Suffocation and struggle

Meaning

Quarrelling, fighting, overcoming and suffocating personify the obstruction of pure substance by impure accompanying matter. Suffocation describes the suppression of life-bearing action, not only literal blockage of breathing.

II.3.7 makes impurity an assailant that finally opens the way to corruption. Pure substance considered in itself is said to escape corruption; mixed lower bodies do not. The prison, vermin, spoiled food and executioner images extend that contrast into a dramatic account of human nourishment and mortality. Their moral intensity does not make every meal a deliberate act of self-destruction, nor does the assertion about pure substance guarantee immortality for the whole human body.

The English keeps the sequence of hostile verbs and the limitation to substance considered simply. Excrement has a wider obstructive-material sense here than ordinary bodily waste.