A.Galvanism.
867. If we take a retrospective glance at thedevelopmentof the planet, we find that it commenced with the simplest actions, and then assumed a more elevated character by gradually drawing together several actions and letting them work in common. In magnetism the earth-element alone was active, and this having freed itself from the other elements by crystallization, asserted itself as a particular form upon the planet. By this single act of the planet, an extensive series of positions or numbers originated, which may be calledmineral individuals.
868. Up to the formation of the solar system or of the planet, the character of creation isanalytic. The three primary ideas emerged from each other as gravity, light and heat, and appeared as fire. These three united actions emerged again from each other and became air, water and earth, which together make up the planet. This was therefore the descending creation. But from and after this period, the character of the development of the planet becomessynthetic, for the divided elements again united with each other. By synthesis only or by combination of the elements does the planetprogressively advance, and by it only does it divide into lesser planetary masses or bodies, calledindividuals. This is the ascending creation.
869. To the earth-element, in which the active magnetism is isolated, comes the element-water; and by the identification of both intoonebody, a new process is evolved, which we have recognized by the termchemism—salt. Then the earth-element combines with air and becomes an Inflammable, in which the process is likewise extinguished and only a dead product is left—the Inflammable. Then it combines with fire and is converted into ore. There never originates therefore from the twofold combination of the earth-element with any other element, but one product, that namely in which the Earthy obtains the preponderance, or a mineral.
870.Twoelements only belong to the essence of chemism, and they indeed are the two lowest, the elements carbon and oxygen, both being reduced to their primary condition, i. e. to that of an alkali in natron, and an acid in the hydrochloric or that of common salt.
871. As the principle or rationale of chemical action consists only in the potentiality of two elements to revert to their polar, or the oxygenous, condition, this action must thus become extinct, so soon as the creation of the new or secondary element has resulted. For if the tension equalizes itself in the two, and the two only be coexistent, so in accordance with the compensation no new tension can originate, and yet such is the groundwork of all chemical action. The result of the chemical process is consequently death; and furthermore, because it is also a simple bin-elementary process, it cannot be the ultimate goal or limit attained by the development of the planet.
872. The next stage to which the genesis of the planet ascends consists in the bin-elementary processes being associated with thethirdterrestrial element. In this manner a process originates in which the powers ofearthand ofwatermarry or conjoin with the power ofair, and thus originates a chemical power or chemism, influenced by the air.
873. The chemism, when influenced by air, is one of a perpetual character; for this power dies only because the tension of its two elements is balanced or equalized; the influence of the air is, however, none other than the constant renewal of the tension.
874. Now, the process of tension in the air is electrism or that action in which the two poles being devoid of indifference range opposite to each other, can therefore never unite, and the end attained by which is oxydation. The new process is consequently a chemical power constantly excited by electrism—it is anelectro-chemism. (Ed. 1st, 1810.) This composite process is known under the name ofGalvanism.
875. Hereby the galvanism has been most rigorously and characteristically separated from the chemism, and the succession of stages been exactly indicated. By the accession of a single but higher nature-factor, namely, the air, chemism advances one andonlyone stage higher. We have consequently made no leap or abrupt transition in tracing out our genesis of nature. Magnetism is the uni-elementary, chemism the bin-elementary, galvanism the tri-elementary process of theplanet, in so far as it is occupied with its own evolution, or that of theSolid.
876. Considered in relation to the result and also the internal nature of the process, galvanism is in no wise different from chemism, but only in reference to the continuance of the tension. The fluid and solid are in both the co-equal media or means; the decompositions, separations and combinations also, are alike in both. The air has no other office than to sustain the opposition, which in chemism proceeds through the difference of the two unipolar elements, acid and alkali.
877. The air maintains this animosity of the elements only by oxydation, and so far takes part in the contest like a fellow-combatant; yet this invariably happens only while the water is preserved by these means in its primary condition, that of the acid. The air breathes lifeonly into the chemical body, without being body itself. No galvanism therefore continues, if it be denied the access of air. The chain or column enters it is true into tension also without air, but remains only for a short time in that state, or so long only as there is a trace of oxygen in the water.
