1755. The animal kingdom is the individual development of all four elements.
ZOOSOPHY,
1756. Is the development of the animal kingdom in consciousness. The repetition of the animal creation is spiritually divisible into Anatomy (Zoogeny), Physiology (Zoonomy), and Zoology.
1757. Zoogeny represents the idea of the animal or the developmental history of the individual animal.
IRRITABILITY OF THE BLOSSOM.
1758. The Highest to which the vegetable kingdom could attain was the blossom; and of this the sexual parts are the completion. At the instant when the sex originated, the vegetable functions became of a nobler character; for the sexual organs are only the inferior organs refined or purified by light. The electrical and chemical process of the vegetable body are again represented, but in a spiritual manner, in the blossom. The functions of the fruit were none other than those of the elevated chemism; they were only the nobler processes of digestion and nutrition. As their purest expression of life, and that which has been produced simply by their co-operation, is the motion which resides in cellular tissue, so also was it this only, which obtained a preponderance in the fruit, and that indeed at the cost of the material processes. The germen obtained a kind of motion; yet this appears to be still imparted by material processes. Inthe corolla, however, this expression of life attained to completion. It is no longer simple nutrition or accumulation of sap that moves the stamina upon the female stigma, but a purely polar act; the Immaterial, the Spiritual produces the phenomena of life. These movements of copulation are by no means a coalescence, are not a nutritive act, nor the result of mechanical decissation, as is the case in many capsules; but true elevated vital actions. The parts reassume after the motion their first or original position, a feat which is performed by no capsule upon its dehiscence. Of these movements, those of the leaves in the sensitive plants, e. g. Hedysarum gyrans, are the antetypes or prefigurations. There consequently originates with the highest development of the light-organs in the plant, a motion independent of the material processes, and of the terrestrial elements.
1759. A motion, that is liberated from the terrestrial elements, is free from their mechanism; it simply obeys the nature of the æther, which is of a spiritual, or voluntary, kind.
1760. The essence of volition or free-will does not reside, in a physical sense, in the consciousness of the action, but in the autocrasy; or in the ability to perform an action, without external or terrestrial influence. The æther-actions have originated from special polarity. Independent movements must therefore be such as have been produced simply by polarity, apart from material intrusion.
1761. The ability or power upon the part of organic bodies to apprehend polar excitation, to move themselves simply by its means, and again to restore themselves to their former state, without regard being paid to a material process, I callIrritability. That organ is irritable which can move itself without any other object than that of automacy or self-motion.
1762. Irritability belongs to the plant, but is only of that kind where the perception cannot express itself otherwise than by direct motion. In the sexual parts and probably in the highest leaf-formation, the plant iselevated to irritability; unto motion through simple perception, unto motion without design, to motion from mere lust or desire. The highest spiritual operation, of which the plant is capable, is irritability. But as everything which has attained its Highest, stands at the end of its development, so also has the plant terminated, when it has once exercised its power of irritability through copulation.
SEXUAL MOTION.
1763. All the irritable motion of the vegetable may be confined or reduced to the movements of the stamen-filaments, the other movements being merely precursors of these. What, therefore, the stamina would achieve by their motion, that the irritability does in a general point of view. The motion of the stamina is directed merely upon the stigma, in order to impart the male pollen to the female body; and thus, simply to evoke the spiritual tension, which resides originally in the male semen, as in light-æther from the dead mass, but that originally dwells in the female seed as in the dark mass of earth.
1764. Now, since the stigma bears simply relation to the contents of the ovary, and conveys everything to this, and thus, to a female utricle, which is the middle of the plant, or its body proper; so in the motion of the male organs, the conatus or effort upon their part to introduce an elemental matter, or rather its spirit into this utricle, or this body, is rendered manifest or revealed. The highest Spiritual of the plant is accordingly not a mere motion in the general sense; but one that is definite and wholly special—a motion of Ingestion. The direction or design of the firstindependentmotion is thereforeIngestion; this again not being of a general, but a wholly definite import, namely, an ingestion of themaleorgan into thefemale.
1765. The Male is, however, characterized by its self-substantial polarity, and by its self-intrinsic life; the Female by the want of polarity, by a heterodependent life. The act of ingestion thus depends upon polarization, upon evocation and maintenance of an independent life. The fruit is vivified by impregnation, ay, for the first time then obtains life; the female becomes self-active through the vital spirit received from the male; the body is kept alive by, and only by, ingestion. The act of ingestion is the act that tends unto the self-substantial, independent life.
1766. The blossom dies, so soon as, by ingestion, it has attained this independent life. If we assume that it could not die, but retain the life that was momentarily won for several instants; then this would happen only by repetition of the first act, whereby it had obtained in an instant a self-substantial life; and thus by repetition of the ingestion. By ceaseless ingestion only can the blossom gain a lasting, self-substantial life of motion.
1767. But such a blossom, when self-dependently subsisting, could not continue in further union with the vegetable stock or trunk, for this is no longer requisite for its life's support; through the first act of vivification, through the once sprinkled pollen, it virtually becomes detached and falls as fruit to the ground; as a fruit certainly, or as a female body, unto which is wanting thecontinuedexcitation produced by the male coition. A fruit thus detached or fallen off, and retaining the male filaments, which ceaselessly exercise the function of ingestion, will be of necessity engaged in constant motion; will be a blossom, that incessantly practises copulation.
1768. As in this blossom the motion of ingestion is that alone which sustains it, and nothing more can flow to it from a stem; so also will this blossom be occupied in constant motion; and it consequently comes to pass that the action, which broke forth at the last and instantaneously in the plant, being thus the highest or most individualized, is here the first, inferior, and most general action, or one that lies at the foundation of all other processes. The free blossom is naught but movement of ingestion.
1769. The blossom, however, concentrates in itselfall the lower vegetable processes, is itself naught but the aggregate of such processes repeated in the body of the light; thus the blossom, having been set free, is a vesicle of ingestion endowed with all terrestrial functions.
ANIMAL FORMATION.
1770. The vegetable blossom loses its definition as plant, so soon as it has acquired self-substantial life; it loses its definition, because as blossom, it simply lives in light, while the plant must half dwell in darkness; it loses it, because the copulating motion can be frequently self-repeated.
