The Body, Outside and In

But let us come back to the works of God. So that the eyes might be better protected from harm, he hid them behind the covering of the eyelashes — and from that hiding Varro thinks the eyes got their Latin name. The eyelids themselves, which have the power of rapid motion and are named from that fluttering, are set with hairs standing in rows and make a very handsome fence for the eyes. Their constant motion, meeting at a speed the mind cannot follow, never interrupts the course of sight, and it rests the eyes. For the pupil — that is, the clear membrane — must not be drained and left dry: unless a steady moisture keeps it washed so that it shines clearly, it loses its power. And why should I speak of the ridges of the eyebrows, set with short hair? Do they not, like earthworks, both protect the eyes, so that nothing falls into them from above, and adorn the face at the same time? [a]

The nose rises where the eyebrows end, drawn out in an even ridge, and it both separates the two eyes and shields them. Below them the cheeks swell — no ugly thing, rising gently like low hills — and make the eyes safer on every side; the great Craftsman arranged it so that if a harder blow lands, the parts that stand out take it. The upper half of the nose, as far as the middle, was made solid; the lower half has soft cartilage set into it, so that it gives under the fingers. And into this one part three jobs are packed: drawing the breath, smelling, and letting what the brain discharges drain away through its hollows. How wonderfully, how divinely God contrived these too, so that the opening of the nose would not spoil the beauty of the face — which it certainly would have done if only a single hole stood open. Instead he closed it in and divided it with what amounts to a wall drawn down the middle, and made it beautiful by the very fact of its being double. From this we understand how much the number two, made firm by one simple joining, does for the completeness of a thing.

For though the body is one, the whole of it could not be built out of single parts; there have to be members on the right hand and on the left. So the two feet, and the hands as well, are not only good for some use and practice — walking, or getting work done — but also give the body an admirable character and grace. And in the head, which is as it were the crown of the divine work, the great Craftsman divided hearing into two ears, sight into two eyes, smell into two nostrils, because the brain, which holds the whole system of sensation, is itself one and yet divided into two parts by the membrane between them. The heart too, which appears to be where wisdom lives, is one, and yet inside it has two chambers holding the living springs of the blood, with a barrier between them. It is so that, as in the world itself the ruling power — twofold out of simple matter, or simple out of twofold matter — governs and holds the whole together, so in the body all the parts, built out of two, might present a unity that cannot be taken apart. And no words can say how useful and how fitting the look of the mouth is, and its opening crosswise; its use consists in two jobs, taking food and speaking.

The tongue shut inside, which by its movements cuts the voice into words and is the interpreter of the mind, still cannot do the work of speech by itself. It has to strike its edge against the palate; it needs the help of the teeth it knocks against and of the lips pressed together. The teeth, though, contribute more to speech: infants do not begin to talk before they have teeth, and old men who have lost theirs lisp so badly that they seem to have gone back afresh into infancy. But this belongs to man alone — or to birds, whose tongue, pointed and quivering with set movements, brings out countless turns of song and all sorts of sounds. The tongue has another job as well, which it does in every creature and which is all it does in the mute animals: it gathers the food up once the teeth have crushed and ground it, rolls it into a ball, presses it down with its own force, and passes it on to the belly. That is why Varro thinks the tongue got its Latin name from binding the food together. It also helps animals drink. They stretch the tongue out and cup it to draw up water, and once they have it in the hollow of the tongue they clap it against the palate with great speed, so that it does not run back out while they are slow about it. The tongue, then, is roofed over by the arch of the palate as by a shell, and God has fenced it around with the teeth as with a wall.

The teeth themselves are set in order in a wonderful way; and so that they would not stand bare and stripped, a terror rather than an ornament, he has dressed them with soft gums — which get their Latin name from bringing teeth to birth — and then with the covering of the lips. The hardness of the teeth, as in a millstone, is greater and rougher than in the other bones, so that they are equal to crushing food and fodder. And how becomingly he divided the lips, which before were as it were joined! The upper one, right under the middle of the nostrils, he has marked with a slight hollow, as with a little valley; the lower one he has spread out softly, for the sake of beauty.

As for the taking in of flavor, whoever thinks that this sense sits in the palate is mistaken. It is the tongue by which flavors are perceived — and not the whole of it: the softer parts along each side draw the flavor in with the most delicate perceptions. And although nothing is taken away from what is eaten or drunk, the flavor still reaches the sense in a way no one can describe, in the same way that taking in a smell subtracts nothing from the thing itself.

How beautiful the other parts are can scarcely be put into words. The chin, drawn gently down from the cheeks, its lower end so closed that the faint dent pressed into it seems to mark the very tip. The neck, firm and well rounded. The shoulders, let down from the neck as though by gentle ridges. The forearms, powerful, and braced with sinews to hold them steady. The great strength of the upper arms, standing out in remarkable muscle. The bend of the elbows, useful and becoming at once.

And what am I to say of the hands, the servants of reason and wisdom? The most skillful Maker made them with a flat and moderately hollowed bend, so that anything to be held might rest in them easily, and he finished them off in the fingers — where it is hard to say whether the beauty or the usefulness is greater. Their number is perfect and complete; their order and the way they step down from one to the next is handsome; the matched joints bend freely; and the nails are rounded, wrapping and bracing the tips of the fingers with a curved covering, so that the softness of the flesh does not give way when it holds something. All this is a great adornment. But this is wonderfully convenient in use: one finger stands apart from the rest, rising along with the hand itself and set off in a different direction, and by offering itself as though to meet the others it holds all the power of gripping and of doing — either alone, or at any rate in a special way, as the guide and director of them all. That is why the thumb’s Latin name is pollex, because among the others it prevails by force and power. It has two joints standing out, not three like the others; the third is bound to the hand by flesh, for the sake of beauty. If it had stood separate with three joints, the foul and unbecoming look of it would have robbed the hand of all its grace.

Then the breadth of the chest, raised and open to the eyes, displays a wonderful dignity of its own condition. The reason is this: God appears to have made man alone lying, as it were, face upward, for hardly any other animal is able to lie on its back. The mute animals he appears to have formed as though lying on one side, and to have pressed them down toward the earth. That is why he gave them a narrow chest, out of sight and thrown down toward the ground. Man’s he made open and upright, because a chest full of reason given from heaven ought not to be low or unsightly. The nipples too, gently raised and crowned with small darker circles, add something of beauty. They were given to women for the feeding of their young, to men for appearance only, so that the chest would not appear misshapen and, as it were, mutilated. Below it lies the flat surface of the belly, and about the middle of it the navel sets a mark that is not unbecoming, made for this purpose: that through it the child may be fed while it is in the womb.

It follows necessarily that I should begin to speak of the inward parts as well. Beauty was not assigned to them, since they are hidden from view, but an incredible usefulness was; for this earthly body had to be nourished with some moisture out of food and drink, as the earth itself is nourished by rain and frost. The most provident Craftsman placed in the middle of it a container for food, so that once the food was digested and turned to liquid the body might distribute the vital juices to all its members. But since man is made up of body and soul, the container I have spoken of above supplies nourishment only to the body; for the soul, in truth, he has given another dwelling. He has made a kind of inward organ, soft and loose in texture, which we call the lungs, for the breath to pass into by an alternating exchange; and he did not shape it after the fashion of the womb, in case the breath should be poured out all at once, or blow it up all at once. For this reason he did not make it a solid organ, but one that can be inflated and take the air in, so that it receives the breath gradually while the life-giving air spreads through that loose substance, and gives it back gradually as the air spreads out of it again. For it is that very alternation of blowing out and breathing in, the whole process of respiration, that keeps life in the body. [k]

