2177. The large intestine no longer digests, but only receives what is left from the process of digestion and expels or casts it out.
2178. The large intestine begins with a cæcal extremity, or with an obtuse cyst, and opens into the anus, exactly like the original animal cyst, the polyp. The blind extremity is called cæcum. With this the small intestine communicates by perforating it at an acute angle, and that indeed in a direction which runs towards the obtuse cystiform extremity; so that both intestines lie in mutual juxtaposition like a fork, whereof the pharynx and the rectum are the two prongs, while the cæcum is the handle.
2179. The two intestines are consequently by no means correlated. In the perfect animal there are two intestinal systems thoroughly distinct from each other; two intestines, which belong to two different animals, the sexual and encephalic animal, or the plant and the animal. The genesis of the large intestine and all its relations, which are principally seen in the cæcum and rectum, plead for this philosophical derivation of the two intestines.
2180. The rectum appertains wholly and entirely to the sexual system, and especially to the uterus. It is devoid of mesentery, and supplied by special vessels; it stands in most obvious sympathy with the uterus, with its diseases, and with menstruation. Even hemorrhoids are a sexual disease, a disease of the sexual intestine.
2181. The anus is thus the intestinal mouth of the sexual animal. In the lowest organized animals, the oviducts seminal and urinary ducts together run into it, as into a proper mouth. The anus is a true oral cavity in the fishes, reptiles, and even in the whale.
2182. The pharynx opens into the mouth, and so does the rectum into the anus; the trachea opens into the month, and so does the urethra into the anus; the salivary ducts open into the mouth, and so into the anus do the oviducts, with the spermatic canals in the lower animals. The rectum moreover lies behind the urinary cyst, like the gullet behind the trachea.
2183. The sphincter or occlusor muscles of the anus have been formed like the sphincter muscles of the pharynx. The anus is a mouth without a head, and therefore a mouth without lips, or an pharynx.
Cephalic Intestine.
2184. The union or combination of the intestine with the animal systems, such as the nervous, muscular, and osseous, occurs in the head.
2185. In so far as it combines with bones and muscles, it becomes an organ of motion, and, when with the nerves, an organ of sensation. The animal or sarcal intestine is pharynx and mouth.