1771. The self-moveable or automatic blossom has consequently passed over into a new kingdom, or into one whose very definition is the self-substantial motion.
1772. A blossom, which, when separated from the stem, maintains by its own motion the galvanic process or the life within itself, and gets its process of polarization, not from a body lying external to or coherent with it (as is the vegetable stem); but only from itself—such blossom is anAnimal. An animal is blossom without stem or a flower, which of itself produces its stem, this being the reverse of what takes place in the plant. The essence of the animal consists in the maintenance through its own motion of the galvanic vital process. It has been already shown above, in speaking "quoad" the distinction of the organic essences, that the exclusive or only valid difference between plant and animal, was motion arising in the latter apart from any external stimulus. We have now been brought by quite another route to the same result.
1773. If the animal is the floral vesicle living from or by itself, it can no longer lie fettered like the plant between two elements; it must be nominally free from the chains of darkness, and thus from the earth. No animal is so joined by growth with the earth, that like as in a plant this should be a co-operating pole in its processes. No animal must co-exist in two elements like the plant, but it has all elements in itself, like the blossom includes all vegetable parts. It may be said that the plant has been immersed in the earth, water, and air; these three elements having, on the contrary, been immersed in the animal. The animal is in respect to them the continent, the planet; they, however, are the continent in respect to the plant. Thus the relations to the world are completely reversed in both.
1774. An animal is a floral vesicle freely separated from the earth, and living alone through its own motion in the water and air. And here it is not locomotion that is treated of, since this by no means belongs to the animal's essence. Yet on this account the poor oyster was formerly adduced as an argument against this animal character, but unjustly; for would a man frozen up in an ice-block lose his character as an animal? The oyster opens its shell and shuts it too, as well as the crocodile opens and shuts its jaws.
ANIMAL SIGNIFICATION.
We will now proceed to knit or associate with this genetic or physiological, the physio-philosophical mode of development.
1775. Every Organic originates from a mucus-point. If this mucus-point occur in the darkness, it thus becomes a terrestrial organism, a plant; if it enter into the light, which is only possible in the water and in air, it thus becomes a solar organism, independent of the planet, self-moving around itself like the sun, an animal.
1776. An animal is a light-mucus-vesicle, a plant, so far as the root is concerned, a darkness-mucus-vesicle; but it works its way unto air and light, and becomes a light-mucus-vesicle in the blossom.
1777. A free blossom is consequently to be philosophically regarded as equivalent to the primary mucus-vesicle, which has at once developed itself in the water. Now, such an aqueo-mucus-vesicle is directly that which the blossom can first become through a series of developments, and by divestures of the Dark.
1778. The plant is an animal retarded by the darkness; the animal is a plant blooming directly through the light, and devoid of root.
1779. The animal has been posited as a light-or æther-Total upon the planet; the vegetable as a planetary Total in light.
1780. The animal is a whole solar system, the plant only a planet. The animal is therefore a whole universe, the plant only its half; the former is microcosm, the latter microplanet.
ANIMAL PLACE.
1781. No animal can become developed beneath the earth, or where it is absolutely dark and dry. None simply or solely in air. Water is the origin or source of all animals.
1782. They have originated upon the sea-shore, but not in the midst of the sea, nor in that of the land. The deluge cast up the first men. They were littoral inhabitants, and without doubt carnivorous, as savages still are. For whence could they have obtained also fruits, cabbage, and turnips?
SENSATION.
1783. In so far as the animal vesicle is a whole solar system, to it, the characters that transcend the plant, such as motion, belong.
1784. But motion is not that alone which is displayed in the floral cyst when it has become solar; but with it there is yet something higher bestowed.
1785. Like light or sun the vesicle has the principle of its polarization or determination in itself; and it is certainly itself which moves its organs in conformity with this self-determination; but it is withal in antagonism towards the elements, like the sun is towards the planets. Through this antagonism the sun is destined unto the development of light. Although the light is its own product, still it perceives the object toward which the æther-polarity is directed. This perception of thedirection, whither motion should act by means of the central polarity, is in the animal calledSensation.
1786. Sensation is the relation of the Central to the Peripheric, of the sun to the planet; motion is the relation of the periphery to the centre, of the planet to the sun. The Animal emerges into being from the alternating play of the supremest antagonism in the heavenly bodies, the Vegetable from that of the terrestrial antagonisms.
1787. Emission of light is discharging or unloading of the sun achieved by the influence of the planets; sensation is unloading of the animal by objects, by the world, and by its own organs.
1788. Sensation is therefore a positing ofwantin the animal. Through sensation nothing comes into, but rather something passes out of us.
1789. The animal vesicle is a sentient or feeling blossom.
SEXUAL ANIMAL.
1790. As the essence of the blossom consists in the sex, so indeed is the blossom none other than the sexual system; thus it may be said that the animal vesicle is none other than asentient Sexual cyst. This discovery is of the highest importance for the whole of zoosophy.
1791. Two fundamental properties are originally combined in the animal, at the very instant when an animal can exist. There is never one without the other, never simply sensation, but also motion; but the latter is not simply this, but is at once also amovement of copulation. The animal is a sentient genital.
1792. Both fundamental properties are however subordinated to each other. The basis of the animal organism is the sexual system; with this the animal commences; what is further developed in addition thereunto, is only higher completion. But what it, as sexual system, does, it does only through sensation.
1793. It is natural that the animal has not been concluded with the sentient sexual system; but that the terrestrial processes also are developed like as in theplant, and perfected indeed more individually than in the latter. The main distinction is, however, this; that these processes have preceded in the plant, and the sexual system grown out of them; in the animal, on the other hand, the sexual system is the foundation, the root, out of which these processes grow forth. The first and simplest animal vesicle is a sexual cyst, amatrixor womb.
SENSITIVE ANIMAL.
1794. The animal is a twofold representation of the organization, being at one time the planetary, and at one time the solar. There is a planetary animal and a solar animal in the higher organism. The planetary animal is the plant in the animal, the galvanic animal; the solar animal is the sentient, the light-or æther-animal.
