INTESTINE SERIES OF FOODS. 149 



serving to inaugurate the new body, and thus is the last of the sali- 

 vas, which digests and introduces the chyle itself as the other sali- 

 vary fluids digest and alter the food. 



As a corollary of this we may infer, that delicious, pleasant and 

 agreeable foods contain a native series of offerings to our intestine 

 wants. Fruits, aromatic and luscious, hold their delights the loosest 

 of all, and give them away at the first solicitation. Their nectars 

 claim instant kindred with the tongue and the oral saliva. Na- 

 ture has cooked them, and they need no mixture, nor artificial fire : 

 the grape and the pineapple are a sauce unto themselves, and are 

 baked and roasted and boiled in the sunlight. They are at the top 

 of their life at the table ; their niceness is not foreign, nor does their 

 beauty depend upon disguise. By feeding the eyes with bloom and 

 loveliness, they call forth a chaster saliva into the mouth to wel- 

 come and introduce them; different from the carnal gush which sa- 

 vory meats engender. They are flasks of the spiritual blood of the 

 earth, of the kith of our tree of life, and nearer to it than aught be- 

 sides, unless it be the mother's milk. The term fruit implies that 

 which is for use, or which has attained its own object, and seeks its 

 place in another system. Fruits therefore hang before our mouths, 

 and tempt us by nature's sweetest wiles ; as it were the nipples of 

 her bosom, which still run pure with rills of the milk of her ancient 

 kindness. They belong essentially to mouth digestion, which is mere 

 melting. 



Meats belong to the lower man — to the blood and the chyle. 

 Animal life has diverted them to itself, and the spirit of the beast 

 has to be exorcised ere they can enter the human body. They de- 

 mand a long and severe process of reformation and excretion ; artful 

 fire and elaborate treatment before their preoccupation is put aside. 

 They are proper to the belly, and are the taskmasters of digestion. 

 Vegetables are, in these respects, intermediate between meats and 

 fruits ; and milk, eggs, and the like products, which are the fruits 

 that animals yield us, are also intermediates put forth from the ani- 

 mal side. As we said before, the modern man requires all these 

 viands to supply his different natures, seated one after another 

 adown the long hungers of his entrails. 



Let us then assimilate this idea in passing onwards, that every 



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