Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/182

162 body are perpetually at the nod of the decisions of the mind? Surely this is a riddle in the constitution of man, which no reason of man, unenlightened from above, can satisfactorily solve.

But if such be the obscurity in which the voluntary motions of the body are involved, what shall we say of the thick darkness which overspreads the involuntary? How, for instance, shall we account for the perpetual motion of the above-mentioned organs, viz. the cerebrum and cerebellum, the heart and the lungs, the stomach and the intestines, &c.; all which organs, during the bodily life of man, are in a constant state of activity, uninfluenced alike by the assent or dissent of their proprietor, and continuing their motions without any interruption from the general motions of the body, be they ever so violent? On this occasion, surely, even the most determined scepticism must be forced to confess, that man, during his life here below, is in some invisible and mysterious connection with superior beings, who exercise a secret unseen agency on his vital organs, regulating all their motions, and preserving them in the discharge of their several functions, which, possibly, if left to the volition and superintendence of man, might be exposed to perpetual disturbance and interruption. At all events, is it not (I would ask) a most extraordinary fact, deserving all