On Invisibility

There's a great bit in Dune where Paul is reading from the Orange Catholic Bible,

> Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

> Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep,

> And as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm

> Your bedded hair like life in excrements

> Start up and stand on end.

i read that as "your hair is standing up as if made sticky with poop"... "life in excrements" here sounds like it means "covered in".

"Life in excrements" is supposed to evoke an image of maggots poking up out of horseshit.

At the time, maggots were thought to form spontaneously. Fly eggs were discovered sometime later.