Heart and Head

HEART AND HEAD.
Sec. XII.

"Quid sine capite est homo," cries Ambrose, "cum totus in capite sit!" According to thorough investigation and evidence of Scripture in all its parts, however, the heart is the internal centre of the natural condition of man, in which the threefold life of man blends together. Wherefore 3^, inwardness, internality (although properly of a broader meaning than 3^, Ps. xxxix. 4, lxiv. 7), is used in a sense almost the same as 3^ (Arab. qalb) (e.g. Ps. v. 10, xlix. 12) ; and af>, KapSi'a, denotes also the middle or centre of other natural things (see Sec. X. of this division). The heart is (A) the centre of the bodily life, it is the reservoir of the entire life-power (Ps. xl. 13, comp. xxxviii. 11), and indeed in the lowest physical sense; for eating and drinking, as strengthening of the heart (Gen. xviii. 5; Judg. xix. 5; 1 Kings xxi. 7; Acts xiv. 17; Jas. v. 5, comp. Luke xxi. 34), becomes the strengthening of the whole man. It is (B) the centre of the spiritual-psychical life, and (a) of the life of will and desire. When the man determines of himself upon anything, it is called Sab <n6p (Esther vii. 5, comp. Eccles. viii. 11,

ix. 3), or tnfc \sb 213 (Ex. xxxv. 29), or 'isb (Ex. xxxv. 21), or iai> pj (Eccles. i.' 13), or ta^j? BB' (Dan. i. 8); New Testament, irpocupeh-at, rfi KapSla (2 Cor. ix. 7). When the man designs anything with a consciousness of the motive and object, it is called taaj>3 iTH (I_sa. _x. 7) or ta^Dj; (i Kings viii. 17,

x. 2): it is Hl^ri (Ps. xxi. 3), evSoKia (Rom. x. 1), irpodeaK (Acts

xi. 23), of his heart; and when he is strongly determined, he is iSpaio< ; iv rfj KapSla (1 Cor. vii. 37). What is done gladly, willingly, and of set purpose, is done eii ieapS(a<; (Lam. iii. 33; Rom. vi. 17; comp. Prov. xxiii. 7). The heart is the seat of love (1 Tim. i. 5) and of hatred (Lev. xix. 17). Whom a man loves, to him lie gives his heart (Prov. xxiii. 26; Judg. v. 9), and him he has in his heart (Phil. i. 7; 2 Cor. vii. 3). The heart is (b) the centre of the spiritual-psychical life, as the life of thought and conception. The heart knows or perceives, Deut. xxix. 3, Prov. xiv. 10; it understands, Isa. xxxii. 4, Prov. viii. 5, Acts xvi. 14; it deliberates, Neh. v. 7; it reflects, cvfifidWei, Luke ii. 19; and estimates, Prov. xvi. 9. The heart is set or directed (D^, when one gives heed (Deut. xxxii. 46; Ps. xlviii. 14): it is turned away from, or inclined towards, according as one's sympathies are turned away or turned towards an object (Deut. xxx. 17; Josh. xxiv. 23). That which one impresses on one's self, and makes one's own, is said to be on or in the heart (Deut. xi. 18; Cant. viii. 6; Prov. vi. 21, iii. 3); one knows in his heart if he is conscious to himself (Deut. viii. 5), and with his whole heart if he is absolutely conscious (Josh, xxiii. 14; comp. 3^, knowledge about anything, in the phrases, 2 Kings v. 26, Gen. xxxi. 20); and everything which comes to us in perception and memory rises in the heart (3Wj> ni>j? ₀r Isa, lxv. 17, Jer. iii. 16, or

Ka, 2 Chron. vii. 11; dvaftaivei iirl KapSia, Acts vii. 23, 1 Cor. ii. 9). The heart is the storehouse of all that is heard and experienced (Luke i. 66, ii. 51, xxi. 14). Thinking is called a!» -iDK, Gen. xvii. 17, or Gen. viii. 21, xxiv. 45;

nirDj? "ianj Eccles. i. 16, or drty, 1 Sam. i. 13; Xeyeiv or eiVetj' iv rfj KapSla, Matt. xxiv. 48, Apoc. xviii. 7. The heart even discourses inwardly, and then speaks, by expressing itself outwardly (*i»K, Ps. xxvii. 8; 13% Ps. xii. 7, Prov. xxiii. 33; njn, Prov. xv. 28, xxiv. 2, Isa. xxxiii. 18). The heart is the birthplace of the thoughts: thought is called nun, Ps. xlix. 4, P'3?, Ps. xix. 15, or Ji'jn, Dan. ii. 30, of the heart;—its thoughts, ni3BTiD, Gen. vi. 5; 'pjfn or ^n, J_udg. v. 15; rrfsre, Jer. xxiii. 20; Prov. xvi. 1; ni»2bp, Ps. Ixxiii. 7; 'Bnfcs, J₀b xvii.

11; fiovKal, 1 Cor. iv. 5; SiaXoyierfiol, Matt. xv. 19, Luke v. 22, ix. 47, xxiv. 38; ivOvfirjaeis, Matt. ix. 4; ewoiai, Heb. iv. 12. Wise thoughts, as well as inventions (1 Kings xii. 33; Neh. vi. 8; Isa. lix. 13) and deceits (Jer. xiv. 14, xxiii. 16), originate from the heart: it is the heart which forms them pV), Gen. viii. 21), and devises them (BH?, Prov. vi. 18). Because it is the birth-place of the thoughts, the heart is, moreover, the birth-place of words. Words are brought forth from the heart (Job viii. 10), are spoken with the heart (Ps. xv. 2); the mouth speaks ix Tov irepiaaevfxaros T?}? KapSias (Matt. xii. 34). The heart thus comprehends both vow and X07o?. Therefore the wise man is called 3{rD3n (Ex. xxviii. 3), and 3b is pregnantly used as equivalent to understanding (Job xii. 3; Prov. xv. 32; Hos.

iv. 11): thence 'B^K, the man of understanding (Job xxxiv.

