2642. The carbonic acid of the respiratory process may originate accidentally, as when it is formed on the integument. In so far is the expiration one and the same with the evaporation.
2643. The chyle ascends directly from the small intestine into the leaf-fabric, or into the lung. Both organs are to be compared with an entire plant, whereof the intestine is the root, the lymphatic vessels the stem, the lung the leaf-fabric or foliage.
2644. The chyle moves in the lymphatic vessels like the vegetable sap, and thus by polar tension between lung and intestine. Lung and intestine have been diametrically opposed. The conductors of the antagonism are the lymphatic vessels.
2645. The lymphatic vessels do not absorb by virtue of their own contractility, nor by open ends; but by physical pores like the cells of plants.
2646. It is the chyle, which is oxydized in the lung; the venous blood is a subordinate object.
2647. Through the oxydation it becomes coloured like the vegetable sap does in a leaf. But the latter sap obtains only the colour of the terrestrial oxydation, of the terrestrial oxyde or the water, and becomes green; while the chyle gains the colour of the cosmic oxyde, or the fire, and becomes red. The red, fire-coloured sap is the blood. The function of the lungs is consequently a formation of blood.
2648. The blood is an infusorial, a green mucous sap, which has been elevated to what is aerial. The blood consists of aerated Infusoria—blood-globules. These are the red substance of the blood. In the lower animals only, where the blood, like the body, contains but few blood-globules, is it colourless.
2649. Through the respiration an electrical difference enters the blood, whereby it becomes separated into several substances.
2650. The water in the chyle is the inorganic menstruum, wherein the mucus, as being a fundamental matter of the vegetable sap, has been dissolved. Through the digestion the mucus becomes animal—gelatine.
2651. The gelatine is the basi-constituent part of the chyle, being a product of the digestion or the root-process. Gelatine is the vegetable mucus repeated and ennobled in an animal. This ennobling took place through the digestion.