878. Galvanism, as a tri-elementary process, represents the planet in itstotality. The galvanic column is an entire planet, a planet upon the planet, the planet individualized.
879. The individual, taken in a strong sense, is an entire planet taken up into Singulars, a triplicity of the elements in the particular orspecialunity. In galvanism there consequently issues forth for the first time an individual, which is equivalent to a cosmic totality. Galvanism is the metatype of the planet. All other and profounder processes are not total in character, nor metatypes of a whole system, but only moieties thereof.
880. The planet, regarded in itself, in its three elements, apart from its relation to the sun, is a galvanic body, a column, just as inversely this is a planet.
881. The attributes, which consequently belong to the planet, abstractedly from the sun, must belong to every galvanic process, or to such a body. The planet is a Whole included in itself, and thus is galvanism. The latter acts only in a closed chain, or only by its own body or its materiality formingonecircle that returns into itself. The three elements are mutually self-excited and moved, and that indeed from internal causes, though not apart from external conditions. Thus galvanism is like an individual planet.
B.Primary Organism.
882. An individual (total, self-included) body, excited and moved by itself, is calledOrganism.Organism is what individual planet is.The metatype of the planet is organism; or a planet upon the planet is organism.The planet is not itself an organism, because it is not individual or galvanic in every point.
883. The self-excitation of the individualized elements, is called life.
884. Galvanism is the principle of life. There is no other vital force than the galvanic polarity. The heterogeneity of the three terrestrial elements in a circumscribed individual body is thevital force. The galvanic process is one with the vital process.
885. Organism is galvanism residing in a thoroughlyhomogeneous mass. The galvanic column is no organism, because it only admits the galvanic process just as the planet does, in individual places. A body only, which is zinc-pole, silver-pole and moist pulp at every conceivable point, is an organism. A galvanic pile, pounded into atoms must become alive. In this manner nature brings forth organic bodies.
886. Electrism has a basis; it is the air. Magnetism has a basis; it is the metal. Chemism has a basis; it is the salt. So has galvanism a basis; it is the organic mass.
887. Accordingly, what would be organic, must be galvanic; what would be alive, must be galvanic. Life is not different from organism, nor also from galvanism. For life is verily the vital process. But the vital process is an organic, galvanic process. Galvanism lies at the basis of all the processes of the organic world. They are either modifications of it, or only its combinations with other and still higher actions. A living thing, which is not galvanic, is a nonentity.
888. With galvanism consequently the first step has been made out of the inorganic into the organic kingdom. Every aught of nature, which has hitherto originated, is inorganic. These, however, were mere individualities. The character of the Inorganic consists consequently in something being a Singular, a moiety, or a metatype of a Singular; the character of the Organic in its being the metatype of a whole or round number. Organic things are internal self-exciting numbers; the inorganic things are fractions.
889. Every fraction is dead. No moiety can attain to life, for it does not receive its complement. What is simply fluid, cannot be organic, because it is not the totality of the planet. What is simply solid, cannot be organic. It is only a third of the organism. Every organism is produced according to the laws of galvanism, according to the law of the triplicity.
890. As the terrestrial magnetism is indeed only one, but includes an infinity of magnets, which are rendered manifest in the progress of the earth's life; so also in the great galvanism of the earth an infinite number of subordinate galvanic triplicities reside inclosed, which become gradually detached, and, instead of the universal galvanism, represent an infinity of individual galvanisms. The universal galvanism cannot exist, without establishing itself as an infinity of individual galvanisms. As magnetism is only associated with the net of metallic veins, so is the absolute only, with the universality of its finite positions. The number of organisms is infinite, both in coexistence as also in consecutive existence.
891. An organism is an individual in the rigid sense of the word, because it is ruined, so soon as one of its three members parts from the rest. In this sense only are there properly speaking organic individuals.