10, 34), and 3^-ipn (Prov. x. 13) or 3^-pK (Hos. vii. 11; Jer.

v. 21), the man void of understanding; for heart without ^3t? (Job xvii. 4) or ⁿⁱ?3Pi (Prov. xiv. 33) is no better than none. The heart is (c) the centre of the spiritual-psychical life, as emotional, i.e. the life of the feelings and the affections (affections of the mind). To the heart are attributed all degrees of joy, from pleasure (Isa. lxv. 14) to transport and exultation (Acts ii. 46; Ps. Ixxxiv. 3); all degrees of pain, from discontent (Prov. xxv. 20) and sorrow (John xvi. 6) up to piercing and crushing woe (Ps. cix. 22; Acts xxi. 13; Isa. lxv. 14); all degrees of ill-will, from provocation and anger (Prov. xxiii. 17 1 Jas. iii. 14) to raging madness (Acts vii. 54) and glowing desire of vengeance (Deut. xix. 6); all degrees of dissatisfaction, from anxiety (Prov. xii. 25) to despair (Eccles.

11. 20); all degrees of fear, from reverential trembling (Jer. xxxii. 40) to blank terror (Deut. xxviii. 28; Ps. cxliii. 4). The heart melts and writhes for anguish (Josh. v. 1; Jer. iv. 19), becomes weak by despondency (Lev. xxvi. 36; Deut. xx. 8), glows and ferments for sadness (Ps. xxxix. 3, Ixxiii. 21), dries up and withers under the weight of sorrow (Ps. cii. 4; Ezek. xvi. 30), is broken and crushed by the anguish of adversity, wrath, and punishment (Ps. cxlvii. 3; Jer. xxiii. 9; Ps. li. 19), is turned for sympathy (Hos. xi. 8); is set into a sacred burning by God's word (Jer. xx. 9; Luke xxiv. 32). Briefly, 3^, KapSia, is the conscious unity of the spiritualpsychical life in all its directions; and therefore "ins 3^, Kap&ia fiia, is the conscious perfect agreement of will, thought, and feeling (Jer. xxxii. 39; Ezek. xi. 19; 1 Chron. xii. 38; Acts iv. 32). But as will, thought, and feeling are always conceived by Scripture from an ethical point of view, it is thence understood of itself, that the heart, moreover, is (C) the centre of the moral life; so that all moral conditions, from the highest mystical love of God (Ps. Ixxiii. 26), even to the self-deifying pride (Ezek. xxviii. 2, 5), and the darkening (Rom. i. 21) and hardening (Isa. vi. 10, lxiii. 17; Jer. xvi. 12; Lam. iii. 65; 2 Cor. iii. 14), are concentrated in the heart, as the innermost lifecircle of humanity (1 Pet. iii. 4); and the moral character is called precisely n!? (comp. an ambiguous character, Ps.

xii. 3, 1 Chron. xii. 33), or with reference to the heart, "HP (Deut. xxxi. 21; New Testament, Sidvoia, Luke i. 51, eVtVota, Acts viii. 22). Therefore 1a, clear; ""'"IB, pure;¹ "K^, upright; sty, whole; Dn, perfect; Ji33, strong; lptU, faithful, and so further, with their opposites, are appellations of the heart,—the decision of which, however, is not a problem of psychology, but of ethics. The heart is the laboratory and place of issue of all that is good and evil in thoughts, words, and deeds (Mark vii. 21; Matt. xii. 34); the rendezvous of evil lusts (eiridvfiiai) and passions (irddjj iiridvfiia<;, Rom. i. 24; Mark iv. 19, comp. 15); a good or an evil treasure (Luke vi. 45). It is the place where God's natural law is written in us, and effectually proves itself (Rom. ii. 15); as also the place of the positive law put within by grace (Isa. li. 7; Jer. xxxi. 33). It is the seat of conscience (Heb. x. 22); and all the testimonies of the conscience, e.g. 1 John iii. 19-21, are ascribed to it. With the heart it is believed, KapSia iriaTeverai (Rom. x. 10); and also disbelief places there the dregs of all wickedness (Heb. iii. 12). It is the field for the seed of the divine word (Matt. xiii. 19; Luke

¹ It is characteristic of the rather Hellenic than Hebraic language in which the idea is expressed, that the book of Wisdom (vii. 27) says iei'xt ^c,yx1, where the Old Testament (Prov. xxii. 11, LXX.) says iei'xi xxpltxi.

viii. 15). According as it makes its decision, it stands under the inspirations of God (e.g. 2 Cor. viii. 16) or of Satan (John xiii. 2; Acts v. 3). It is the dwelling-place of Christ in us (Eph. iii. 17), of the Holy Ghost (2 Cor. i. 22), of the peace of God (Col. iii. 15); the receptacle of the love of God shed abroad (Rom. v. 5), the place of rising of the heavenly light (2 Cor. iv, 6; 2 Pet. i. 19), the closet of secret communion with God (Eph. v. 1&; comp. Lam. ii. 18, iii. 41, Hos. vii. 14); a great mysterious depth, which only God fathoms (Prov. xv. 11; Jer. xvii. 9; Ps. xjiv. 22 ;Rom. viii. 27).¹ To speak with Beck, it is the centre of the entire man—the very hearth of life's impulses—the supporter of the personal consciousness, combined with the self-determination and activity of the reason—the training-place of all independent actions and conditions; it is the agent of all relations and conducts, as well on the spiritual as on the bodily side, so far as they ensue with self-consciousness and free agency. It is the heart that characterizes the moral condition of the man: in the heart are found the postulates of speech; in the heart is affirmed the natural law, and, by means of regeneration, the new law of God as a living power. The question of v. Rudloff,² whether the heart belongs to the domain of the spirit or of the soul, needs not at all to be proposed in this mode of comprehension. It is the spiritual-psychical inward nature of the man in its concrete central unity, and on all sides of its dynamic efficiency and its ethical determination. All that Hellenicallyand Hellenistically is called voth, X07o?, avvelSrjaK, dvfio<;, is involved in KapSia; and all by which "lEO and t?W is affected, comes in J? into the light of consciousness. The heart, says Solomon (Prov. xiv. 10), knoweth the bitterness of his soul. It is obvious, from this mode of conception, that the heart is the place where, as Oehler expresses it,³ the soul is at home, and becomes conscious of all its doing and suffering, as its own. All the rays of the life of soul and body converge thither, and again develop themselves thence (comp. e.g. Prov. xiv. 30, xvii. 22). Heart,

