caged within their bars,
In a deep hideous purring have their life,
And an incessant pacing to and fro.
DEMONS.
|
The mind bold And independent, The purpose free, So we are told, Must not think To have the ascendant, One whose breath Before his death; Which fools adore, When life is o'er, Which rattle and stink, E'en in the flesh. No flesh hath he; Ha! ha! Afresh, afresh, As priestlings prate, And envy and hate |
What's a saint? Doth the air taint A bundle of bones, Ha! ha! We cry his pardon! For it hath died, 'Tis crucified Day by day, Ha! ha! That holy clay, Ha! ha! And such fudge, Is his guerdon Before the judge, And pleads and atones For spite and grudge, And bigot mood, And greed of blood. |
SOUL.