1795. The highest completion of the vegetable animal is in the blossom. There is thus a sexual orSex's animaland a sensitive orSensation's animal.
1796. The completed animal consists of two animals, because it is at once planet and sun, plant and animal.
1797. The vegetable and the sensitive animal have been formed parallel to each other, yet in such a manner that the former being the lowest, contains only the dispositions unto the highest. There are consequently vegetative and animal organs, which take a parallel range. The animal grows upon a vegetable body. It may be aptly said, that the root of the plant becomes the mouth or head of the animal, the stem the trunk or visceral body, the blossom the sexual parts. The three parts therefore of the animal body, and the antagonism therefore of the head with the sexual parts, unite through the medium of the vegetable stem, or the visceral body.
1798. The parts of the animal body divide, as in the plant, into tissues, anatomical systems, and into organs proper or members. The tissues are the constituent parts of the systems, these of the organs, and all collectively, or associated, of the body.
I.Animal Tissues.
1799. These are the mathematical primary forms, whereof the animal body consists, and divide into the animal and vegetative fundamental forms.
A. ANIMAL FUNDAMENTAL FORMS.
1800. As animality is the representation of the three conditions of æther, and thus of the gravity, with light and heat or motion, so are three tissues to be met with, which correspond to these three forms. The light emerges from the centre; the gravity occupies the whole mass; the motion oscillates between the two. The organic light-mass will therefore, as sun, occupy the centre, the gravity-mass, like the planets, the periphery, the motion-mass, like the heat, the radii between the two. The primary form is, however, the primary vesicle. If, therefore, new tissues appear in the animal, they can thus be only metamorphoses of the vesicle. The vesicle, can only resolve itself into three forms; either its contents become self-substantial—Point; or in like manner the envelope—Line; or, finally, both become an uniform mass—Globe.
1.Point-tissue.
1801. We take up or commence the study of the animal substance, with the condition under which it has originated, that of a vesicle or sensitive blossom. The vegetable texture attained a form which was prescribed by the light. Now, as the animal vesicle is, in the first place, nothing else but a Sentient, so must the texture of the original animal vesicle be commensurate with this property.
1802. The highest perfection of the blossom was, however, resolution of the texture into the original form of vesicles or granules, a retroconduction of the organic mass to the primary condition, yet under the signification of light. The Highest of the blossom was an organized and designedly-prepared granular texture—pollen.
1803. Now a substance which absolves itself fromthe terrestrial forms, and would assume the form of the æther, and thus of that which is most discrete, can represent no other form than that of the point. The whole æther is an infinity of non-coherent atoms. This atomic formation, when metatyped or copied in a terrestrial mass, can be none other than a granular substance.
1804. The fundamental substance of the animal is point-substance; but, since the essence of the animal consists in its being a sensitive substance, so must it belong to the latter's essence, that it be atomic or punctiform. The point-texture is equivalent to the sensitive mass.
1805. It might be believed, that as the animal is a floral vesicle, the cystic or cell-form must also lie at its foundation; only, there is another relation beyond that which occurs in the plant. This animal cyst is an already organized cyst, anorgan, no longer a component part of an anatomical system; this cystic form cannot, therefore, enter into the texture of the animal mass; yet meanwhile, as is natural, the sensitive mass admits of being reduced, but only as organic in a general sense, to the vesicular form. The lowest animals, such as the Infusoria, Polyps, Acalephæ, or sea-nettles, in short, all Protozoa or mucous animals consist of this point-substance, and are wholly sensitive mass.
Nervous Mass.
1806. The sensitive mass is called in higher animals,Nervous mass. The nervous texture is a conjoined series of mucus-granules, which have become albuminous in character. The nervous mass is the least organized; it has selected the primary forms, which have been preconstructed in æther, or the densely fluid solar matter. The Dominant of the terrestrial organs can have also no other form, than such as agrees with the Dominant or governing primary mass of the planetary system; or it can have none other, because at the instant when it exists, it is sentient. At the first instant of the origin of organic matter, it can, however, originate only as infinitely numerous points; at the termination of the plant, thismass would be displayed as a light-organ; being thus engendered as such, it must forsake the vegetable forms, and assume the universal form-susceptive primary form, which is the form of the point. The floral mass, the delicate petals of the corolla, the stamina and the pollen are to be deemed the first onset or advance that is made to nervous mass. The cellular tissue becomes delicate and gradually resolves itself into granules.
1807. Granular or point-mass is, however, an accumulation of centres. The nervous mass is therefore, in accordance with the conception of the Organic, a repeated, multiplied centre. The nervous mass has therefore a light-function, i. e. the gentlest polarization in the organism. Nervous mass is light-mass.
1808. The animal substance has commenced with the nervous mass; thus with that which is the highest, and which physiologists have deemed to be the ultimate mass. The origin of the animal is from the nerves, and all anatomical systems are only free evolutions or separations from the nervous mass. The animal is naught but nerve. What it is further or in addition, is obtained elsewhere, or is a metamorphosis of nerves. The mucus of the Infusoria, Polyps, and Acalephæ is nervous substance upon the lowest stage or degree, where the other substances that are therein involved and merged, have not as yet been perfected in an isolated manner.
1809. The nervous mass indicates the absolute Indifferent in an animal, and consequently that which is polarizable by the gentlest aura or breath.
Division of the Nervous Mass.
1810. The nervous mass behaves itself also in its production like the solar mass. As from this the planets have through antagonism on the periphery, emancipated themselves, so from the nervous mass have the anatomical systems, which are subservient unto lower purposes.
1811. The development of the animal organs is a constant division of the nervous mass, whereby it becomesmore and more divested of their coarse coverings, and traverses the same like radiating æther, illuminant, heating, and moving æther. It is a positing of the centre in the periphery.
1812. When also the other systems have been formed out of the identical nervous mass, still the whole animal body is naught but nervous mass, only, in a crude or inert condition. There is, consequently, no point upon the body, on which the nervous phenomena are absolutely wanting, or where they may not appear under certain relations.
1813. What remains behind of the nervous mass, has now the form of filaments or rays, which are projected from one centre, the brain, to all parts of the periphery.