¹ Where hitherto, in the individual cases, only one illustrative text or a few or many of them are cited, it has always occurred with design, and after a previous review of the collected texts pertaining to the point.

² Die Lehre vom Meiutchen, p. 42. • Art. "Hens" in Herzog's R.E.

soul, and flesh, is the Old Testament trichotomy (Ps. Ixxxiv. 3, xvi. 9); heart and soul, the Old Testament designation of the spiritual-psychical inner life (Deut. iv. 29, vi. 5; Josh, xxii. 5, xxiii. 14; 1 Kings ii. 4; 2 Kings xxiii. 3; 1 Chron. xxviii. 9; 2 Chron. vi. 38; Prov. ii. 10). We have purposely spared neither ourselves nor the reader the trouble of a tabular survey thus dry and wearisome, that the importance of the questions might be duly estimated which are associated with the view which is expressed in so continuous and various a manner in Scripture, from beginning to end. Maimonides disregards all difficulties, when, in view of this biblical mode of speaking, he says that lb is a homonymous word, which primarily denotes the principal organ of life — but then, moreover, thought, sentiment, will, and intellect.¹ Between heart in the lower bodily-vital sense and heart in the higher spiritual-psychical sense, there must subsist a deeper and more real consistency than that of a mere figure of speech. From the fact that Scripture speaks nowhere of a heart of the brutes in a higher sense (a fact to which Roos first of all calls attention),² as moreover that the Arabic Hamasa, p. 513, says precisely, the brute is

without heart ^jju), it cannot be proved that the higher

conception of the human heart is a purely spiritual one: for the difference of the human and the brute heart has its foundation in the distinction of the human and the brute soul; the organ of which in both cases is the heart of flesh: the fleshly heart of man is divested of humanity, while his soul is brutalized (Dan. iv. 13). That, moreover, when Scripture speaks of the heart in the higher sense, its reference is not to be so entirely withdrawn from the fleshly heart, is proved by almost all the passages where the heart appears as the object and subject of affections, e.g. Job xxxvii. 1: "At this also my heart trembleth, and is moved out of his place." These are for the most part symptoms of the fleshly heart, as Ps. xxxviii. 10; the impetuous quickly recurring contraction and expansion,³ by which

¹ Moreh Nebuchim, i. 89.

⁸ See also Beck, Seelenlehre, p. 70.

³ Not to say movement of rotation, for which "imnD is the strict expression, the heart revolves in every condition of its efficiency a little round its axis—leviter sese quasi contorquet, as Harvey expresses it; and with

the sentiments are indicated. But, moreover, Scripture conceives of higher spiritual occurrences in association with the fleshly heart. ^u I will give them," says Jehovah, in Ezek. xi. 19, of the Israel of the future, "one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh" ("iba 3!?). And Paul says to the Corinthians (2 Cor. iii. 2): "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: inasmuch as it is manifest of you that ye are the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tables of stone, but pn fleshly tables of the heart." Irenseus not unjustly avails bimself of this passage as a prooftext for the resurrection of the flesh: Si ergo nunc corda carnalia capacia spiritus fiunt: quid mi rum si in resurrectione earn quaj a spiritu datur capiunt vitam !¹

Will it perchance be opposed to us, that this concentration of all spiritual-psychical life in its sensuous agency upon the heart is not at all peculiar to the Holy Scripture? Even according to the Indian view, the sun of knowledge rises in the aether of the heart: there dwells the part "which stands at the crest" (Kutasfa) of the universal Brahma, who, by his reflection, bestows the needful light on the spiritual capacities.² Of the Persians, Firmicus Maternus tells us that they regard the heart as the source and ground whence the thoughts branch forth like a wood³ (in modum silvarum). In Homer, KapSia (^Top) likewise serves as the central living hearth of man, and stands to ippeve< ; directly in the relation of an internal nature. It is only because of the distinct and more elevated position which philosophy and physiology award to the pow, that the brain gradually attained a higher significance. Pythagoras was the first who isolated the vow in the brain. Alcmaeon, his pupil, considered the brain as the organ, as well of perception (aiadrjai<;) as of thought. Even Plato located the vow in the head, wearing the form of a terrestrial globe. In like manner,

convulsive states of the heart is associated at times a feeling as if the heart were in a rolling motion.

¹ Opp. ed. Stieren, i. 753.

² Grant, Bibliotheca Tamulka.

