2634. The chyliferous or lacteal vessels stand in antagonism with the lung, or the skin as being the original respiratory organ. It is only, therefore, the infusorial chyle that has been absorbed, not the excrement, because between the latter, as the product of oxydation, and the lacteal vessels, repulsion takes place. The chyle, having been absorbed, enters into the thoracic duct, and from thence into the lungs.
Evacuation.
2635. Through the absorption of what is fluid, that which is excrementitious becomes more solid, and is thus given over or transferred into the vegetable, sexual, or large intestine.
2636. The excrement is now found in another, i. e. in a lower, or vegetable animal. It therefore obtains the direction of all sexual secretions; it is thrown out or ejected, and in a reverse direction, because the anus is the sexual mouth.
2637. Digestion is thus through all predicaments, from its incipient dealings with the highest life unto the plant, and from this to the mucous globule, a thorough process of putting to death.
2638. The nutritive will be through all predicaments, from the infusorium to the plant and to the animal, a thoroughly vivifying or life-inspiring process. Digestion is descension, nutrition is ascension.
2. Functions of the Respiratory System.
2639. The branchiæ and lungs are the air-organ of the animal, the foliage. The animal, like the vegetable foliage, is oxydized from water or air, by which means the animal sap, which hitherto is only a root-sap, becomes differenced into an aerial sap.
2640. No animal can live without oxygen gas, because the air is the condition of the galvanic process.
2641. The oxygen passes over materially into the blood or the chyle. Beyond this it is an indifferent matter for physiology, whether the blood simply derives the positive tension from the air, or combines the positive oxygen materially with itself. In both cases the same heterogeneity originates. Were oxygen, however, not to enter the body through the lung, it could not then be seen, whence its ingress might be effected. In other respects, every change of matters is established with material combinations and separations.