must absorption and secretion be, since these latter acts are in necessary connection with the former; absorption implying a reception into the body of such parts of the digested food as may tend to its nourishment, and secretion implying the rejection of such parts as might otherwise prove injurious.
Behold here, then, the established analogy between the nourishment of the body by means of material food, and the nourishment of the mind, or spirit, by means of spiritual food! Material food is first received by the bodily mouth, and after the processes of mastication and deglutition is let down into the stomach, for the purpose of a more interior introduction into the body. In like manner, spiritual food is first received into the external memory (the mind’s mouth), under the form of science, and being there well masticated by thought and meditation, and afterwards swallowed, or forced more interiorly into the mind, is thus submitted to rational consideration, for the purpose of digestion. Material food again, when well digested in the stomach, undergoes a separation of its parts, so that what is salubrious is absorbed, and thus admitted more intimately into the body, whilst what is noxious is secreted, and thus cast out. Spiritual food, or science, in like manner, by digestion, is distinguished as to its component principles, and the consequence is, that the