⁸ In a passage given in full in the following section, in Gersdorf, Bibliotheca Patrum, vol. xiii. p. 67.

the younger Hippocratic school,¹ and most of the Alexandrian physicians. Nevertheless Erasistratos taught (under Seleucus Nicator), according to Galen's testimony, that not alone the spirit of life, but also the spirit of the soul, had its seat Kara Ttv KapStav. This view, moreover, found scholastic support elsewhere. Empedocles gave the heart's blood to the soul, Diogenes of Apollonia the cavity of the chest to the vonat^; the author of the Hippocratic work, irepi iiapcVa?, gave the left ventricle to the yvwfirj (intelligent soul), as their seat respectively. But the chief assertor of the heart as the central organ of the soul is Aristotle, with the school of physicians that adopt his philosophy. The heart, from which the formation of the embryo takes its beginning, is_t in his estimation, the centre whence proceed all the organs of sense, and whence, therefore, the soul, as the entelecheia of the body, develops its reality.² Moreover, among the Stoics, Chrysippus taught that the heart is the abode of the reason and the affections; and Posidonius, that the one soul, with its three fundamental powers (Xcr/l^eodai, dvjiovadai, iiridvfieiv), has its one proper dwelling-place in the heart.³ And generally, the heart appears to the entire Greek science something more than a mere mechanical forcing-pump of the blood; for even Plato (followed by Philo), although he regards the head with the senses as the seat of the X070?, places the dvfio< ; in the chest or the heart, as the iiridvfiia in the liver, or the umbilical region. In Homer, the slain man, as wanting consciousness, is called d/ojpeo?, without heart; and also in the Latin, cor, although here pressed back by animus, is used in a spiritual-psychical sense, as is shown by the adjectives excors, socors, vecors, and the forms of speech, cordi esse, cordi facere, and the like. Of a clever, cunning little maid, it is

¹ Hippocrates himself, in hia genuine writings, nowhere attributes to the brain the functions of the soul. This Galenistic view did not occur till the later apocryphal Hippocratic works: see Herm. Nasse, Commentatio de insania secundum libros Hippocraticos, 1829, iv. p. 4. The work, vepi hpii »omh,i,, would therefore not be genuine; for there (Opp. ed. Littre, vol. vi. p. 392) it is expressly said that the brain, and not the heart, is the seat of the intelligence.

¹ See Brandis, Aristoteles und seine akademischen Zeitgenossen, second part (1857), p. 1144. Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, ii. 487; comp. v. Zezschwitz, Profangriicitiit und bibl. Sprachgeisl, pp. 24-31.

³ See Max. Heinze, Stoicorum de affectibus doctrina (1860), p. 50.

said in Plautus: Ut liabet sapiens cor, quam elicit quod opust.¹

It is thus a fact, that this mode of regarding the heart is common to Scripture with classical and oriental antiquity, and that, in classical antiquity, even great scientific authorities look on the heart as the central organ of the soul. But is the marvel of the matter thereby explained 1 Is it, on that account, the less an enigma that needs explanation? In the extra-biblical sphere one might pass on, and be satisfied with the fact that this idea of the heart—as, perhaps, that of the.revolution of the sun round the earth—is one of the many puerile ideas which belong to the early times of humanity; ideas, of which even yet science has not been able altogether to divest herself. But in Scripture it is so involved with the idea of the blood, and this so much implicated with the ritual of sacrifice,² and the doctrine of atonement; and even were this not the case, it has there so pervading an influence upon the mode of thought and expression, and such an all-pervading control, that it is impossible to be satisfied with that cheap and superficial mode of explanation. For only the book of Daniel sometimes names the head, where, according to the prevalent mode of speech in Scripture, the heart might have been expected: it considers the head as the locale of visions (ii. 28, iv. 2, 7, 10, vii. 1, 15; comp. on the other hand, ii. 30). This ftn, Wi in association with y<*jn in the book of Daniel, is a hint of the greatest value; but it is also the only trace of the reference of spiritual-psychical events to the head: for, in respect of such passages as Eccles. ii. 14, it would only be a misapprehension of the true matter of fact to assume any.

Certainly moreover the head is, according to Scripture, evidently the noblest part of man; standing in the closest relation as well to soul and spirit in the man, as to all psychic-spiritual influences which arise to the man. Because in the head, the human organism culminates, Christ is called the Kecf>aj^s of

¹ Persse, iv. 4, p. 84, ed. Ritschl.

² In the whole-offering the head and heart of the beast were burnt upon the altar (Lev. i. 8, viii. 20); otherwise, only the fat, kidneys, and the liver: Philo (Opp. ii. 190) neglects the former, while he finds the reason of the latter in the fact that head and heart are the seat of the tiyifitmix.it, i.e. of the »oDf.

* See my Four Books of the Church, p. 14.

the church His body, (see especially Eph. v. 23; Col. ii. 19; comp. 1 Cor. xi. 3); and for the same reason, U^" I is the general metaphorical appellation of him who is most exalted, the most excellent, the chief. He who blesses lays his hand upon the head of the person to be blessed (Gen. xlviii. 14, comp. xlix. 26; Prov. x. 6), and he who consecrates, on the head of the person to be consecrated (Jer. viii. 10); so that from thence, blessing and consecration, like the anointing oil *(Ps. cxxxiii. 2, comp. Lev. viii. 12), should flow down upon the whole natural condition, and pervade it. Precisely for the same reason, tongues of fire are distributed on the heads of the apostles, and they become thus full of the Holy Ghost (Acts ii. 3): it was to them their heavenly laying on of hands (^Pp). There is a similar reason for the healer laying his hand upon the person to be healed (Matt. ix. 18): the power of healing (Luke vi. 19) goes forth upon the head, in order to go forth from thence upon the whole man. And it scarcely needs a proof, that the countenance or front of the head is,regarded also in Scripture as the mirror of divine influences upon the man—of all affections, and of the entire life of soul and spirit. When Moses beheld the glory of God upon Sinai (Ex. xxxiv. 29, comp. Matt. xvii. 2, 2 Cor. iii. 13), it was his countenance which shone long afterwards. The wisdom of a man, says the Preacher (viii. 1), brightens his face, and, through boldness, his countenance is defaced or changed. In the physiognomy is reflected the moral condition of the man (Isa. iii. 9: see above, Sec. X. towards the end). Therefore God's D^B is Himself, in His essential revelation (Ex. xxxiii. 14; Deut. iv. 37); as the Angel of Jehovah, as the medium of this revelation, is called V3S ^ksd (Isa. Ixiii. 9). As the person, in respect of its internal nature, is called t?W, '^u%77; so, in respect of its external nature, it is called D^B, irpoawrrov, or E'tn (Judg. v. 30; 1 Chron. xii. 23), and even (Ex. xvi. 16, xxxviii. 26). The visible personal presence of any one is called his countenance, e.g. 2 Sam. xvii. 11. In all these relations the head is very highly exalted, but without, as v. Schubert¹ thinks, attributing to it any spiritual or higher

