The moon receives her light from the sun, the centre of life of our solar system. If the sun were to cease to exist, the moon would soon lose her borrowed light; likewise if the sun of divine love ceases to shine in the human heart, the cold, calculating intellect may continue to glitter for a while, but it will finally cease to exist. If the brain vampyrizes the heart, that is to say, if it absorbs the greater part of the life principle, which ought to go to develop love and virtue in the heart, man may become a great reasoner, a scientist, arguer, and sophist; but he will not become wise, and his intellect will perish in this life or in the state after death. We often see very intellectual people becoming criminals, and even lunatics are often very cunning. That which a man may call his own in the end, are not the thoughts which he has stored in his perishable memory; but the fire of love and light which he has kindled in his heart. If this fire of life burns at his heart it will illuminate his mind, and enable the brain to see clear; it will develop his spiritual powers of perception, and cause him to perceive things which no amount of intellectual brain-labor can grasp. It will penetrate even the physical body, and cause the soul therein to assume shape and to become immortal.

It is not to be supposed that the above truths will be at once accepted by every reader of the Journal, except by such as have given deep thought to the true nature of man. Neither are they a subject for scientific controversy or disputation. A knowledge of the truth is not produced by disputations and quarrels, but only by direct perception, experience, and understanding. The conclusions which man arrives at by logic are merely productive of certain opinions, and these opinions are liable to be changed again as soon as the basis from which his logic started, changes. A real knowledge of spiritual truths requires a power of spiritual perception, which few men possess. Nevertheless, even our logical deductions, taking as a starting point that which we know to be true, will help us to arrive at the same conclusions at which the Hermetic philosophers arrived by the power of spiritual perception.

[In the foregoing passage, Dr. H. professes to state doctrines derived from intuition or spiritual perception by the ancients, and also recognized to-day by spiritual perception. To me they appear as the results only of that sort of ancient SPECULATION, which recognized earth, air, fire, and water as the four chemical elements of all things. I do not find them sustained by the spiritual perception of those who have the intuitive powers to-day, nor by scientific investigation. The substance of the heart is not the seat of life. It is a merely muscular substance, and ceases all action when separated from its controlling ganglia. The vitality of the heart lies in its ganglia—in other words, in the nervous system, in which alone is life, and of which the brain is the commanding centre. That life resides exclusively in the nervous system is one of the established principles of physiology, which cannot be disturbed by any theories descending from antiquity, before the dawn of positive science. That the will resides in the blood and the heart, is about as near the truth as Plato’s doctrine that the prophetic power belonged to the liver. If the region of Firmness in the brain be large, it will be strongly manifested, even though the heart be feeble, and as easily arrested as Col. Townsend’s. But if the upper surface of the brain be diseased, or sensibly softened, the will power is almost destroyed, even if the plethoric, hypertrophied heart is shaking the head with its power. Many an individual of a delicate frame, has overpowered by firmness and courage stout, muscular men of far larger hearts. That the brain is the organ of thought alone, is a very old crudity. It contains every human emotion and passion, which we may stimulate in the impressible, or suspend instantly by a slight pressure on the brain. There is no intense exercise of any of the emotions or passions without a corresponding warmth and tension in the portion of the brain to which they belong, the development and activity of which determine their power. The will and life are not identical, as Dr. H. suggests, for if they were, we should not have these two words with different meanings. If will is an attribute of life, that does not constitute identity. The speculations of Rosicrucians are of no authority in science. The divine love or influence is in direct relation to the brain, the central organ of the soul, and not to a muscular structure of the body, which is far below the brain in rank. It would be just as reasonable to affirm that courage belongs only to the muscles. That illuminating love which Dr. H. ascribes to the heart, belongs to the upper region of the brain, and is never found when that region lacks development, or is in a cold, torpid condition. I deny entirely that these mystic theories are the product of true, spiritual perception. They arise from the fact that the thoracic region sympathizes with the seat of true love and will in the brain. This secondary effect has been felt and realized by those to whom the functions of the brain were unknown. Spiritual perception, now guided by the spirit of investigation, discovers the whole truth—that all human faculties and impulses belong to the brain, but have a secondary influence on the localities of the body to which SARCOGNOMY shows their relations.]

If we believe in one great spiritual cause of all, and conceive of it as the great spiritual Sun of the universe (of which our terrestrial sun is merely an image or reflection), we find that spiritual man (the image of God) can be nothing else but an individual ray of that spiritual sun, shining into matter, becoming polarized and forming a centre of life in the developing human fœtus, and causing this fœtus to grow in a living form of human shape, according to the conditions presented to it by the maternal organism, and when it is born, and becomes conscious, the illusion of self is created within that individual form. Besides the gross, visible, external form, more ethereal internal forms are evolved, which are of a longer duration than the outward physical form, but of which it is not necessary to speak at present.

At all events, all that we positively know of man, is that he is an invisible internal power, which evolves an outward shape, which we call a human being. The material through which the organism is built up is the blood, and the centre from which the blood flows into all parts of the body and to which it returns from all parts, is the heart. The heart is consequently the centre from which that power which builds up the organism of man emanates, and as this power can be nothing else but Life, the heart is the centre of life. The heart and the brain stand in the most intimate relation to each other, and neither one can continue to live if the other one ceases to act; but according to the doctrines of the ancient and modern occultists the heart is of superior importance than the brain. A man may live a long time without thinking, but he ceases to live when his heart ceases to beat. The heart is the seat of life, the brain the seat of thought, but both are equally necessary to enjoy life; there is no intellectual activity without life, and a life without intelligence is worthless. That the force which constructs the organism of man emanates from the heart, appears to me to be self-evident; that the power which guides this construction emanates from the brain has been demonstrated by Dr. Buchanan.

[This is quite incorrect. The heart may cease acting, as in apparent death while the processes of thought and feeling are going