892. If we do not confine indivisibility to what is mechanical, but extend it also to the chemical; individuals may be likewise granted to the mineral kingdom. The minerals are chemical individuals; for by separation they are likewise annihilated as such, and moreover the relation of mixture of chemical bodies is not one of an arbitrary kind. The gray ores are a definite mixture of sulphur and antimony, and are thereby individuals. The silver, lead, and copper, that are accidentally mixed in this compound, do not at all alter the individuality, and by no means prove a capacity residing in the matters for mixture in all conceivable numbers. Such a mixture would be a medley only. In plants and animals casual component parts occur also frequently. Thus the individuality of the ruby-silver appears to consist in the definite mixture of sulphur and arsenic, with the addition perhaps of antimony. The silver is only mingled with it, and therefore present in all numbers. The same holds good of the bi-sulphurets of iron, and the glance-ores. (Ed. 1st, 1810.)
Creation of the Organic.
893. It has been demonstrated from the genesis of the Organic, that its essence consists in the universality of the planetary processes. Every organic individual has essentially three processes in itself, which must be regarded as its fundamental processes, whereof no one can ever be wanting. Seeing, that if this be the case, the body is only a chemical or magnetic, a crystallized carcase.
894. The first three planetary processes, namely, the earth-process, water-process, and air-process, or theforming,chemicalizing,and electrifying or oxydizing processes, are also the first three vital processes.
895. It has been shown, that with every new process and with every new combination of processes, the materials also of the same were altered, ennobled, rendered more composite, and thereupon also more decomposible. Herein also nature advances consecutively and creates new materials for the organic world.
896. In the metamorphosis of the earths, when the chemism was added to the process of formation, not only the alkalinity and acidity issued forth in the calcareous earth and the salts, but the pure Earthy also became free from fixity, and manifested itself ascarbonin the carbonic acid.
897. The last product of an antecedent stage is always the basis of that which is subsequent.The fundamental matter of the organic world is consequently the carbon.
a. ELEMENTARY BODY—PRIMARY MUCUS.
898. If in this carbon the three processes of the planet, namely, the formative or its special, the chemicalizing or fluidizing, and the electrifying or oxydizing, process, concentrate themselves, and are present with alltheir energy in every atom of the organic body; so must the mass of carbon be at the same time solid, fluid, and aerial, oxydizable in every spot, and thus alsosoft. Now a carbon mixed identically with water and air isMucus.
899. Mucus is oxydized, hydrated carbon; or expressed in purely philosophical language, mucus is the universality of the minerals and elements, or the synthesis of earth, salt, Inflammable, and ore in water and air.
900. Every Organic has issued out of mucus, is naught but mucus under different forms. Every Organic is again soluble into mucus; by which naught else is meant, than that the formed mucus becomes one devoid of form.
901.The primary mucus, out of which every thing organic has been created, is the sea-mucus.
902. Mucus belongs originally and essentially to the sea, and has not been mixed with the latter through the dissolution in it of putrefying substances.
903. The sea-mucus has originated in the progress of planetary development, like the calcareous earth has with the carbon and like the sea-salt. As little as this could have entered the sea originally through solution of rock-salt; so little could the mucus through the perishing of animals and plants, for none of these were yet present, but could be first developed, only with the production of this mucus.
904. The sea-mucus was originally generated through the influence of light and by the denudation of the crude masses, especially of the earths and salts, which was thereby effected; while with the metals and Inflammables ranging opposite to these, the carbon thus became free, and betook itself as carbonic acid to the water and air. Thus also has salt been produced.
905. The sea-mucus, as well as the salt, is still produced by the light. Everything takes place through the differentialization, or by the absolution of fixed poles on the earth-element.Light shines upon the water, and it is salted. Light shines upon the salted sea, and it lives.
906. All life is from the sea, none from the continent.
907. All mucus is endowed with life.
908. The whole sea is alive. It is a fluctuating, ever self-elevating and ever self-depressing organism.
909. Where the sea-organism by self-elevation succeeds in attaining unto form, there issues forth from it a higher organism. Love arose out of the sea-foam.