1814. The nerves being individualized, and withdrawn from the coarser mass, stand in need of noactio in distans, or no nervous atmosphere (although for other reasons such a one may exist), in order that every part of the body should have sensibility or feel; for every substance is verily but an aberrant nervous substance, in which the original spirit is still inherent or abides.
1815. Each part of the body has consequently irritability, and each one has the capacity for sensation; and that, indeed, through and in itself, or not borrowed from, what have been called, nerves; as it is indeed only the coarse nervous envelope of the more delicate nerves.
1816. Yet, meanwhile it is certain, that nothing feels but the nervous mass, because every thing, which feels, does, and hath the power to do so, only in so far as it has beennervous mass. Precisely as all metals are only magnetic in so far as they are metamorphosed iron, which is the primary metal.
1817. Certain formations or textures must, on that account, have different sensations, because they have deviated more or less remotely from the primary texture;withoutin this any regard being paid to the number of nerves running to such systems.
1818. The transformation of the nervous mass uponthe periphery is chiefly imparted by oxydation, because here the oxygen of the water exerts a direct influence. The transformation does not, however, simply occur upon the periphery, but also internally, and that indeed in a beamy or radial direction. The external parts will be harder, the internal or radial continue soft, but be more solid than the nervous mass itself.
2.Globe-tissue.
1819. The nervous tissue alone cannot constitute the animal substance concerned in all functions, but it must with further development pass over into another. As the æther-mass cannot concentrate itself into the sun without, from the antagonism with the refraction of light, condensing into planets, so also a central mass cannot subsist in an animal, without converting itself on the periphery into one that is planetary or terrestrial.
1820. The antagonistic mass, originating in a peripheral relation in the nervous mass, will surround the residue of the latter like a bladder or cyst, just like the planetary masses, or the colours, have primordially surrounded the sun as great hollow globes. The aggregate and purer nervous mass becomes thus directly the central mass of the animal—thebrain.
1821. The limitary mass originates through oxygenation. Thus the colours originate; they are an oxygenated light. Thus has every terrestrial mass originated through combustion. The planets are suns that have undergone combustion; the limitary mass is nervous mass similarly treated and deoxydized.
1822. As having been already subjected to combustion, it therefore becomes polarizable, and consequently susceptible of sensation in the least degree. The limitary mass must be rigid or fixed; for it has indeed originated through fixation of the poles, or through the strongest oxydation. The limitary mass is the most rigid in the whole animal; for it is the primary antagonism with the nervous mass, the ultimate planetary matter, which is characterized by immoveability of the atoms.
1823. The limitary mass must be typical of the earth-element, this being the most rigid, and the end of the oxydation. The limitary mass is the animal earth-mass, just as the median mass is the animal æther- or fire-mass.
1824. The texture of the animal earth-mass must be that of a crystal, but of a round globular crystal; for it is organic mass, and can consequently have been only deposited as vesicle; it is, however, earthy mass, so that the whole vesicle must be, with all its contents, rigidified. Now, the rigidified substance of a vesicle is a globe—the texture of the mass which is opposed to that of the nerves is consequently the globular form.
Osseous Mass.
1825. The rigidified limitary mass, which exhibits histologically dense globes, consists of earthy substance, and surrounds the nervous mass, isosseous mass. The osseous or bony texture is a solid globe or rigidified vesicle, being thus ambitus or boundary, as well as complexus or contents.
1826. Bone can only originate through oxydation of the animal mucous or nervous mass, whereby it is converted into a vesicular form. These vesicles are, however, by virtue of the highest oxydation, which must necessarily enter into antagonism with the highest central organ, converted wholly and thoroughly into rigid substance or earth, which is the maximum of the oxydation or fixation of æther.
1827. The osseous mass, as the organic earth-mass, corresponds to the gravity. It is the materiality in a general point of view in the Organic, and consequently the Inert.
1828. Osseous or limitary organs will become more rigid in the air than in water. The air-breathing animals must have more perfect bones or harder limitary organs.
1829. Bones are therefore either wanting completely in the aquatic animals, or they are mucus scarcelyoxydized, in other words, cartilage; or finally, almost entirely rough carbonated earth, in the corals and shells.
1830. This theory is most beautifully proved in the corals. Internally they consist of granular substance, like the polyps, or of sentient nervous mass; externally they are simply earth or globular form, which is the rudest antagonism presented to the likewise rude central mass.
1831. Bone essentially surrounds the nervous mass. The skull environs and incloses the brain, the vertebræ the spinal cord, the ribs, the visceral nerves the snail's shell all the soft parts of that animal, the coral stem its polyp-tube, the horny coat the insect.
1832. The purest and highest antagonisms in an animal are nerve and bone, and as such they are demonstrated on every occasion. The nerve is that which is soft, powerless, changeable, sentient, governing, and motion-imparting; the bone, what is hard, strong, unchangeable, non-sentient, governed, and becoming moved; the one properly speaking the spiritually vitalizing, the other the spiritually dead, or self-subsistent simply in a mineral point of view. The bone is the obedient planet of the nerve.
1833. Point-and globe-form are consequently, as regards the tissue of the substance, the first two forms of the animal body.
1834. What develops itself apart from nerve and bone in the animal, must either range between or below both; it must participate of both forms, or be only their incompletion.
3.Fibrous Tissue.
1835. The nervous and osseous substance could not range opposite to each other, without a transition or a something interposing; as little as could æther and Terrestrial, or sun and planet, between which the moved æther or the heat oscillates, and conditionates the planetary motion.
1836. Between the soft point-form of the nerve and the hard globe-form of the bone, a semi-oxydation stands midway, just as the air stands between the æther and the earth. As this is the medium element, wherein the light is refracted into colours, and thereby warms and moves the planet, so must this median animal formation be the element, through which the nerve imparts its motion to the bones.
1837. This organ stands, like the air, upon the middle rate of oxydation; the oxygen becomes alternately united with it and set free; which is neither possible in the point-form, as being that which incessantly liberates oxygen, nor in the globe-form, as being that which always holds or retains the oxygen in union with it.
