Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/194

174 indebted to the principle for this power you possess even of setting one leg before the other.

The case is the same with the act of standing, which therefore may be regarded, and indeed ought to be regarded, as an act of mind rather than of matter. For only take the trouble of making the experiment with a dead body deprived of mind, and you will find it impossible to preserve it, without the aid of foreign resources, in an upright position like that of standing, whatsoever pains you take about its centre of gravity. Whensoever then you stand, you have again the most demonstrative evidence that your mind is at work, notwithstanding your inattention to it; and that thus, whether you walk or stand, some invisible and supernatural agency is present, proving' to you at once its existence, and the necessity also of its operation to enable you either to move your body forwards, to different places, or to keep it erect in the same place.

But what shall I say of the bodily act, or rather the bodily posture, of sitting?—I can only observe, that I should never have thought of calling your attention to this mode of bodily rest, had I not found that it is often alluded to in the Sacred Scriptures, or ; and that in this it is applied in a figurative sense, to denote a state of the mind or spirit of man in regard to the grand concerns of