rs of the body, serveth to warm and winnow the
other blood which runneth through the veins. The lights never cease with
its lappets and bellows to cool and refresh it, in acknowledgment of which
good the heart, through the arterial vein, imparts unto it the choicest of
its blood. At last it is made so fine and subtle within the rete mirabile,
that thereafter those animal spirits are framed and composed of it, by
means whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution,
deliberation, ratiocination, and memory have their rise, actings, and
operations.

Cops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of
myself when I enter into the consideration of the profound abyss of this
world, thus lending, thus owing. Believe me, it is a divine thing to
lend,--to owe, an heroic virtue. Yet is not this all. This little world
thus lending, owing, and borrowing, is so good and charitable, that no
sooner is the above-specified alimentation finished, but that it forthwith
projecteth, and hath already forecast, how it shall lend to those who are
not as yet born, and by that loan endeavour what it may to eternize itself,
and multiply in images like the pattern, that is, children. To this end
every member doth of the choicest and most precious of its nourishment pare
and cut off a portion, then instantly despatcheth it downwards to that
place where nature hath prepared for it very fit vessels and receptacles,
through which descending to the genitories by long ambages, circuits, and
flexuosities, it receiveth a competent form, and rooms apt enough both in
man and woman for the future conservation and perpetuating of human kind.
All this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence
have we this word, the debt of marriage. Nature doth reckon pain to the
refuser, with a most grievous vexation to his members and an outrageous
fury amidst his senses. But, on the other part, to the lender a set
reward, accompanied with pleasure, joy, solace, mirth, and merry glee.

Chapter 3.V.

How Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers.

I understand you very well, quoth Pantagruel, and take you to be very good
at topics, and thoroughly affectioned to your own cause. But preach it up,
and patrocinate it, prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even
from hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end
you will be astonished to find how you shall have