1838. This tissue must consist of firm or solid nervous granules, which have been serially co-arranged in lines or radii. Such organic lines are calledFibres.
1839. The fibrous is the third original tissue, which appears in the animal organization.
1840. The nerve acts upon the fibres as upon the bone, or as a Central upon a Peripheric, as the light upon the air.
1841. Thereby the soft fibre is polarized; the poles are mutually attracted and repelled, and motion of the fibres originates, their extremities approximating or withdrawing by virtue of the polarity. Contractile fibres are calledsarcose or fleshy fibres.
Flesh.
1842. The flesh is the median formation between nerve and bone. It is half nervous mass, therefore sentient, half bone, therefore moving.
1843. The essence of the motion resides in the muscle, not in the nerve. Such is the cause of motion, the muscle being the self-moving, the bone that which is moved.
1844. The flesh must surround the bone, as the air or water surrounds the earth.
1845. The flesh is a terrestrial substance, just as thebone is; the nerve is a cosmical substance, and on that account the mediator of everything.
B. VEGETABLE TISSUES.
4.Cellular Tissue.
1846. There are three, and only three constituent forms essential to the animal substance, the point, the globe, and the line; equivalent to centre, periphery, and radius.
1847. Out of these three all other forms, of whatever kind, are developed, through degradation unto vegetable structure. This form can be none other than theCell-form. In the animal there are therefore four fundamental forms, while in the vegetable only one occurs.
1848. The cellular form may be also called the water in the animal, the globe-form the earth, the fibrous the air, the point-form the fire. Thus is the animal even in its tissues a whole universe, for it cannot otherwise be thought of.
1849. The cellular substance is the last division of the point-substance, because the nervous granule becomes hollow. A true cellular tissue first makes its appearance therefore in the higher animals.
1850. Bone, flesh and nerve are the highest organs of the animal; the viscera, which mostly consist of cellular tissue, will indicate the Vegetative in the animal. Proper animal organs can only present the above-mentioned triplicity. What is not bone, flesh or nerve, is not animal, but vegetable.
1851. Nerve, flesh and bone are mutually excited, and are independent of the cellular tissue. They are moreover the animal in the animal, the thoroughly Free and Voluntary.
1852. These three substances have therefore nothing to do with the three terrestrial processes; they do not digest, respire, nourish nor transport about the galvanic sap, but live for themselves or to their own satisfaction.
1853. The origination of the three inferior substances out of the nervous mass, is perfectly similar to the original creative process of the three terrestrial elements from the æther. The animal organism is a second world-creation, for in the organic æther an organic air, earth and water, have been produced, or it has itself become these through fixation of the poles. This capacity for resemblance between the organic and inorganic elements is marvellous; but yet there would be more to wonder at, ay, it would be thoroughly incomprehensible, if the organic elements had been created according to some other type.
1854. When once the nervous mass has become separated from the three other masses, each then commences to be self-substantially perfected, and become a particular organ, though it is still under the supremacy of the primary mass.
1855. The principal mass which constitutes the animal body, after complete separation of the chaotic nervous mass, is without doubt the fundamental mass of everything organic; being the mucus or cellular mass, in which the other elements have only been included like veins of ore. It is the cellular mass therefore which we will first consider in its process of formative evolution.
1856. As cellular mass it must be the seat of the galvanic process, and thus of the life proper. In the cellular mass consequently the three vegetative processes, or the three terrestrial elementary processes, must be firmly established; as there digestion, respiration and nutrition are.
1857. With these three processes, the three superior elementary forms, which are peculiar to the animal, as nerves, bones, and muscles, will have nothing to do, excepting in so far as they govern them. As in the plant, so also in an animal, the terrestrial processes are only the appurtenance of the cellular tissue.
1858. In cellular tissue is therefore the seat of life. But the vegetative mass simply lives that it may live, while the animal lives, in order to combine the universewith the life. The animal elements live only in order to feel and move, in order to act freely like the world; the vegetative only, that they may subsist as planet. The latter are an image of the planet, the former of the world; the one deal with matter, the other with spirit.
Integument.
1859. The cellular tissue does not continue a mere parenchyma in the animal as in the plant, but it obtains a definite anatomical form.
1860. The animal cellular tissue has issued forth from its highest formation in the plant, or out of the blossom, which is a great bladder or cyst composed of primary vesicles. It is the secondary cystic form, wherein the animal cellular tissue appears, when it becomes an anatomical system.
1861. The animal cellular tissue forms therefore everywherelarge bladdersorcysts, whose walls consist of primary vesicles, or of the vegetable cellular tissue. Cyst-walls are teguments.
1862. The cellular system in the animal isTegumentary system.
1863. The idea of the integument is the wall of a cyst. There is no tegument apart from the meaning of circumscription, inclusion, and limitation. There is no flat integument, or one that could be designed after the idea of the plane. Every tegument is periphery, just as there is nowhere a surface in the universe, which could have been produced according to the level or plane.
1864. All terrestrial processes, as digestion, respiration, and nutrition, are consequently tegumentary processes. All these organs must be tegumentary organs. Intestine, vessel, lung, in a word all viscera are naught but tegument.
1865. The vegetable tissue becomes in the animal, tegumentary tissue. The tegumentary formation is the vegetable in an animal—the parenchyma, theVisceral.
1866. The lowest distinction between animal andplant resides accordingly in this, that the vegetable tissue consists of actual vesicles, which form everywhere closely compressed masses; the animal cellular tissue on the contrary of granules, which inclose a hollow space. The animal body is a hollow globe of vesicles, the vegetable body one full of vesicles. (Ed. 1st, 1810, § 1870.)
1867. Every animal cyst is necessarily composed of the element of the vesicles, and is then for the first time an organ. The vegetable bladders are, however, single vesicles, and as such are already an organ. In the plant therefore the cellular tissue is upon the lowest stage, being only an aggregate devoid of secondary form; in the animal along with its aggregation a secondary form has been imparted. In this the higher character of the animal is at once demonstrated.
1868. The above is certainly a distinction between the two organisms, but it is not theessentialone; for with it, what is animal has been by no means expressed; this being first imparted in the three cosmic elemental forms, which manifest themselves through sensation and motion, and then admit of being recognized as an animal. The corolla is also a cyst, but without being an animal; because, to this animal-like tegumentary formation, the proper animal elements are still wanting.