910. The primary mucus was and is still generated in those very parts of the sea where the water is in contact with earth and air, and thus upon the shores.
911. The first creation of the Organic took place, where the first mountain summits projected out of the water; and thus indeed without doubt in India, if the Himalaya be the highest mountain.
912. The first organic forms, whether plants or animals, emerged from the shallow parts of the sea.
913.Man also is a child of the warm and shallow parts of the sea in the neighbourhood of the land.
914. It is possible, that Man has only originated on one spot, and that indeed the highest mountain in India. It is even possible, that only one favorable moment was granted, in which Men could arise. A definite mixture of water, definite blood-heat, and definite influence of light must concur to his production; and this has probably been the case only in a certain spot and at a certain time.
915. The first men were the littoral and mountainous inhabitants of warmer countries, and found therefore at once reptiles, fishes, fruit, and game for food.
CHANGE.
916. The number of individual organisms is not persistent. For they are verily only products of a ceaseless polarization or a constant evocation of poles in the great galvanism, positions of the general galvanism in time. Thus, as the poles change, so also do the organic individuals. The kingdom of organisms is an iron bar, in which the magnetic poles originate andvanish or change, according as the polarizing magnet is removed. Organisms change, because they are numbers, thoughts of God.
917. The process of change in organic individuals is that of their destruction.
918. But this destruction is as nothing for nature. There originate again in the same moment other organisms in other situations. The process that destroys the poles is only one that effects their change.
919. The world-organism only is eternal, and devoid of change, with the exception of that which is within its poles. It can itself change with no other, because it is only one.
920. No individual organism is eternal, because it is only a changing pole of the world-organism.
921. There is no constancy in the individualities. Change only is persistent.
922. The world only is persistent. Nothing in it is constant. Were individuals not to perish, but live for ever, the world must then die; for the life of the world, like every life, consists only in the change of poles. Individuals could in no way therefore continue alive, if the world were to remain alive, because this is only possible through change of the individuals, which are its organs; nor could they, were the world to die, because the totality of individuals is the world itself.
923. Death is no annihilation, but only a change. One individual emerges out of another. Death is only a transition to another life, not unto death.
924. This transition from one life to another takes place through the primary condition of the Organic, or the mucus.
925. If new individuals originate, they could not therefore originate directly from others; but they must be redissolved into mucus. Every generation is a new creation.
b. FORM—GLOBE.
926. The organism is a metatype of the planet andmust also have the corresponding form. It is theSphere. This results also from the combination of the three actions, which being in equiponderance could only produce the globe.
927. The sphere must commence with the idea of the point. For the idea of the sphere is the idea of the centre, which is a point. The point, however, is not different from the sphere. It is only the infinitely small or minute sphere.
928. The primary mucus is globular in form. The primary mucus does not swell into a single sphere, but it divides into infinitely numerous spheres. For were it only one sphere, it would be the planet itself. But it is an individual, or only one sphere in the great sphere. The idea of the great sphere consists however of an infinity of small spheres.
929. The primary mucus consists of an infinity of points. This admits of being proved by its mode of origin. It is formed on the limit between water and earth, consequently in a line. This line, however, becomes constantly dissevered by disquietude, and divides therefore necessarily into infinitely numerous points.
930. The primary Organic is a mucous point.
931. The organic world commences not merely with one point, but with infinitely numerous points. Where earth, water, and air are found inonespot, there also is an organic point.
932. The organic points originate upon the surface of the earth, not in it, and not in the air. For only between earth and air do all three elements enter into collision.
PRIMARY VESICLE.
933. Through the oxydation of the air an opposition of the component parts, or of the Fluid and Solid, issues forth in the organic point, and these mutually conditionate each other. The Fluid and Solid cannot, however, be otherwise conditioned, seeing that the former is the Contained, the latter the Containing. The Solid is only aprecipitate from the Fluid wrought by the influence of the air. The air, however, is externally related to the mucus-point. The Solid can therefore originate nowhere else than between the Fluid and the air. It consequently surrounds in accordance with its genesis the Fluid. The physical cause thereof is naturally the oxydation of mucus upon its periphery. A globe, the middle of which is fluid, but the periphery solid, is called a bladder or cyst.