¹ Geschichte der Seek, i. 270; against which Einhorn, Princip. des Mosaismvs, i. 174, observes: "The head is to the external appearance what the heart is to the internal agency of the soul; and only on this view is a prominent position attributed to it in the biblical point of view."

psychical functions. And even where Scripture speaks of the functions of the organs of sense, especially of seeing and hearing, as of conscious functions, and transfers the appellations to purely intellectual and spiritual transactions, it nowhere justifies us in supposing that there the head—which, even as the chief organ, unites in itself the organs of sense—is represented as the seat of the soul and the spirit, which are the background of every sensuous perception or perception similar to it.

The result of our investigation is pretty much this: that the Scripture, without excluding head and brain (as we may see on a glance at Dan. ii. 28, etc.) from the psychico-spiritual activities and affections, attributes the central agency of these to the heart. We have set forth the state of the case wholly without prejudice, considering the Scripture in its own light, and not in that of the later physiology and psychology. So much the more uncompromisingly is manifested the contradiction in which the scriptural view stands not only with the scientific idea that has been customary since the middle ages,¹ but also with our own natural self-observation. For as it is indubitable that, by the blood in its normal design, the integrity of the psychical functions is conditioned; and that privation of blood by disease, or violence,—or superfluity of blood, has, as its consequence, a scale of symptoms, from the most extreme agitation even to absolute suppression; and as it is experimentally certain, that with anger, love, and every eager psychical excitement, is associated palpitation of the heart—that the blush of shame has its cause in the heart-beats which drive the arterial blood towards the countenance—that generally, in a mysterious manner, mental affections change the pulsations of the heart; —so it is to us also indubitable, and experimentally certain, that anything which mentally affects us from without, does not become a conscious affection, without the brain being interested, as well in its origination as in its consequences. That the brain

¹ Thus teaches, for instance, the Jewish physician and astronomer, Schabtai Donolo, that the nDEO—which withal he takes strictly in a dichotomic sense, as spirit of thought and life—has its seat in the membrane of the brain, which is expanded over the brain and the fluid, as the divine Schekinah in the highest heaven arched over the waters. Below the membrane there is, without anatomical division, the dura mater, together with the arachnoidea.

is the organ of the conscious vital activity, and therefore the peculiar organ of the soul,—i.e., as Damerow strikingly expresses it, the central organ of the spirit which appears in man as soul,— is not only the testimony of science, but is assured to us by every headache that results from over-strained thinking, and every congestion of blood towards the head that checks our thinking, by every self-reproach to which we give expression by striking our forehead, by every sense of stupefaction arising from forcible depression of the skull.¹ It is further a fact, that after injury of the brain and spinal marrow, the animal muscles, i.e. the muscles that obey the volition, sink into absolute quietude, from which they can only be aroused by external stimulus,—a proof that brain and spinal marrow are the chief organs whence proceed all those stimuli which from within put the animal muscles² in motion. Thus, for the present, there prevails no doubt at all that the higher self-conscious activity of the soul, in all its tendencies, has its laboratory in the brain,⁸ although, even to the present day, we have not succeeded in discovering

¹ "The problem of the biblical significance of the heart is solved very simply by meaDS of the absolute ignorance of the brain and nervous life." Thus Noack dismisses me (Psyche, 1860, p. 348). But is it necessary to know the life of brain and nerves, to feel that we think with the head? Such a solution is none at all.

^J In contrast to the organic muscles, which are the agents of the vegetative life, and withdrawn from the volition,—a usual distinction since the time of Bichat.

⁵ " By heart (x«e3i'«)," says Harless, Etliik, p. 15, "we understand nothing else than the naturally offered designation of the living spiritualbodily personality, so far as it is capable of inclination or disinclination,—of love or of hatred. Of a seat of this capability in the heart, we need speak just as little, as of a seat of the intelligence in the brain, or of other similar seats of the spiritual life." Where, then, is left the respect for the "so-called materialism of exact criticism," expressed in the preface to the Ethik f Nothing is more certain to him, than that the brain is the special seat of the soul; and how does it agree with this, that, according to a thorough biblical inspection, the heart is not only the seat of the impulse and of the inclination, but also of the intelligence and the will? It is just the question put to the science of biblical psychology, which is surely not satisfactorily solved by the fact that the heart is the natural centre of man. For the rest, the "spiritual-corporeal personality of man " is nowhere in Scripture called 3i>, but always E'W. The heart nowhere appears as personal

power (Hn), nowhere as personal link (E^;23), but always only as a personal

organ.

that unique constituent of the brain which is the indispensable condition of psychical phenomena, and therefore the peculiar ultimate—as it were, definite—seat of the soul. Nevertheless, all disturbance of the soul is esteemed pre-eminently a morbid state of the organ of the brain; and as it has not been absolutely decided that the thoughts coincide with the nervoelectric oscillations of the brain fibres, or are even accompanied by them,—even a plastic corporeal existence has been attributed to them in the brain.¹

The treatise of Fr. Nasse which appeared in the year 1818, on the psychical reference of the heart, is of still undiminished value for the question with which we are here concerned.² This eminent investigator, whose glance was not limited to his own department, and who embraced all regions of science and of the spirit with observant and living sympathy, declares himself here decided against the hypothesis of a single organ of the soul—for the soul itself united in itself. Thence he ventures the conjecture, that a psychological significance belongs not merely to the brain, but, moreover, to other organs of the internal corporeity,—a significance which antiquity anticipated and stamped upon their language, but which later science has not yet dispassionately examined, and therefore, moreover, has not duly estimated. Above all, it is the heart, to which, in opposition to the exclusive reference of the psychical life to the brain, he seeks to win back the hitherto mistaken close relation to the soul, especially to its capacities of feeling. But he goes too far when he attributes to the heart an immediate psychical agency, i.e. a proper production of psychical functions taking place without concurrence of the brain. For although the heart in itself is only a great muscle, and is thus a mechanism without sensation, which drives round the blood in the body, by means of the pressure which it brings to bear upon it, it yet includes ganglia (nervous centres) and nerves, which belong to its nature not less than the muscular mass. These

¹ Thus e.g. Buchez, s. Edel. Unterauchvngen ilber das Intellectuelle Leben, 1855.

