The heart, this primum mobile of the animal life, has with perfect justice been chosen as the symbol, nay, the synonym, of the will, as the primary kernel of our phenomenon, and denotes this in opposition to the intellect, which is exactly identical with the head. All that, in the widest sense, is matter of the will, as wish, passion, joy, grief, goodness, wickedness, also what we are wont to understand under "Gemüth," and what Homer expresses through (
Greek characters), is attributed to the heart. Accordingly we say: He has a bad heart; – his heart is in the thing; – it comes from his heart; – it cut him to the heart; – it breaks his heart; – his heart bleeds; – the heart leaps for joy; – who can see the heart of man? – it is heart-rending, heart-crushing, heart-breaking, heart-inspiring, heart-touching; – he is good-hearted, hard-hearted, heartless, stout-hearted, faint-hearted, &c. &c. Quite specially, however, love affairs are called affairs of the heart, affaires de cœur; because the sexual impulse is the focus of the will, and the selection with reference to it constitutes the chief concern of natural, human volition, the ground of which I shall show in a full chapter supplementary to the fourth book. Byron in "Don Juan," c. xi. v. 34, is satirical about love being to women an affair of the head instead of an affair of the heart. On the other hand, the head denotes everything that is matter of knowledge. Hence a man of head, a good head, a fine head, a bad head, to lose one's head, to keep one's head uppermost, &c. Heart and head signifies the whole man. But the head is always the second, the derived; for it is not the centre but the highest efflorescence of the body. When a hero dies his heart is embalmed, not his brain; on the other hand, we like to preserve the skull of the poet, the artist, and the philosopher. So Raphael's skull was preserved in the Academia di S. Luca at Rome, though it has lately been proved not to be genuine; in Stockholm in 1820 the skull of Descartes was sold by auction.[1]
- ↑ The Times of 18th October 1845; from the Athenæum.