934. The first organic points are vesicles. The organic world has for its basis an infinity of vesicles. (Ed. 1st, 1813. §. 922.)
INFUSORIA.
935. The mucous primary vesicle may in a philosophical sense be aptly called infusorium, like as we designate the primary condition of the embryo, by the word vitellus. Now are we making use of definite expressions.
936. Everywhere, where the three elements cooperate, are infusoria present—thus upon the sea-shore, the tide-mark or strand, and shallow watery places.
937. The infusorium is a galvanic point, a galvanic vesicle, a galvanic column or chain.
938. In every infusorium there is triplicity of the poles, or properly speaking, of the processes. Each one maintains itself by the nutritive, digestive, and respiratory process, or what amounts to the same, the infusorial globule of mucus assumes a figure, its peculiar fluidity is formed in its interior, and it becomes oxydized. As is well known, no infusorium can live without moisture, and none if the access of air having been prevented, or the water boiled, it is freed from the air and the Earthy.
939. If the organic fundamental substanceconsistof infusoria, so must the whole organic worldoriginatefrom infusoria. Plants and animals can only be metamorphoses of infusoria.
940. This being granted, so also must all organizationsconsistof infusoria, and during their destruction dissolve into the same. Every plant, every animal is convertedby maceration into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and the moisture is stocked with infusoria.
941. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division of organisms into infusoria, a reduction of the higher to the primary, life.
942. Organisms are a synthesis of infusoria. Their generation is none other than an accumulation of infinitely numerous mucous points, infusoria. In these the organisms have not forsooth been at once wholly and perfectly depicted as on the smallest scale, nor contained in a state of preformation; but they are only infusorial vesicles, that by different combinations assume different forms, and grow up into higher organisms.
THEORY OF GENERATION.
943. The theory of generation is inthissense a synthetical and epigenetic, not an analytic.
944. The theory of preformation contradicts the laws of nature's development.
945. Generation is a successive formation, both in relation to the quantity as well as the quality, and the specific organs. It having been preposited, that an organism has several organic systems, so must these range according to their importance, and like the systems of nature, behind each other, and be also developed in this order. As the whole of nature has been a successive fixation of æther, so is the organic world a successive fixation of infusorial mucus-vesicles. The mucus is the æther, the chaos for the organic world. The semen of all animals consists also of infusoria; the same may be said of the vitellus. The pollen of flowers consists in like manner of microscopic vesicles with globules, which have a life of their own and move themselves in water. Many confervæ indeed divide evidently into a multitude of living, self-moving globules, which, after they have swam about for some time, again unite to form a stem of conferva.
946. Every generation consequently commences à priori or from the beginning. The organic substancemust again be dissolved into the original chaos, if any thing new should reoriginate.
947. Out of an organic menstruum only can a new organism proceed, but not one organism out of the other. A finished or perfect organism cannot gradually transform itself into another.
948. The generative juices, or semen and vitellus, are none other than the total organism reduced to the primary menstruum.
949. Physically regarded also every individual originates only from the Absolute, but no one out of the other. The history of generation is a retrogression into the Absolute of the Organic, or the organic chaos—mucus, and a new evocation from the same.
950. This development from mucus is only applicable however to the generation of the perfect organisms, but not to the origin of the organic body, or the infusorial mass. The former originate only from an organic mass that has been already formed; but the infusorial mass, as constituting the organic primary bodies, cannot have originated in the same way. It does and must originate directly from the Inorganic. For whence can the organic matter have otherwise proceeded?
951. The infusorial mucus-mass originated, as has been already remarked, at the moment when the earth's metamorphosis was at an end; at the moment, when the planet succeeded in so bringing together and identifying all the elementary processes, that they were all together or at one and the same time in every point.