² In the first quarterly part of the Zeitschr. filr psychische Aerzte, but to whom also the treatise on the relation of the chief tendencies of the soul to those of the body is to be attributed, in addition, in the Zeitschr. Jtir die Anthropologic, 1823, 1.

nerves are partly cerebro-spinal, partly sympathetic, as generally between the two systems of nerves there subsists a close reciprocity. This is not the place to allege the results of an anatomical investigation of the nerves of the so-called organic region, and to adduce the facts of experimental observation which place that relation of reciprocity a priori, probable as it is, beyond a doubt. When for a long time the cerebral system had been regarded as too dominant, the reaction prepared by Fr. Nasse, experimentally established by Volkmann and Bidder in favour of the sympathetic system, laid claim to an independence for it, which, if not absolute, was yet a relative one; and the result of it was the acknowledgment of the nearest material relationship and causal reciprocity of the two systems. And if I be not deceived in my judgment of the present position of the inquiry, the heart, in the measure that this united dualism of the nervous system has become recognised, has again attained significance; and although, at the present time, not much will be thought of the experimental facts asserted by Fr. Nasse,—that sometimes melancholy and mania are associated with defects of the heart in the most manifold forms, without, at the same time, any noticeable affection of the brain, and without any disease of the brain appearing in the corpse; and that the post-mortem investigation of men, brutal and degenerated into the inhuman, has shown all kinds of deformities of the heart,¹—still, it might become conclusively manifest, that brain and heart both together are the nearest and most influential bodily organs of the human soul. If the notion of finding the point of the brain wherein is the abode of the psychic-monad be only first substantially given up, then, instead of the view of the single seat of the soul, the ancient Stoic supposition of an extended seat of the soul, lately experimentally demonstrated by

¹ See on both, moreover, Steuder's Diss, de Cordis Morborum vi ad Animum, Kiel 1855. Against the former, it may be said that the proof per enumerationem simplicem (from individual cases) is too weak to build thereon the assumption of a deeper causal-connection; the latter has not yet been confirmed, at least for the present, by later observations. Charles n., the last of the House of Hapsburgh on the Spanish throne, the favourite of the Inquisition, and the amateur of the auto-da-fe (died 1700), presents an example not mentioned in Fr. Nasse: "The heart of the king was not larger than a pigeon's egg, and soft as moistened chalk" (see Kayserling, Bin Feiertag in Madrid, p. 9).

Fechner,¹ will be more and more confirmed; and theD, moreover, the acknowledgment of the fact, that the ganglionic system serves for the perception of the general conditions of life which proceeds from external impressions and single sensations, will further tend to this result, that the expansion of the seat of the soul extends not only to the heart, but that this latter also is a central hearth of the soul's activity.²

Thus, while considering the contradiction which the biblical assertions on head and heart meet, we have attained a point from which may be anticipated a possibility of arrangement. It is certainly too little, when Beck, in order to apprehend the spiritual significance which Scripture attributes to the heart, makes the following observation, which, in itself, is entirely true:³ "Centrality, with independently acting combined power, as well as with power of circulation stimulated and nourished on all sides—this forms the essential characteristic of the heart's life; and as the soul, with its peculiar character, is organically involved in the blood, so the central chamber of the blood-life, the heart in its declared peculiarity, forms the organic basis of the entire soul-life." It is too little; for Scripture, it is true, makes blood and lower soul-life coincide with its spirit-resembling functions, but nowhere blood and higher soul-life: there subsists a mediate connection between these two, but no immediate; the spiritual significance of the heart must yet be found elsewhere than in its being the central organ of the blood. But if it can be proved that the heart, considered in respect of its nervous character and not of its muscular mass, is the central point, in which, because it is the fountain of the blood, the two nervous systems coincide in a more significant manner than anywhere else, as it has already been shown

¹ In his Elements of Psycho-physics, ii. 382-428 (against Lotze, who, with Herhart, postulates for the simple soul-nature also a single place of retreat, and is inclined to consider the annular protuberance in the brain as this seat of the soul).

* Comp. Mehring, Scelenkhre, 1857 (sec. 46, on the seat of the soul).

⁸ SeclenleJire, p. 65; compare, however, also p. 13. Granfelt expresses himself less definitely in his Observations circa Notionem cordis humani biblico-psychologicam (Helsingfors 1847), that, from the biblical presumption that the heart is the centre and laboratory of the blood, we are led ad simile quoddam centrum adytumque intimum, cut basin visibilem et naturakm cor carnale prxbeat.

that brain fibres go to the heart, and not merely sympathetic nerve-fibres are inwoven therein, and then the spiritual importance which, according to the view of Scripture and antiquity, attaches to the heart, might be explained from the fact, that everything which mentally affects man comes to his consciousness indeed in the brain, but from thence it stimulates the heart, and from the heart reacts upon the brain, as sentiment, i.e. affection taken up into consciousness; in other words, from the fact, that the capacity of being subject to emotions of external or internal impressions, i.e. impressions originating either in the way of perception or idea, begins and ends in the brain, while it has its intermediate place in the heart. Nevertheless, this explanation is only partially satisfactory still; for, according to Scripture, the heart is not merely the seat of emotion, but also of the will and the thought. All the three spiritual activities, so far as they are reflected in the soul, and accomplished in the body, converge in the heart.

