But suppose, again, that the China-ware man should tell you that his factory was made from the same red fluid from which he manufactures so many things in it—that the very pipes that carry the fluid around the building were made from it, and so also was the pump that sends it through these pipes. This would seem to you strangest of all. And yet all the various machinery of the body is made from the blood. The liver, that manufactures bile from blood, is itself made from blood; and so of other things; even the pipes in which the blood runs all over your body, and the heart that pumps it into them, are made, as I have before told you, from the blood.
The body the house of the soul.
The body is the house or habitation of the soul. It is a well-built and a well-finished house. The bones are its timbers. The skin is its covering. The hair is its thatched roof. The eyes are its windows. It is a house that can be easily moved about, just as the soul wishes. There is for this a great deal of machinery in it. And the soul has little cords, called nerves, running to all parts of this machinery, like telegraphic wires. There are also other kinds of machinery, as the breathing machinery, the machinery for taking care of the food, and the machinery for circulating the blood. The soul resides in the top of this house, the brain. Here it sends out messages every where by the little cords, and receives messages by them. Here it thinks and acts, and some of the time sleeps. This part of the house is very curiously and beautifully fitted up.
All the parts and the furniture of the soul’s house made from blood.
Now all the various parts of this house are made, as I have told you, from the blood, and yet there is more variety in them than there is in the parts and furniture of the houses that man builds. Suppose that a man should show you a great quantity of a red liquid, and tell you that with that he intended to build a house and furnish it—that he should make from it all his stones, and bricks, and timbers, and glass, and nails, and plaster, and papers for his walls, and paints of different colors, and then his carpets, and mirrors, and chairs, and curtains, etc., etc. You would say that the man is crazy. But God makes from that red fluid, the blood, all the parts of the house of the soul.
Exactly in what way all the different parts of the body are made from the blood we do not know. Wise men have studied this a great deal, and they have found out some things about it. What they have found out you are not yet old enough to understand. After all, the wisest men know but little about it, and, with all their wisdom, they do not know enough to make skin, or hair, or any thing else that you see in your body from the blood any more than, as I told you in Part First, they can make even a simple leaf from the sap.
Questions.—What is said about the teeth and the gums? Give the comparison about China and cloth. What is said about the tears and the bile? What is said about the variety of things made from the blood? Give the comparison about the China-ware factory and the machinery of the body. What is said about the different parts of the habitation of the soul? In what part of this house does the soul reside? Give the comparison about a house and its furniture. What is said about wise men?