Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/136

126 Then, again, the chest distributes, with a power of wisdom dictated from the halls above, this daily bread of the body of the soul; and the wisdom that ordains and distributes, enters the very feast, and it becomes a living entertainment; and the brain is the steward and keeper of the animated house, perennially receiving order and law from the soul or unseen body, and transplanting them into its mundane economy. Yea, and the brain is its natural universe, its widespread landscapes, its illimitable ocean, its blue vault of heaven; its royal library, studio, theatre, church, and whatever else is a place of universal sympathy for the soul. And, lastly, the skin is dress and clothing in every sphere, convenient, beautiful, or official, and it is the very mansion itself; for our houses are but our fixed and stiffest clothes, standing by themselves, and large enough to admit of some degree of movement; and these houses represent over again, even on their outside, the busy scene within, and themselves have eyes or windows, mouths or doors, and in general a parallelism true beyond our suspicions, with the real bodies of their inhabitants; for they are clothes which fit generally, ay, and particularly too.

Now, by this artifice, of holding out our bodies at some distance from us, we are enabled to illustrate for the commonest thought the connection or correspondence between the soul and the body; and, though there may be other motives of connection, yet it is sufficient to remark for the present, that, according to all the foregoing analogy, it is because the body is so replete with the most exquisite convenience, that it is the chosen residence or domestic establishment of the soul. Given a tenement of the kind stored with the sumptuous apparatus of the universe, and it is impossible that the soul which answers to it should not be present to, and fitly use, or, what is the same thing, animate it. Not to admit thus much, would be to think meanly indeed of the soul, and of the Framer of the soul. This, then, is the first solution, quite satisfactory so far as it goes, of this hitherto intractable question. Other solutions are too simple to be comprehended at all in these difficult ages.

But let us now reverse the picture, and suppose, for