Worm in the Blood

Worm in the Blood

Let us imagine, with your permission, a little worm, living in the blood, able to distinguish by sight the particles of blood, lymph, &c., and to reflect on the manner in which each particle, on meeting with another particle, either is repulsed, or communicates a portion of its own motion. This little worm would live in the blood, in the same way as we live in a part of the universe, and would consider each particle of blood, not as a part, but as a whole.

• Baruch Spinoza, Letter XV.

Consider if you will, a little worm

Adrift within your blood.

It knows no treaty with other worms,

No republic, no accord.

It sees particles of blood

And lymph, and wonders

How such bodies meet:

Some turned aside by what they touch,

Some yielding

Part of their motion to another.

The blood is its universe.

Blood is all there is,

It mistakes a narrow province

For the whole of nature.

It never suspects worlds within worlds,

Nor that its little cosmos

Is but a component of another.

It cannot know the body

Upon whose hidden order it depends.

Yet do not pity it.

Its soul is no substantial part of yours,

Only a requisite relation,

A moment in the composition

Of a greater individual

That thinks itself as one.

And perhaps we differ little.

Consciousness may be but a worm

Tracing its brief path through things,

Burrowing through the world

Feeding on fragments and signs,

Convinced that what it touches is the whole,

Whilst the vast body of nature

Flows on beyond its sight.