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282 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
into
being, and annihilates, that mystery of mysteries, the livhig body
of man, animal, or plant, every second in time and space ; and it generates
equally life and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and
even the agreeable and disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations.
It is that mysterious lyiFE, represented collectively by countless
myriads of I^ives, that follows in its own sporadic way the hitherto
incomprehensible law of Atavism ;
that copies family resemblances, as
well as those it finds impressed in the Aura of the generators of every
future human being; a mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention
elsewhere. For the present, one instance may be cited in illustration.
Modern Science is beginning to find out that ptomaine, the
alkaloid poison generated by decaying corpses and matter—a Life also,
extracted with the help of volatile ether, yields a smell as strong as
that of the freshest orange-blossoms; but that free from oxygen, such
alkaloids yield either a most sickening, disgusting smell, or a most
agreeable aroma, which recalls that of the most delicately scented
flowers; and it is suspected that such blossoms owe their agreeable
smell to the poisonous ptomaine. The venomous essence of certain
fungi, also, is nearly identical with the venom of the cobra of India, the
most deadly of serpents. The French savants Arnaud, Gautier, and
Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same venomous alkaloid
as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and the trigonocephalus
of Portugal.
It is proven that venom of the deadliest kind,
whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by living
men, animals and plants.
Gautier also discovered an alkaloid in the
fresh carcase and brains of an ox, and a venom which he calls xanthocreatinine,
similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous saliva
of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, the most active organs in the
animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors
of venoms, which have the same importance as carbonic acid and urea
in the functions of life, and are the ultimate products of inner combustion.
And though it is not 5'et fully determined whether poisons can
be generated by the animal systems of living beings, without the participation
and interference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal
does produce venomous substances in its physiological or living state.
Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find 'Cti^xx primary
causes ; and this it can never do without the help of the old sciences,
of Alchemy, Occult Botany and Physics. We are taught that every
physiological change, in addition to pathological phenomena, diseases