" "Do not ask; you would not approve of my scheme, and there would only be a fresh dispute." "I think," said the poet, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder, "that we have no reason to fear disputes.

So far they have been the cement, the refreshing dew of our friendship." "So long as they treated of ideas only, and not of deeds." "You intend to get possession of a human heart!" cried the poet.

"Think of what you are doing! The heart is the vessel of that effluence of the universal soul, which lives in us." "Are you so sure of that ?" cried the physician with some irritation, "then give me the proof.

Have you ever examined a heart, has any one member of my profession done so?
The hearts of criminals and prisoners of war even are declared sacred from touch, and when we stand helpless by a patient, and see our medicines work harm as often as good, why is it?
Only because we physicians are expected to work as blindly as an astronomer, if he were required to look at the stars through a board.

At Heliopolis I entreated the great Urma Rahotep, the truly learned chief of our craft, and who held me in esteem, to allow me to examine the heart of a dead Amu; but he refused me, because the great Sechet leads virtuous Semites also into the fields of the blessed.
[According to the inscription accompanying the famous representations of the four nations (Egyptians, Semites, Libyans, and Ethiopians) in the tomb of Seti I.] And then followed all the old scruples: that to cut up the heart of a beast even is sinful, because it also is the vehicle of a soul, perhaps a condemned and miserable human soul, which before it can return to the One, must undergo purification by passing through the bodies of animals.
I was not satisfied, and declared to him that my great-grandfather Nebsecht, before he wrote his treatise on the heart, must certainly have examined such an organ.