We shall approach the true solution, if we do not refuse¹ to give an unprejudiced and inquiring consideration to a phenomenon, to which—in spite of a scepticism only seemingly scientific, that closes its eyes to it, and in spite of the abuse and fraud whereby it has been degraded—must be attributed, on the ground of many-voiced and credible testimony, the most indubitable authenticity. It is the phenomenon of somnambulism. It only so far comes within the range of our investigation here, as the declarations of somnambulists remarkably and unintentionally accord with the statements of Scripture on the spiritual significance of the heart. A perfectly trustworthy reporter, who had opportunity of observing two somnambulists,—a little girl of ten years old, and a young man who for twenty years, in the condition of so-called magnetic sleep, preached Christian devotedness in a manner that marvellously transcended his own educational position and human capacity—both somnambulists, not by human agency, but by divine dispensation,—says on this matter: "From the presumable hypothesis, that the two natural forces of positive and negative electricity correspond to the two spiritual forces of knowledge and will, whose result is perception, and that positive currents are conveyed by the several

¹ We are glad herein to have the agreement of Oehler in Herzog's R.E. vi. 21.

nerves of sense to the knowing power of the spirit, while the willing power conveys negative currents to the muscles, and thus through them reacts upon the external world, I conceived of the place where occurs the flowing into one another of the two electricities, as being in the two hemispheres of the brain; because all our physiologists acknowledge the brain as the chief seat of the spiritual activity. It was not until after the somnambulist said to me that the light-beam of knowledge not only penetrates to his heart, but that it also streams forth from our heart to him, that I was able to renounce this general assumption; and I am now conjecturally of the opinion, that the region of the heart and of the stomach (namely, the socalled ganglionic system, which directs all the involuntary movements of the internal organs, as the chief conductor of the negative element) is the abode of the spiritual perception; and that here is formed, by the overflow of the two electricities, the spiritual light of conscious actions stimulated from without, or of purely subjective acts." We are far from wishing to appropriate to ourselves this combination, not only of nervous power, but also of psychico-spiritual capacity, with electricity: it lies altogether beyond the horizon of our capability of judgment; but the facts from which the originator of that conjecture proceeds, are, in our estimation, uncommonly weighty, and it will not be found without result if we at least record two of them.

When the somnambulist K. (the second of those above designated) observed that one of the auditors wished to question him, but hesitated, he said, "I see through your thoughts even without question; but in order that I may glance through them with facility, would you be good enough to place your hand at the pit of my heart, and with vivacity think of a question which you wish to have answered without asking it aloud? I will then at once answer." At this moment, his wife, who was separated from his sleeping couch by other auditors, and stood at the door of the room, thought very vividly how she would like to press forward and submit to him in thought the question long ago contemplated, whether he could long bear the bodily exertions which somnambulism caused him, in addition to his heavy smith's work, or whether her melancholy prognostic would not be fulfilled, that he could not live long? Immediately the character of his speech sympathized with the mournful tone of feeling and the anxious cares of his wife. What he replied, notwithstanding the heavenly consolation mingled therewith, made upon her so deep an impression, that she was carried out fainting, and all further question ceased.

The above-mentioned narrator relates the second fact supplied by way of illustration in the following manner. When I asked the somnambulist H., of ten years old, whether she could also see my thoughts in undulations of light which penetrated from my heart to her, she answered me, "No, I cannot see them; I am as yet still too weak for that; but I feel them dimly in my heart." As she answered me to no thought questions, but to questions expressed aloud in words, I asked her whether then she could hear my words, and she replied, "No, I hear them not with my ear; but I perceive them in my heart and in my breast, as they press into my spirit."¹

Another somnambulist, when questioned on the nature of thoughts, gave the self-same answer. I apprehend the thought in the nervous system, and neglect it in memory. It seems to me at first like an electric spark which circulates in the nervous canals; hereupon it passes into the blood in the form of a crystalline atom, and comes forth thence to the daylight after it has burst the husk of its birth, and begins its operation. The conversation then continued in the following manner: Q. Where does it come to light? A. In the heart and in the brain. Q. In which of these two organs does it show itself first? A. I say to thee, in the heart and in the brain. Q. Which agency does it express in the heart? A. That of the feeling: it then makes itself visible to the spiritual eye. Q. I thought, on the contrary, that the brain sees it, and the heart

¹ Thus far from the writings of the head-master, M. Beesel, in Schbneck at Danzig, upon somnambulists and somnambulism there. There are the following works: (1) Communications of the Somnambulist C. W. Kbhn to Suckczyn at Danzig, 1851; (2) Last Sayings of the Somnambulist Kbhn, 1851; (3) Literal Statements of several still living Somnambulists in the neighbourhood of Danzig, 1853; (4) Vital-Magnetism, or Association of the oscillating-formative Spirit- and Life-Powers with the Vibrations and Currents of the JEther, 1858 (in commission at Homann in Danzig). These four works may serve rather than others to enable us to form a wellfounded judgment on somnambulism. We commend them to such as may be capable of testing it.

merely feels it? A. No, the heart sees it first; but the sympathy between the two organs is so great, that it is seen almost at the same time by brain and heart.¹

