942. There are two adjustments, with regard to the excretions, carried on by organized bodies, which can never be contemplated with sufficient admiration. It has been fully shown (464 et seq.) that the relation established between the two great classes of organized beings is such that the excrementitious matter of the plant is nutritious to the animal, and the excrementitious matter of the animal is nutritious to the plant; and, consequently, that the two orders of living beings maintain the world, which is given them as their inheritance, in a state of perpetual adaptation for the life and health of each other; the animal receiving healthy stimulation from that which is poisonous to the plant, and the plant being nourished by particles which the animal throws off as exhausted and useless. And this relation naturally suggests that so beautifully described by Milton:—
Flow’rs and their fruit,
Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives.
943. Secondly, the particles thrown off by organized bodies are rendered, in the very act of their dissipation, subservient to purposes of utility and pleasure. How these poisonous elements are converted into the pabulum of life and health has been shown. To a being with the senses and faculties of man, how loathsome might these particles have been rendered during the period of their transition from one organized kingdom to the other! And if disagreeable at all, how constantly forced upon his sense, wherever he might be, during every moment of his waking hours, must these objects of disgust have been! But how does the matter actually stand? The excretions of the plant are the very particles that, poured
“Into the blissful field through groves of myrrh,
And flow’ring odours, cassia, nard, and balm,”