1869. Now as the tegument is none other than the form, under which the cellular tissue exists in the animal, we must regard it as an elemental form, which has stepped into the place of the cellular. The tegumentary form constitutes the fourth form, and is none other than the primo-vesicular form elevated to a higher rank, by being composed of cell-granules, which have been formerly nerve-granules.
1870. The animal body must consist of nerve, muscle, bone, and tegument, and of no other fundamental form; in other words, of point, line, globe, and cyst.
1871. All anatomical systems are developments and separations of the four tissues, which are prolongedas sheaths through the whole body, like as in the plant are the bark, liber and wood.
1872. They are divisible next of all into two great parties, into the terrestrial and cosmical, or vegetative and animal.
A.VEGETATIVE SYSTEMS.
1873. The vegetable systems can only be different developments of the tegument. They accord with the galvanic factors. Any further derivation of them is unnecessary. The tegumental development must be represented as the systems of digestion, respiration, and nutrition, since from it these have been sufficiently borrowed or derived.
1874. Except these three systems there can be no other tegumental system; and, if such appear to be present, they must be subordinate to these. For there cannot be subsequently any more than there was fundamentally or at bottom.
1875. In the animal, however, the galvanic processes do not remain entangled inonemass, as in the plant. But they are even characterized as animal by their individual liberation from the whole mass. In the plant digestion or absorption, and nutrition or the course of the sap, were in one kind of mass or one kind of cellular tissue, all three processes (together with respiration) being in a tolerably confused condition.
1876. The animal appears in its dignity by separation of these processes, and by the perfection of each individually, or "per se."
1877. As all life consists only in the constant conversion of what is inorganic into the Organic, so is the process of digestion or absorption necessarily the first in animals.
1. INTESTINAL SYSTEM.
1878. The chemical process of the galvanism is conversion of the Inorganic into mucus, and thus an assumption of this matter into the organic body. Now as everylimit of the body is tegument or cellular tissue, so can this assumption take place everywhere. Adoption of what is external into an organic body isabsorption.
1879. Absorption originates from the antagonism of the body with the earth, which is organizable, and thus with the mucus.
1880. We call this slime or mucus, nutritive matter. Wherever such matter can operate upon the body, a corresponding organ of absorption, and thus a cell or integument, will be formed.
1881. The whole body is surrounded by integument; it was originally nothing but integument.
1882. The essence of the integument consists in absorption, or in the intervention of the chemical process.
1883. The integument is the root of the animal.
1884. The animal cellular mass is, however, in conformity with its origin, a bladder or cyst that has been opened by light and air. The integument is a large cyst not closed all round, but open atoneend. It is the open floral cyst, which has just become an animal. The original integument is thusIntestine. The intestine is the water-organ.
1885. The integument presents therefore to the external world, or to the nutritive matter, two parietes or walls, an external and an internal.
1886. Both walls are opposed to each other like light and darkness, like air and water. The external is the light-and air-wall, the internal the darkness-and water-wall.
1887. It is consequently only the internal wall that stands in the same relation as the root. The internal is "par excellence" root, and is thus a main organ of absorption.
1888. The external wall comes under the idea of the stem-bark, and in so far only as this has a root-nature in itself, is it likewise absorbent.
1889. As upon the external animal wall the light and air constantly operate—for without light indeed no animal originates—so is this wall more and more removed fromthe idea of the root, and becomes, by virtue of the influence of light and air, instead of an absorbent organ, an organ rather of decomposition—anevaporation's organ.
1890. As a cyst the internal wall incloses the nutritive matter, which originates from the mucus, and thus from the organic water. The internal wall is therefore constantly immersed in the water, and is consequently in every respect a root.
1891. As the animal is only developed in light, so must the function of the root languish in the external wall, and decay, because it is devoid of the earth, which protects it from or against the light. This deficiency is compensated for in another way, or by the formation of a cavity, into which the media of nutrition enter, and which is dark like the earth.
1892. Internal and external wall stand also opposite to each other, like water and air. The one is the water-, the other the air-wall.
1893. The nutritive matters are not decomposed upon the internal wall by extraneous influences, but they remain identical; ay, they become indifferent, because they enter into darker and warmer water.
1894. On the other hand such nutritive matters are decomposed upon the external wall; and there here therefore gradually originates, instead of the chemicalizing root-process, the polarizing process of air.
1895. In a perfect light-animal it is only the internal wall that is chemicalizing; the external has become oxydizing. The internal is a mucus-wall, but the external, on account of the decomposition of mucus, an oxygen-wall.
Division.
1896. The more an animal has been exposed to the air and light, by so much the greater is the antagonism between its internal and external wall. In aquatic animals the antagonism is at its minimum, because externally and internally there is water; both parietes aretherefore mucus-walls. The external wall of the fishes secretes an abundance of mucus, as does that also of the worms, snails, and molluscs.
1897. But an internal wall is still the more mucous of the two, because it is darker and warmer.
1898. At first the animal is content with the antagonism of the walls; especially so long as it remains occluded in dark and deep water, or within other animals. Many intestinal worms, polyps, and even Acalephous animals, are but simple sacs.
1899. When the animal organization, however, ranks upon a higher stage, light, or even air, operates more upon its external wall, but upon its internal, water; thus the antagonism of the two walls is carried out to the utmost degree.
1900. Through the different, ay, opposed processes, the two walls finally adopt another structure. The external becomes denser and harder, on account of the decomposition by light and dessication by air; the internal, however, retains its original structure and consistence. Soft, aqueous, indifferent, and constantly absorbent, it is only a viscous mucus.
1901. In place of an integument of similar tissue throughout, one will originate, whose external tissue is dense and oxydized, but whose internal is loose or spongy, and indifferent. The previously uniform integument will now separate or fall into two distinct layers; into a soft muco-cellular layer, and into a tough coriaceo-cellular layer.
1902. With the last attainable antagonism the layers finally separate; two bladders or cysts, disunited from each other, originate; of these the internal is themucous, the external thecoriaceous cyst.
1903. Now the internal cyst alone is theintestine, the external thecutisorskin.
1904. Intestine and cutis belong tooneformation, or to the integument. They pass directly into each other at the mouth and anus. Their structure also is wholly similar.
1905. They are merely distinguished by darkness and light, but more closely by water and air. The intestine is thewater-tegument, the skin theair-tegument.
1906. The functions of both are therefore co-related like dissolution is to combustion, along with which the evaporation has been bestowed.
1907. Intestine and skin stand in antagonism with each other.
1908. The first animal, as being sentient integument, is a sac; the first skin is also a sac; an animal around the animal.
2. DERMAL SYSTEM.
a.Branchiæ or Gills.
1909. The external wall, being constantly exposed to the air that is in the water, can adopt no other than the aerial character, and is thus like the leaf of the plant. The skin is the organ of evaporation, and with this of oxydation also.
1910. A self-oxydizing integument is called aBranchiaor gill.
1911. The skin is essentially nothing else than a gill; and, if it subsequently appears as anything else, this happens only through a higher state of perfection being attained by its branchial function.
1912. The lowest animals, such as most of the worms, molluscs, and snails, breathe through the external integument; even the gills of fishes are none other than a piece of skin.
1913. Thus gills and intestine would be the first two organs, which are developed out of the tegumentary system by the antagonism of air and water. Through the gills, air, and through the intestine, water enters the body. The gill is the atmosphere of the animal, the intestine is its sea.
b.Tracheæ, or Air-tubes.
1914. As the intestine, and in general every water-tegument is prolonged into mucous tubes or absorbent vessels; so also, with a more vigorous formation, the branchial membrane is drawn out into tubes, in order to conduct the air or oxygen towards the intestinal vessels, just as the intestine conveys through its absorbent ducts the water to the vessels of the skin.
1915. This saccular inversion of the skin constitutes the tegumentary lymphatic vessels, whose original function has been to transport the oxygen, combined with the water, to the intestine. They are the original respiratory vessels, which in the higher animals become, through the pure influence of air, trueAir-tubes, like the spiral vessels.
1916. The air-vessels traverse the thickness of the body toward the intestinal membrane, like the mucous vessels do toward the branchial membrane.
1917. Thus an infinite number of air-vessels will and must originate.
1918. The air-tubes are consequently the formation which is properly opposed to the lymphatic vessels. They are for the air or for the skin, what these are for the water or the intestine. Air-vessels are first displayed in insects, then in fishes, reptiles, birds, and Thricozoa or Mammalia.
1919. If the infinitely numerous air-vessels concur to form one stem, they are then calledlungs, as in the higher animals.
1920. The pulmonary vesicles are nothing but ramified air-tubes, such as the insect has.
1921. The formation of air-tubes is one of a higher character than that of the gills. For in it, indeed, the function has been separated from all other functions. It is simply destined to convey the air without water.
1922. As they pass into the dark, light does not operate upon them; and they will therefore less promote evaporation than mediate unto combustion.
1923. The anatomical idea of the air-vessels, or of the lung, is a saccular inversion of the skin. The skin is prolonged into, and ramifies towards, the body. Theintestine is prolonged through the absorbent vessels, as being also small inversions, toward the lung, and becomes a stem—thoracic duct. Then the thoracic duct finally unites with the lungs through the medium of the heart, which is a new formation.
1924. Everything becomes stem which attains a higher grade, and which approximates the air and light. The stem strives to be a centre, but the ramification devolves upon the periphery; the former upon the Solar or Animal; the latter upon the Planetary or Vegetative.
1925. The nobler therefore a formation, by so much the more single and stemmy is it: such is the case with the trachea of the lungs, such with the lymphatic duct.
3. VASCULAR SYSTEM.
1926. The earth or the nutritive mass acts also upon its formation, and destines the tegument to a peculiar structure. The result of the electric and chemical process, or of the oxydation of the mucus, is precipitation, mass-and earth-formation; it is thus a process of nutrition, since through it the Solid of the body, with even the branchial and intestinal membranes, originates.
1927. The earth-system can only be developed where the two last systems coincide, or where the intestinal and branchial processes enter into mutual contact; in short, where the mucus is oxydized, and thereby separated into what is aerial and rigid.
1928. This spot is only in the middle between the two. The process of precipitation and the formation of elemental matter occurs, consequently, between the two layers of integument, or at present between the two teguments that have become self-substantial, or between intestine and skin.
1929. A new formation must be evolved, whereby the two shall be held together; a formation, whereby the antagonism shall be conducted from one to the other; and thus whereby the mucus shall be conveyed to the skin, but the air to the intestine.
1930. Were intestine and skin entirely separated from each other, each would perish; the former would no longer be oxydized, the latter no longer nourished.
1931. With their separation they must continue to be attached to each other at certain points, and thus undergo eversion at certain points. Thereby tubes originate in the intestine, which pursue their course toward the skin; in this again tubes, which pass to the intestine.
1932. A tube, which receives mucus from the intestine, air from the skin, and includes both within itself, is a long cyst. A cyst, which conducts mucus to the skin and air to the intestine, is aVessel, avein.
a.Unclosed Vascular System.
1933. The vessel has, in virtue of its essence, two extremities, an air-extremity, which is polar, and a water-extremity, which is indifferent. Every vessel has been rooted in two systems, in the intestine and skin, and is subservient to both.
1934. The vessel is no longer a something single, like the last-mentioned or preceding cysts, but double. Every vessel hath two poles.
1935. The organization necessarily produces two kinds of vessels. A vessel, which conducts the mucus to the skin, cannot also convey the air to the intestine. There is consequently a mucus-vessel and an air-vessel, or a water-and an air-vessel, an indifferent and a different.
1936. The mucus-vessel is calledabsorbent, the air-vesselrespiratory ductor trachea.
1937. Air-and absorbent vessel stand in antagonism like skin and intestine, like water and air. The air-vessel is the skin or the branchia, which passes to the intestine, the absorbent vessel is the intestine, which passes to the air; the one the intestinal branchia, the other the branchial intestine.
