From the propelling power in affection, or from its collected and concentrated activity, the heart beats. Affection, or love, flows into the will, where, by the human organism, its endeavor is turned into the power of heart-throbs by Correspondence, just as the endeavor of affection is turned into the light of the understanding, and thence into the act of the hand. It is because of this, that when the desires are ardent and intensified, the heart's action quickens: that when they are deep and soft, the heart-beats are milder, and that the states of affection in general have a corresponding effect upon the heart's action. That there is such a relation between the heart and affection is tacitly perceived in calling an affectionate person warm-hearted, or a selfish person cold-hearted. The stomach digests food from powers derived from affection and thought. Memory is the mind's stomach where knowledge is stored for the use of the desires. The affections digest knowledge by selecting and appropriating things from observation and memory, favoring one class and rejecting another. Affection operating in the mind has the power of digesting mental things, and of appropriating them to use. The body, by virtue of its form, converts the mental digestive powers to physical ones. So it is that a happy and
