Eat Your Mistakes
The true externality of animal nature is not the external thing, but the fact that the animal turns in anger against what is external. The subject must rid itself of this lack of self-confidence which makes the struggle with the object appear as the subject's own action, and must repudiate this false attitude. Through its struggle with the outer thing, the organism is on the point of being at a disadvantage; it compromises its dignity in the face of this non-organic being. What the organism has to conquer, is, therefore, this its own process, this entanglement with the outer thing. Consequently its activity is directed against the direction outwards, and is the means to which the organism lowers itself in order that, repudiating and rejecting that means, it can return to itself. . . . Excrement has, therefore, no other significance than this, that the organism recognizing its error, gets rid of its entanglement with outside things.
Hegel, Philosophy of Nature
In defecation we do not merely eject waste material, but our own digestive juices also: we are like writers tearing up drafts after their manuscript has been typed.
J.N. Findlay, "The Hegelian Treatment of Biology and Life"
And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein.
And he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.
Moreover, he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel.
So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll.
And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee.
Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.
Ezekiel
I then asked Ezekiel. Why he ate dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? He answerd. The desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite
Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
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