Prosaically we can say that the process of decay, if regarded scientifically, is not in itself necessarily repugnant. It may be as interesting as fermentation or any other chemical or biological process. Putrefaction, like poison, is hostile to higher living organisms, and hence a self-protecting feeling of disgust has arisen round it, in the course of evolution. An emotional feeling arises in the mind of anyone who has to combat any process or operation of nature,--like the violent emotions excited in an extreme teetotaller by the word 'drink': a result of the evil its profanation has done; for the verb itself is surely quite harmless. Presumably a criminal associates disagreeable anticipations with the simple word 'hanging.' The idea of a rank weed is repulsive to a gardener, but not to a botanist; the idea of disease is repellent to a prospective patient, not to a doctor or bacteriologist; the idea of dirt is objectionable to a housewife, but it is only matter out of place; the word 'poison' conveys nothing objectionable to a chemist. Everything removed from the emotional arena, and transplanted into the intellectual, becomes interesting and tractable and worthy of study. Living organisms of every kind are good in themselves, though when out of place and beyond control they may be harmful. A tiger is an object of dread to an Indian village: to a hunting party he may be keenly attractive. In any case he is a lithe and beautiful and splendid creature. Microscopic organisms may have troublesome and destructive effects, but in themselves they can be studied with interest and avidity. All living creatures have their assuredly useful function, only it may be a function on which we naturally shrink from dwelling when in an emotional mood. Everything of this kind is an affair of mood; and, properly regarded, nothing in nature is common or unclean. That a flying albatross is a beautiful object every one can cordially admit, but that the crawling surface of a stagnant sea can be regarded with friendly eyes seems an absurdity; yet there is nothing absurd in it. It is surely the bare truth concerning all living creatures of every grade, that "the Lord God made them all"; and it was of creeping water-snakes that the stricken Mariner at length, when he had learnt the lesson, ejaculated:-- "O happy living things! A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware."