Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



central life ruling and radiating among all organs, 

 and assigning them their arts to play. 



Disease then, in body or mind, is from this 

 point of view the break-up of its unity, its entirety, 

 into multiplicity. It is the abeyance of a central 

 power, and the growth of insubordinate centres — 

 life in each creature being conceived of as a con- 

 tinual exercise of energy or conquest, by which 

 external or antagonistic forces (and organisms) 

 are brought into subjection and compelled into 

 the service of the creature, or are thrown off as 

 harmful to it. Thus, by way of illustration, we 

 find that plants or animals, when in good health, 

 have a remarkable power of throwing off the attacks 

 of any parasites which incline to infest them ; 

 while those that are weakly are very soon eaten 

 up by the same. A rose-tree, for instance, brought 

 indoors, will soon fall a prey to the aphis — though 

 when hardened out of doors the pest makes next 

 to no impression on it. In dry seasons when the 

 young turnip plants in the fields are weakly from 

 want of water the entire crop is sometimes destroyed 

 by the turnip fly, which then multiplies enormously ; 

 but if a shower or two of rain come before much 

 damage is done the plant will then grow vigorously, 

 its tissues become more robust and resist the attacks 

 of the fly, which in its turn dies. Late investiga- 

 tions seem to show that one of the functions of the 

 white corpuscles in the blood is to devour disease- 

 germs and bacteria present in the circulation — thus 

 absorbing these organisms into subjection to the 

 central life of the body — and that with this object 



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