When a phrenologist is examining a man's head, and wishes to know
about his heart, he feels of the stomach. There's where the heart
lies.
The sacred writer understood it, when he spoke of the "bowels of
compassion."
A man utters wiser than he knows, often, when, in a crowd
surrounding some object appealing to the heart, he cries out,--
"Gentlemen, have you no bowels?"
The dear Christ suggests the intimate relations between the soul and
the stomach, when, before appealing to the hearts of the multitude,
he filled their stomachs with good food.
In the Bible there are scores of expressions and phrases which point
to the stomach as the seat of the sympathies.
All the bright ones, with subscription papers in their hands, wait
till after dinner.
If they catch a man with a perfectly satisfied stomach, they are
likely to get a good round sum, even for the Hottentot-red-
flannel-shirt-fund.
The fact that the bumps of the heart are in the upper part of the
brain, matters little, if the condition of the digestive apparatus
controls their action. When I remark that the heart is located in
the stomach, it will, of course, be understood in a practical,
rather than in an anatomical sense.
The condition of the stomach determines the action of the emotions
to an extent which cannot be predicated of the intellectual
faculties. When one is dyspeptic, he may multiply and divide; he may
not disgrace himself even in the role of a logician; but if you
appeal to his sympathies,--to any of his emotions,--you will wake up
a pig, a porcupine, or, possibly, a tiger.
Leaving out the Bible intimations and statements, and the
illustrations which abound in English and German biography, no
observing person will fail to recall numerous illustrations in his
own experience.