SYSTEMATIC SYNTHESIS OF ELEMENTS. 163 



78. THE PLANT STOKES UP that the animal may de- 

 stroy, as it must destroy itself in order to act. Chemical 

 influences come in on the one hand to assist the plant in 

 producing or compounding, and on the other to assist 

 the animal in destroying or decomposing. The action 

 of the sun's influence is also compounding in the plant ; 

 it promotes the vegetative in the animal as well as in 

 the plant. Hence the exposure of the Body to the influ- 

 ences of the sun is essential to the enjoyment of health, 

 and children in particular should be caused to play in 

 the full light of the sun, since they are growing, and 

 need all growing influences. 



79. THE ANIMALS, HOWEVER, COMPLETE THE PROCESS 

 begun by the plant, and perfect their tissues from the 

 Principles furnished, to a degree beyond what the plant 

 can do, for it can secrete neither muscular nor nervous 

 tissue. The vegetative process in the animal can be, if 

 it is not always, influenced by the nervous tissue ; for 

 nothing is more evident than that the eye and mouth 

 water under mental influences, and that the quality of 

 the liquids is always affected by the existing state of the 

 mind. 



80. WHILE ON THE ONE HAND ANIMALS cannot begin 

 to compound Elements so low in the scale as plants can, 

 PLANTS ON THE OTHER, HAND cannot compound to so high 

 a degree as animals ; yet the plants cannot compound 

 from so low a point as the simple elements. Even the 

 plants must be supplied with food, that is, prepared or 

 compounded Elements. 



81. THE PROCESS OP COMPOUNDING THE ELEMENTS 

 MAY BE CLASSED in three stages : the chemical, the vege- 

 table, the animal. The former two we have considered 

 in this chapter; the third will be most appropriately 

 treated in the next chapter, in connection with Tissues, 

 to which we will now advance. 



78. Why does ? What said of sun's influence? 79. Do ? What said of 

 mental influence ? 80. What said of ? 81. How ? 



