The phenomena of anaphylaxis point to the reality of those wider, bio-social and cosmic issues, associated with food and its appropriation , the importance of which I have never tired in stressing, although they have been usually neglected by our investigators.
The food we ingest should not only be adequate for mere individual existence, but also for the progressive evolution of the race. It should adequately nourish the species, and this, moreover, in a way that the universe itself is the richer, and not the poorer, in the result.
Nor is the universe an indifferent, or unconcerned, witness of what we eat or do. Be it by blandishments, or by reprisals, the universe is endeavoring to keep us on the path of duty. Serve we must, though we have choice to serve either as high castes or as low. If we fail to serve as may be loyally expected from us, we get short shift altogether. That is the deeper meaning, the philosophy of anaphylaxis, as of cancer.
As Emerson has it: “We aim at a pretty end, quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever the part appears”.
