Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/135

Rh eye receives the finest of impressions from things, and gives the finest of expressions from the soul. So likewise the ear is the hearing trumpet of the real body, which would otherwise be deaf to the sounds of nature; it embraces all the means of reverberation, whether in the free air, or of cheerful voices from the household ceiling, or of more solemn sounds from the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault; in short, both the whole instrumentality and the whole architecture of sound. But the nose is to the real body the prophecy of more devices than have yet entered our arts; for hitherto sweet odors and aromas are but casual visitants of the soul, and have few artificial aids for preservation or concentration; they come and go with the fitful winds, and where is the vessel, that can hold them? For the nose seems more deficient of analogies in art than either the eye or the ear, and hence we can only identify it unworthily as the scent-bottle of the real nose. To pass over the other senses, we next observe that, the legs are the whole outward art of locomotion, from passive to active, from the nails of the toes to the wheel of the knee, and the globe of the hip; in short, from the cane to the railroad: the real body uses them in nature, whether for the support of its lowliness, or the means of its swiftness, or the equipage of its pride: they are the dignified columns of all movement, material as well as social; the rich soul's carriage, and the poor soul's crutches. But the arms and hands are all the finer machineries or inventions which are wielded directly by the arms and hands of the soul; they are the pen and the sword; the instrument of many strings; strength and manipulation in all their bearings; in short, the mechanics of animal intelligence, whereby the nice conveniences of truth are brought to the rooms and walls of the microcosmal home. Then the abdomen is the natural kitchen of the soul, raising to sublimity the processes of the gastrosophic art; preparing from all things in its indefinite stores one universal dish, lower than cookery, higher than philosophy, even the natural blood of life, to be served up day by day in repasts for the spiritual man: the viand of viands, solid and fluid all in one; varying from hour to hour, and suited with more than mathematic truth to the constitution of the eater.