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OF THE FUNCTIONS OF MAN. 83
ternal organs of nutrition. Even with all the aids of
scientific observation, what ages elapsed before the cir
culation of the blood was discovered ? From the time
food is swallowed, until it enters into the structure of our
organs, lives its brief organic life, dies, and is conveyed
out of the system, we have no particular consciousness
of any of the changes through which it passes. In
health there is a general feeling of satisfaction and plea
sure in the performance of every function ; but this
feeling is vague. In disease, these acts may be accom
panied by pain.
But it is the law of the organic system, that its
functions are unconscious and vaguely pleasurable in
health—and that these nerves only acquire sensation in
disease, when they produce pain by their connection
with the nerves of sensation belonging to the nervous
system of animal life.
A good digestion, a brisk circulation, a vigorous action
of the capillaries and corresponding secretions, give a
general feeling of health, and a degree of pleasure of
which we are hardly conscious, until, by being deprived
of it, we have data for comparison. To have made us
conscious of these incessant actions of our vegetative
life, might have been a discomfort. While they all go
on rightly, it is enough for us to have the general and
pleasant feeling that all is right ; but when there is food
in the stomach that can not be digested, poisons in the
system that can not be eliminated, nature cries out
against the outrage, and her warning cry is Pain.
The grand center of the superadded functions of
animal life is the brain. Here is the center of con
sciousness, of sensation, of voluntary motion, of thought,