952. Hence the organic primary body originated also by synthesis, not by analysis, if regard be paid to its factors. But do we consider this substance as first emerging into view, when the coarse, abundant, isolated materials, such as earth, metals, Inflammables, and salts had separated themselves from it; that this organic primary body then remained behind as it were for the first time: it has then originated through analysis, or was preformed; but so preformed as are also the metals, and as is everything. It need scarcely be observed,that this last separation from out the Earthy is thecarbon, the dissolution of the earths into atoms, and thus again into points or globules susceptible of form.
953. Everything is preformed in æther, like as every Mathematic is preformed in zero, every Active in God; yet for that very reason nothing individual is preformed therein; but it originates first throughfixation of poles on the substance. This is the true meaning of the original generation of the Organic.
954. This origin of the organic primary bodies I designateGeneratio originaria,Creation.
955. But infusorial vesicles can also originate by mere division of larger organic carcases, and these can again originate as well through the combination of these secondary as of the primitive vesicles, or as it were by coagulation only, such being the case indeed in the intestinal worms also. I nominate this generation,Generatio æquivoca.
956. All generation isGeneratio æquivoca; whether imparted by sexes or not. For the generative juices of the sexual organs themselves are naught else than organic primary mass, and have originated by division.
957. There are only two kinds of generation in the world. The creation proper and the propagation that is sequent thereupon, or theGeneratio originariaandsecundaria.
958. No organism has been consequently created of larger size than an infusorial point. No organism is, nor has one ever been, created, which is not microscopic.
959. Whatever is larger, has not been created, but developed.
960. Man has not been created, but developed. So the Bible itself teaches us. God did not make man out of nothing; but took an elemental body then existing, anearth-clod or carbon; moulded it into form, thus making use ofwater; and breathed into it life, namelyair, whereby galvanism, or the vital process arose.
961. The original origin of organization has been imparted by the co-operating influence of heat and light. By the heat, because without this no galvanic and no chemical process is possible; further, because heat is the totality of æther, the moved æther, the ætherial air, and thus the menstruum of all action. But the heat is not sufficient to animate the three terrestrial elements, because it imparts only the possibility of procedure and of action; while it does not differentialize, nor posit tension, but maintains everything in identity, fluidity. In the heat alone every thing must become fluid and finally decompose. Unto heat therefore the accession is yet necessary of the Cosmic-differencing, or the light. The light inspires the body prepared by heat with life, antagonism, polarity.
962. The æther imparts the substance, the heat the form, the light the life. (Oken first started this opinion in his work, 'Die Zeugung,' Frankfurt, Wesche, 1805.)
c.Processes of the Organic.
963. The life of the organic body is not a single but a threefold action, consisting of the actions of the three terrestrial elements, which become the three fundamental processes of the body, or of life, and in whichthreeprocesses galvanism consists.
1. EARTH-PROCESS, NUTRITIVE PROCESS.
964. The magnetic earth-process is virtually the formative; and in organic bodies is called thenutrientprocess.
965. The process of nutrition is the principal process in the organic world. Its product or its basis is the fundamental mass of the body itself. As crystal and the process of crystallization are related to each other, so are the body and the process of nutrition.
966. The process of nutrition is the sustaining, and proper fundamental process of the organism.
967. It is present entire and indivisible in every part of the body. Whencesoever it is ablated or withdrawn, there is death.
968. It operates according to the laws of crystallization.
969. Its very forms are crystals modified by the organic mass or, what amounts to the same, by the other processes combined therewith. The organic body is an accumulation of an infinity of (organic) crystals (cells).
970. In the planetary process of formation, which is a process of crystallization, the organism is continually comprehended. It is the planetary body ever becoming; the latter is an organic body, which has ceased to become.
2. WATER-PROCESS, DIGESTIVE PROCESS.
971. Another action, that helps to constitute the organic body, is the chemism, which is not only the process of liquefaction, but the process also of the formation or creation of new organic matter. It is known to us under the name ofDigestive process.
972. The digestive process elevates the Inorganic up to the organic mass, like the chemism has converted the Earthy into carbonate of lime and finally into muriatic natron. The digestive process is theprocess of the formation of mucus. Regarded philosophically the nutritive juice (or chyle) is naught else than mucus. This is also correct in a physiological point of view.
