352 HEALTH. 



is the basis of correct perceptions. It gives self-respect, which marks 

 us out from the things about us (pp. 282 — 285) ; makes us judicial 

 among our associates ; establishes a ring of healthy sentiment around 

 us, and between us and other things ; and enables us to discriminate 

 between clean and unclean in whatever seeks to enter our feelings, 

 or aspires to stay there. In short, it places a cordon of pure life 

 around our bodies, as a troop of angels around the bed and before 

 the path of the faithful. Between the life, thus whitely washen, and 

 its objects, nothing intervenes to hinder immediate judgment and 

 action so far as the surface is concerned. The light of the sky and 

 the vigor of the man, kiss upon his skin, and cement a covenant of 

 justice, in which every predominance is conceded to the lordly organ- 

 ization. 



On the other hand, dirt upon the skin is not merely dirt but 

 dirty feeling; and the latter is no sooner set up than it travels soul- 

 wards. The skin is given, among other ends, as a vivacious sentinel 

 to prevent the entrance into us of whatever is alien and impure. 

 The purity of the sentinel is of the greatest value to this exercise 

 of his functions. Dirty feeling does not know dirt when it comes, 

 but is bribed by it, and lets it pass the barrier. Hence an un- 

 clean skin, besides adulterating the feelings, admits a material 

 adulteration to the organs. Furthermore, by clogging the pores, it 

 prevents the beloved dirt from escaping outwards; until at length 

 the body, crusted over with itself, abrogates the skin functions, and 

 finds another and violent eruption in disease. For nobody can stop 

 long in himself; he must go forth as a messenger of life, or death, 

 to those about him. And when he ceases to transpire health, spe- 

 cific sickness is conceived in the struggle ; the system makes new 



place. The result is often quite different from what we feared before these pro- 

 cesses were undergone. 



The generative process, with its sheddings, is the head of the material-psychical 

 acts, and as it secretes the germ of man himself, it affords a light as to the force 

 and function of the other living secretions. What a quantity of imaginations the 

 seed at once carries out of the mind and body; and what an architectural effect 

 it produces on its matrix ! Now, likewise, in their places and degrees, the other 

 excretions export emotion from the organism ; and when they have come out, 

 and reached a suitable nidus, they show that they are seeds, and after their own 

 fa>hion germinate. In this way the world is sown broadcast by the natures of 

 all men, animals and plants. See our Chapter on the Skin, pp. 261 — 268. 



