The small room down there, where I wrote those papers you remember reading, was much more a portion of my body than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg is of his.
The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes.
First, he has his natural garment of flesh and blood.

Then, his artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments.
Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion.
And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside wrapper.
You shall observe,--the Professor said,--for, like Mr.John Hunter and other great men, he brings in that SHALL with great effect sometimes,--you shall observe that a man's clothing or series of envelopes does after a certain time mould itself upon his individual nature.

We know this of our hats, and are always reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong side foremost.
We soon find that the beaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and depressions.

Just so all that clothes a man, even to the blue sky which caps his head,--a little loosely,--shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath it.
Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals, all find it different, according to the eyes with which they severally look.
But our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer natures.

See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it.
There is a shell-fish which builds all manner of smaller shells into the walls of its own.