973. The digestive process is the second organic process, in so far as it has been fashioned after the type of the water; but the first, in so far as every Organic has originated out of water.
974. As forming only the mucus it is not directly distributed in every part of the body like the nutritive process, which is the body or planet itself. But it interposes, or is mediate, everywhere.
975. As the water of the planet is related to the continent or earth's nucleus, so are the digestive matters or the mucus of nutrition to the body. The Earthy, however, is the principal mass of the planet, upon which the others have been supported. So is the nutritive bodythe principal mass, upon which the digestive body has been supported.
976. No organism is conceivable without a digestive process.
3. AIR PROCESS, RESPIRATORY PROCESS.
977. The action of the air finally settles down also in mucus. It is that which sustains the constant heterogeneity of the organic factors, the electrical tension. The electrical tension has, however, oxydation for its result. The organic process of electricity is thus at the same time a process of oxydation. It is calledRespiratory process.
978. Without respiratory process, no organism is conceivable. By its influence difference has been induced in the chyle, and by this difference only does the latter become decomposible or serviceable for the process of nutrition.
979. The respiratory process is also present not immediately in every part of the body, but only mediately. It is the atmosphere of the body.
980. The mutation, which the juices undergo through the process of respiration, is none other than an emergence from their state of indifference. Thereby each point of the juice becomes polar towards every other; all are mutually attracted, all repelled, whereby a decisive vortication originates.
981. As every globule of sap or mucus is indifferent, it has thus naturally an affinity for air. The air itself is comprehended, like the water and the earth, in the organism. And thus it may with full force be said; that the organism is elevated by respiration to the element air, by digestion to the element water, by nutrition to the element earth. So that respiratory process = air-process, digestive process = water-process, and nutritive process = earth-process.
982. The first three organic processes are consequently true synotypes of the planetary processes—are planet-forming processes in miniature in individuals. The fundamental organism has thus been shown to be in its apparent processes a synotype or likeness of the planet; in other words, a microscopic planet.
983. These three processes constitute the galvanic process. Making use of the expressions applied to the inorganic kingdom, we found the organism to be a combination of magnetism, chemism, and electrism; while in organic parlance it is a nutritive process, maintained by respiration and digestion. The processus nutritorius, digestivus, respiratorius, together constituting galvanism.
4. MOTION.
984. Motion is no peculiar or self-persistent process, but the necessary manifestation of galvanism. Motion has been established with the three organic fundamental processes.
985. Every motion depends upon the galvanic process. Taken in a strict sense, there is noprocessof motion, but motion only. For motion is verily but the phenomenon of galvanism. The process of motion is synonymous with the galvanic process.
986. The galvanic process is a process of motion effected in circles, in its own factors, in its planet, but not from without; it is consequently an actual vital process.
987. As the process of motion is the phenomenon common to all three organic fundamental processes, so is the whole organism characterized by it. The essence of the Organic depends consequently upon its automatic or self-motion.
988.Self-motionis the only, but essential and ultimate, distinction between the Organic and Inorganic. (Ed. 1st, 1810. § 904.) All other distinctions that have been advanced do not suffice; because they do not comprehend the totality of the organism, nor the three fundamental processes inonephenomenon, but only individual attributes.
989. A circumscribed, closed mass, which moves itself, is an organism. The perpetuum mobile is only the organism.
990. Every Inorganic moves not itself, but is only moved by external influences; because every Inorganic is only a part of a whole.
991. The organic motion is present and possible in every point of a body. A mass that is automatic, or thoroughly moved by itself, is an organism.
992. The Inorganic consists in motion having vanished from it, and in being simply mass. But the Organic consists exactly in this alone, namely, that the Massive has disappeared, or that the mass is in constant motion. The Organic becomes destroyed, so soon as motion disappears in it; the Inorganic is destroyed, so soon as motion enters it. Motion is therefore the soul, whereby the Organic is elevated above the Inorganic.