We see from these facts and statements, which might easily be multiplied by hundreds, that the head as the apex of the cerebro-spinal system, and the heart as the centre of the socalled vegetative nervous system, are two corresponding poles of the bodily agency of the psychico-spiritual life,² and that the heart is related to the head, as the hidden root to the manifest and outwardly-turned top of the tree. The root contains in itself all that is developed out of it. In those conditions in which the external senses are closed, the sensitiveness to the outer corporeity is as it were dead; the blood from the external parts is withdrawn, and the breathing is almost imperceptible: then the powers that are concentrated in the root break forth in fullest intensity. Although now somnambulism is a phenomenon which always falls under a pathological point of view (by which, moreover, the interference of divine or demoniacal powers is not excluded),³ yet still it is precisely that which is morbidly abnormal, that is recognised as a principal means of ascertaining that which is normal and primitive. And we do not want somnambulism to prove that the internal nature of man, with its centre the heart, is the place of the deepest internalization of all psychico-spiritual activity. As well the most intensive degrees of mystical self-internalization, as the divinely effected prophecy in many of its modes of manifestation, are an evidence of it. "Man," says an Indian religious treatise,⁴ " must draw all senses into himself. Then Brahma appears in him as fire, as lightning. In the great fire, in the aperture of the heart, a little flame will blaze upwards, and in its midst will be alma (the spirit); and he who makes

¹ From a work of L. A. Cahagnet, which, for the rest, I put aside, as in a great measure trenching on the department of the magic forbidden in the Holy Scripture.

^a See Solger, Nachgel. Schriflen, i. 230, which, together with many erroneous consequences, draws moreover this right one, and places it at the head.

* " It is not known," says Purkinje somewhere, "whether the magnetic conditions are to be classed among the pathologic or the hyper-physical." I conceive it is not a dilemma that concerns us.

⁴ See in Steinbeck, Der I)ichter ein Seher, p. 125.

all longing after external knowledge to be silent in him—lie breaks like a hawk through the meshes of the net, and has become one with nature." And in respect of prophecy, it is indeed the characteristic of false prophecy, that it originates out of the prophet's own heart, and follows the tendency of his own spirit (Ezek. xiii. 2); but, moreover, the true prophet receives the perception of the impulse of the Divine Spirit in his heart (Jer. xx. 9); and with what else does he see, except with the internal eye, which is not opened unless the activity of the outward man be withdrawn to the position of the inward man? Therefore Balaam calls himself the man of the opened eye (Num. xxiv. 3, 15). Therefore he whose inner eye is opened sees, while others see nothing, and only perhaps receive a vague impression of an extraordinary occurrence (Dan. x. 7; Acts ix. 7). It is "the concealed paradisiacal glory (restrained in materially trained activity) of central doing and seeing"¹ which is there released. For "faith, power of faith, divination, the degrees of religious ecstasy and convulsion, the steps of the wonder-working operation of faith,—these are all manifestations of the inner man, set free from bondage in the night-side, in the vital vegetative region, and established into the eternal centre."''

But still the question always remains unanswered, how Scripture and antiquity came to the determination of regarding that spiritual importance which the heart attains in various manifest and obscure forms of ecstasy, as the usual normal fact; and of giving it an expression in language, which—from its first unanticipatory coinage, even to the latest time, which still always distinguishes psychically between head and heart—has maintained an almost undiminished dominion.³ I know not how to answer it otherwise, than that the view which forces itself upon us, that all psychico-spiritual life has its seat in the head,' is the result of a psychico-spiritual one-sidedness, which was

¹ Thus J. P. I^ange, in the Zeitschrift fur Chrisll. Wissenschajl, 1852. ⁸ Rocholl, Beitriige zu einer Gesch. der deutschen Theosophie (1856), p. 109.

³ We say "almost," for we should hardly now continue to express ourselves as e.g. Luther on the Holy Communion (Works, SO, 87): "The heart eats that spiritually, which the mouth eats bodily; but because the mouth is a fellow-member with the heart, it must finally live in eternity also for the sake of the heart."

foreign to the ancient world. "The humanity of those times," says, moreover, a later Homeric commentator,¹ "knew no onesided activity of the understanding—no abstract thought: its perceptions were directed to practical life; and were therefore accompanied by greater or less excitement of feeling, which manifests itself in the breast by deeper and quicker, fainter and more slow breathing, as well as by a more or less lively pulsation of the heart. Therefore it conceived of the breast as the chief place of the life of the soul. It was not until an abstract mode of thought was developed, certainly with the sacrifice of unprejudiced simplicity of mind, that the significance of the head in respect of the spiritual life was apprehended." This is precisely our judgment, but without foregoing the hope, that the simple self-consciousness of the yet unbiassed man of antiquity will one day still vindicate itself to modern science, as it did in Aristotle to ancient, in the way of physiological knowledge.⁸ In any case, the present excentric preponderance of the brainlife is, on the one hand, the result of a one-sided intellectual advance, wherein we have far surpassed antiquity; but, on the other hand, it is the result of a one-sidedness of the psychicospiritual life, wherein we are far inferior to antiquity. For this life has its root in the heart, and its crest in the head; and is therefore only then perfect, when between these two poles there subsists, without any confusion of them, but also without absolutism of the one or the other, the destined reciprocal relation.³

We have hitherto everywhere considered the heart not as isolated, but inclusive of what surrounds it,—namely, of the nervous tissues woven through the cavity of the breast, and

¹ Grotemeyer, Homer's Grundansicht von der Seele (1854), p. 5.

¹ As V. Zezschwitz, I.e. p. 30: "This is the way of all spiritual development of man, that what was once consciousness of living possession of nature, is found again on the path of science." Fr. Nasse says, in his treatise on the psychical relation of the heart (1818), p. 88: "We find confirmed, at least in the main features, what Plato, what Pythagoras, taught of the immediate relation of the heart to the soul: we must also here confess that in earlier times very many a thing was better known than in later."

³ Grace re-establishes this life, and then, moreover, there corresponds to it, the condition of truly spiritual self-knowledge, as e.g. is proved by J. Boume's answer to the question, How and in what place is the seat of the soul in man? (Q. 11 of the 40 questions on the soul.)

the abdomen, and the viscera in its neighbourhood. The following section will show with what well-founded scriptural justice we have done so.