Since, then, there are two containers in man — one for the air that nourishes the soul, the other for the food that nourishes the body — there must be two tubes running down through the neck, one for food and one for breath: the upper leading from the mouth to the belly, the lower from the nostrils to the lungs. The design and the nature of the two are different. The passage that comes from the mouth was made soft, and when it is shut it always lies closed on itself, like the mouth itself; for drink and food, being solid things, make their own room to pass through by pushing the gullet aside and opening it. The breath, on the other hand, has no body and is thin, and since it was unable to make room for itself, it has been given a way that stands open, which is called the windpipe. This is built of pliable, soft bones, like rings fitted together in the manner of a hemlock stalk and holding to one another; and this passage is always open. For the breath can have no rest from passing; and because it is always going to and fro, it is checked as though by a kind of barrier by a piece of a member usefully let down from the brain, the one we call the uvula — so that the breath, drawn in from unhealthy air, may not come with a rush and spoil the delicacy of the place it lodges in, or carry the whole violence of the harm through to the inner containers. This is also why the nostrils stand only slightly open; and they get their Latin name from this, that neither smell nor breath ever stops streaming through them, since they are, as it were, the doors of this tube. Yet this breathing-tube lies open not only toward the nostrils but toward the mouth as well, at the far end of the palate, where the mounds at the back of the throat, facing the uvula, begin to rise into a swelling. And the reason for this arrangement is not obscure. We would have no power of speaking if the windpipe were open toward the nostrils only, as the path of the gullet leads to the mouth only; nor could the breath coming up out of it produce the voice without the service of the tongue.

So the divine skill opened a way for the voice out of that breathing-tube, so that the tongue might be able to discharge its office and by its strokes divide the smooth, unbroken course of the voice itself into words. And if this passage is cut off by any means, the necessary result is that the person cannot speak. Anyone who thinks there is some other cause why people are mute is certainly mistaken. They are not tongue-tied, as is commonly believed; rather, they pour that vocal breath out through the nostrils, with a sound like lowing, because either there is no passage at all for the voice into the mouth, or it is not open enough to be able to send out the full voice. Usually this comes about by nature; sometimes it also happens by accident that this entrance is blocked up and does not transmit the voice to the tongue, and so makes mute those who could speak. And when this happens, the hearing too must necessarily be blocked, so that the one who cannot send the voice out is also incapable of taking it in.

This passage, then, has been opened for the sake of speaking. It affords this advantage as well, that at the baths, because the nostrils are not able to endure the heat, the hot air is taken in by the mouth; and also, if phlegm brought on by a chill happens to stop up the breathing pores of the nostrils, we are able to draw the air through the mouth, so that the breath is not stifled when the way is obstructed. But the food, once it is taken into the stomach and mixed with the moisture of the drink, and then digested by the heat, sends out its juice, which spreads through the limbs in a way no one can describe, watering the whole body and giving it strength.

The manifold coils of the intestines too, their length rolled up on itself and yet fastened with a single band, are a wonderful work of God. For when the stomach has sent the softened food out of itself, it is gradually thrust on through those windings of the intestines, so that whatever moisture is in it — the moisture by which the body is nourished — is divided out to all the members. And so that it should not stick somewhere and stay fixed, which could easily have happened because of the turnings of the coils, which often double back on themselves, and could not have happened without injury, he has spread a thicker fluid over them from within, so that what the belly discharges might work its way more easily along the slippery surface to its outlets. It is a most skillful arrangement, too, that the bladder — which birds have no use of — is nevertheless filled and distended with moisture, though it is separated from the intestines and has no tube by which it might draw the urine out of them. And it is not difficult to see how this comes about. The parts of the intestines that receive the food and drink from the belly are more open than the other coils, and much more delicate. These wind themselves around the bladder and enclose it; and when the food and the drink have arrived at these parts in a mixed state, the waste becomes more solid and passes through, but all the moisture is strained through those tender parts, and the bladder, whose membrane is just as fine and delicate, absorbs it and collects it, so as to send it out where nature has opened an outlet.