622 THE MOUNTAIN. 



ing rock of pained and perishing fibres, this slow and corro- 

 sive wasting of finely-organized transparent membranes 

 what is this terrible withering and wilting, this shrinking 

 down to revolting skin and skeleton, this irresistible maras- 

 mus, this ghastly consumption ? 



Leaving out of consideration all the splendid circles of 

 healthy life, where the majestic wheels turn in silence and 

 the endless gyration of organic vortices goes on in har- 

 monious stillness, and the cell, with mute but resistless im- 

 petus, wanders through its duration rapidly, the pathologist, 

 or philosopher of morbid vitality, turns to the jarred, dislo- 

 cated, creaking, shrieking, groaning, dying molecule the 

 cell-abortive, malignant, fatal, venomous, belligerent, con- 

 stituting the world of disease, or the suffering organiza- 

 tion disappearing from dying cells murdered cells the 

 cell arrested in development or being redissolved by the 

 dread power of inorganic matter the cell perverted, mor- 

 bific, the cryptogamic spore of evil, (smallpox, scarlatina, 

 hooping-cough,) the cell, the instrument of death. 



What is health ? what is disease ? ask the ponderable, 

 ask the imponderable. What is this heritage of joy and 

 sweetness, also of bitterness and ashes, which has come from 

 their vicious love-kiss blissful results, or vengeful consum- 

 mations of the fatal covenants of ancient Eros and Anteros* 

 "fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought 

 death into the world, and all our woe" ? 



What has the cell to do with the gloomy operations of 

 the death-forces in the tragical processes of disease ? What 

 is its instrumentality in the category of great physico-vital 



* "We must especially notice the connection of Eros with Anteros, 

 with which persons usually connect the notion of "Love returned." 

 But originally Anteros was a being opposed to Eros, and fighting 

 against him. (Paus., i. 30, 1; vi. 23, 4.) This conflict, however, 

 was also conceived as the rivalry existing between two lovers, and 

 Anteros accordingly punished those who did not return the love of 

 others; so that he is the avenging JSros, a deus ultor." (Paus., i. 30, g 1 ; 

 Ov. Met., xiii. 750, etc. ; Plat. Phoedr., p. 255, d.) 



