(23) I explain: A living body is illuminated by soul: each organ and member participates in soul after some manner peculiar to itself; the organ is adapted to a certain function, and this fitness is the vehicle of the soul-faculty under which the function is performed; thus the seeing faculty acts through the eyes, the hearing faculty through the ears, the tasting faculty through the tongue, the faculty of smelling through the nostrils, and the faculty of sentient touch is present throughout, since in this particular form of perception the entire body is an instrument in the soul's service.

The vehicles of touch are mainly centred in the nerves- which moreover are vehicles of the faculty by which the movements of the living being are affected- in them the soul-faculty concerned makes itself present; the nerves start from the brain. The brain therefore has been considered as the centre and seat of the principle which determines feeling and impulse and the entire act of the organism as a living thing; where the instruments are found to be linked, there the operating faculty is assumed to be situated. But it would be wiser to say only that there is situated the first activity of the operating faculty: the power to be exercised by the operator- in keeping with the particular instrument- must be considered as concentrated at the point at which the instrument is to be first applied; or, since the soul's faculty is of universal scope the sounder statement is that the point of origin of the instrument is the point of origin of the act.

Now, the faculty presiding over sensation and impulse is vested in the sensitive and representative soul; it draws upon the Reason-Principle immediately above itself; downward, it is in contact with an inferior of its own: on this analogy the uppermost member of the living being was taken by the ancients to be obviously its seat; they lodged it in the brain, or not exactly in the brain but in that sensitive part which is the medium through which the Reason-Principle impinges upon the brain. They saw that something must be definitely allocated to body- at the point most receptive of the act of reason- while something, utterly isolated from body must be in contact with that superior thing which is a form of soul of that soul apt to the appropriation of the perceptions originating in the Reason-Principle.

Such a linking there must be, since in perception there is some element of judging, in representation something intuitional, and since impulse and appetite derive from representation and reason. The reasoning faculty, therefore, is present where these experiences occur, present not as in a place but in the fact that what is there draws upon it. As regards perception we have already explained in what sense it is local.

But every living being includes the vegetal principle, that principle of growth and nourishment which maintains the organism by means of the blood; this nourishing medium is contained in the veins; the veins and blood have their origin in the liver: from observation of these facts the power concerned was assigned a place; the phase of the soul which has to do with desire was allocated to the liver. Certainly what brings to birth and nourishes and gives growth must have the desire of these functions. Blood- subtle, light, swift, pure- is the vehicle most apt to animal spirit: the heart, then, its well-spring, the place where such blood is sifted into being, is taken as the fixed centre of the ebullition of the passionate nature.

(105) III. Thou canst not deny, but that the Brain in the Head in a Creature is the Power of the Heart, for from the Heart all Powers rise up into the Brain, from whence, in the Brain, the Senses of the Heart exist. The Brain in the Head takes its Original from the Power of the Heart. Now observe,

(40) The Heart in Man signifies the Heat, or the Element of Fire, and it is also the Heat; for the Heat in the whole Body has its Original in the Heart.

(98) Now the Heart signifies the Sun, which is the Beginning of Life in this outward Body of this World. And now thou canst not say, that the animated or soulish Birth goes away or departs from the Heart, whilst the Body stands in the Mobility or Life.

(1) IF we consider now the Springing up of the Life, and in what Place of the Body it is where the Life is generated, then we shall rightly find the whole Ground of Man, and there is nothing so secret in Man but that it may be found. For we must needs say, that the Heart is the Place, wherein the noble Life is generated, and the Life again penetrates the Heart.

(113) And it is rightly the Brain in the corporeal Government of this World, from whence the Senses and Reason are generated, also all Meekness and Wisdom in natural Things; but the right and holy Spirit in Man, is generated in the hidden Heaven in the Water of Life.

(76) And the House of the hidden Heart generates also such a Spirit as stands hidden, in the Body, to the Spirit of the House of Flesh, as also to the Spirit of the astral Birth or Geniiture; just as the Heart of God in the seven Spirits of God stands hidden in the Spirits in the Deep of this World, and does not kindle them, till after its Enumeration, or Account of Time is out.