Thoughts on Man | Page 6

dominion and loftiness it is accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to
recollect what was the nature and value of its subject and its slave.
By the mind we understand that within us which feels and thinks, the
seat of sensation and reason. Where it resides we cannot tell, nor can
authoritatively pronounce, as the apostle says, relatively to a particular
phenomenon, "whether it is in the body, or out of the body." Be it
however where or what it may, it is this which constitutes the great
essence of, and gives value to, our existence; and all the wonders of our
microcosm would without it be a form only, destined immediately to
perish, and of no greater account than as a clod of the valley.
It was an important remark, suggested to me many years ago by an
eminent physiologer and anatomist, that, when I find my attention
called to any particular part or member of my body, I may be morally
sure that there is something amiss in the processes of that part or
member. As long as the whole economy of the frame goes on well and
without interruption, our attention is not called to it. The intellectual
man is like a disembodied spirit.
He is almost in the state of the dervise in the Arabian Nights, who had
the power of darting his soul into the unanimated body of another,
human or brute, while he left his own body in the condition of an
insensible carcase, till it should be revivified by the same or some other
spirit. When I am, as it is vulgarly understood, in a state of motion, I
use my limbs as the implements of my will. When, in a quiescent state
of the body, I continue to think, to reflect and to reason, I use, it may be,
the substance of the brain as the implement of my thinking, reflecting
and reasoning; though of this in fact we know nothing.
We have every reason to believe that the mind cannot subsist without
the body; at least we must be very different creatures from what we are
at present, when that shall take place. For a man to think, agreeably and
with serenity, he must be in some degree of health. The corpus sanum

is no less indispensible than the mens sana. We must eat, and drink, and
sleep. We must have a reasonably good appetite and digestion, and a
fitting temperature, neither too hot nor cold. It is desirable that we
should have air and exercise. But this is instrumental merely. All these
things are negatives, conditions without which we cannot think to the
best purpose, but which lend no active assistance to our thinking.
Man is a godlike being. We launch ourselves in conceit into illimitable
space, and take up our rest beyond the fixed stars. We proceed without
impediment from country to country, and from century to century,
through all the ages of the past, and through the vast creation of the
imaginable future. We spurn at the bounds of time and space; nor
would the thought be less futile that imagines to imprison the mind
within the limits of the body, than the attempt of the booby clown who
is said within a thick hedge to have plotted to shut in the flight of an
eagle.
We never find our attention called to any particular part or member of
the body, except when there is somewhat amiss in that part or member.
And, in like manner as we do not think of any one part or member in
particular, so neither do we consider our entire microcosm and frame.
The body is apprehended as no more important and of intimate
connection to a man engaged in a train of reflections, than the house or
apartment in which he dwells. The mind may aptly be described under
the denomination of the "stranger at home." On set occasions and at
appropriate times we examine our stores, and ascertain the various
commodities we have, laid up in our presses and our coffers. Like the
governor of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a
foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take account
of the muskets, the swords, and other implements of war it contains,
but for the most part are engaged in the occupations of peace, and do
not call the means of warfare in any sort to our recollection.
The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the
"stranger at home." With their bodies most men are little acquainted.
We are "like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, who
beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what
manner of man he is." In the ruminations