give me peace for quiet work, and I also, he said, might be a chosen
spirit, the divinity might perhaps vouchsafe revelations to me too. I
was young at that time, and spent my nights in prayer, but I only wasted
away, and my spirit grew darker instead of clearer. Then I killed in
secret--first a fowl, then rats, then a rabbit, and cut up their hearts,
and followed the vessels that lead out of them, and know little more now
than I did at first; but I must get to the bottom of the truth, and I
must have a human heart."

"What will that do for you?" asked Pentaur; "you cannot hope to perceive
the invisible and the infinite with your human eyes?"

"Do you know my great-grandfather's treatise?"

"A little," answered the poet; "he said that wherever he laid his
finger, whether on the head, the hands, or the stomach, he everywhere met
with the heart, because its vessels go into all the members, and the
heart is the meeting point of all these vessels. Then Nebsecht proceeds
to state how these are distributed in the different members, and shows--
is it not so?--that the various mental states, such as anger, grief,
aversion, and also the ordinary use of the word heart, declare entirely
for his view."

"That is it. We have already discussed it, and I believe that he is
right, so far as the blood is concerned, and the animal sensations. But
the pure and luminous intelligence in us--that has another seat," and the
physician struck his broad but low forehead with his hand. "I have
observed heads by the hundred down at the place of execution, and I have
also removed the top of the skulls of living animals. But now let me
write, before we are disturbed."