1938. So long as intestine and skin were one in kind, this vascular process was in every situation. With their separation therefore the vascular structure has of necessity originated between two opposed situations. Thereis no point in the skin and none in the intestine, where there might not be an air-and a water-vessel, a respiratory and absorbent duct.
1939. There are thereforenumerousvessels, and consequently aVascular system.
1940. Air-and water-vessel must abut against each other; because they are polar, because the one leads to this place and the other to that.
1941. The system of water-and air-ducts can form no closed vascular system; for they only grow towards each other, as did formerly intestine and skin.
1942. They would not have originated if both cysts had not separated from each other. These vessels are not therefore to be met with in animals that have no intestine. The transition of the water-into the air-ducts takes place in the higher animals through the union of the thoracic duct with the subclavian vein, which conveys the blood directly to the lungs.
1943. The vascular system is properly the primo-cellular tissue, which occupies the middle, and at whose extremities the two cysts remain approximated, in order that they may continue to live.
1944. The vascular is the original system, since its two extremities already carry in themselves the air-and mucus-process, so that branchia and intestine are only to be viewed as peculiarly perfected conditions of these extremities. I would even have developed the vascular system first of all, had not another course been required to render the subject intelligible.
1945. The first animal cyst is a vessel with two kinds of extremities, whereof, like the plant, one draws its supply from the water, the other from the air; but in the animal this is effected by its own motion.
1946. The branchia is nothing but a vascular tissue in the air, the intestine none other than a vascular tissue in the water. Thus, do I wish that these organs should be understood, and not as mere cystic walls.
1947. Every point therefore in the intestine and skin absorbs, and thus every part is perforated with infinitelynumerous holes or pores. Here they absorb air, there water.
1948. Every absorbent point of integument is drawn out as a tube towards the respiratory system, in order to let what it has absorbed become oxydized. These tegumentary prolongations into tubes are thelymphatic vessels.
1949. In all teguments there are necessarily lymphatic vessels, but more of them in the water-than the air-teguments. On that account the lymphatic vessels are much more numerous in the intestine than the skin. They are there called chyliferous, or lacteal vessels.
1950. The lymphatic vessels are the first of all vessels. Many animals, as perhaps the Acalephæ and Distomata, appear to have only this kind of vessel.
1951. Lymphatic vessels are present in the skin, only in so far as it has resigned the respiratory function to special organs.
Meaning of the Unclosed Vascular System.
1952. The action of this unclosed vascular system is wholly similar to the motion of sap and air in the plant, there being only an ascent of the first, and a fall or descent of the last. In the absorbents the sap ascends out of the root (intestine) into the leaves (branchiæ); in the respiratory vessels the air descends from the foliage (skin) to the intestine and the whole body of cells.
1953. This vascular system is therefore the pure remnant of the plant, and has as yet assumed no properly animal character, except that both its sets of vessels or tubes are self-substantial, and ramify, while in the plant they are only intercellular passages or non-ramified spiral vessels.
1954. In insects this system has been most perfectly evolved; there the air-tubes, being well parcelled out, are in great number, and run directly to the intestine and dorsal vessel, which is, as it were, only the trunk of the lymphatic vessels, or the chyliferous duct.
1955. Now, such a vascular system, merely oscillating, as it were, between intestine and skin, can be but persistent in animals, which express only the vegetable type of organization. If other significations be introduced, so also will this vascular system be otherwise evolved.
1956. The unclosed vascular system will be present along with an energetic antagonism between skin and intestine; with an antagonism that is almost suppressed, there will be none. There are then only cells, or there is only point-substance, as in the Infusoria, polyps, and Acalephæ or sea-nettles.
1957. The dermal vessels exist only in the air-insects, because in them nothing but air and water are engaged in conflict. Externally there is desiccated horn, internally mucous water.
1958. A perfectly unclosed vascular system appears to be developed only in animals which respire air. At least there are only genuine air-tubes and lymphatic vessels in such as breathe air; e. g., in the Mammalia, birds, reptiles and fishes, the latter set of vessels being probably not present in insects.
1959. Through the predominance of the air-process, as in insects, the mucus that is conveyed to it becomes so rapidly decomposed, that no more remains behind, for which a new vessel would be necessary.
1960. The galvanic process is at every instant annulled, and only renovated by a new afflux or supply. Here the galvanism does not subsist in itself as a peculiar and independent system.
b.Closed Vascular System.
1961. The unclosed vascular system is not yet self-substantial, because it is a cæcal eversion of the intestine or inversion of the skin, being itself only a ramified intestine and skin. Every system, however, attains its perfection, by being rendered independent of its origin. Thus the leaf is the spiral vessel that has become free, the root the cellular tissue in a like condition, the blossom the liberated vegetable trunk. The vascular system will therefore aspire also to the achievement of its blossom.
1962. If the decomposition that is effected by an inferior amount of polarization, does not happen rapidly enough, for what has flowed thither, to disappear, during its afflux, by evaporation or precipitation; the rest of the mucus which has obtained the air-polarity, is now repelled by the respiratory vessels, because both have become synonymous.
1963. The oxydized superfluous mucus is at once, however, attracted by the intestine, because they are not synonymous. There consequently originates a vessel in the mass of mucus or parenchyma, that has been secreted between the intestine and skin, which begins in the respiratory membrane and terminates in the intestine.
1964. This vessel will commence at the end of the absorbents, or at a point, where it devolves upon the respiratory vessels, to take up their contents, namely the oxygen, together with the nutritive substance, and convey them to the intestine. The mucus, which previously stagnated and moved but slowly from one spot to another, is now again carried back by another vessel without interruption to the intestine.
1965. The vessel which conveys oxydized mucus from the respiratory to the intestinal system, is calledartery.
1966. On the intestine, however, this polar mucus is again reduced to ordinary mucus. It has now become synonymous with the intestine, is repelled from it and attracted by the branchial membrane.
1967. One and the same fluid or sap is consequently brought back from the branchia to the intestine, and from thence again to the branchia. This last vessel is calledvein.
a.Arteries.
1968. The artery is, according to its signification, an air-vessel, which is prolonged or elongated as far as the intestine. Essentially, the artery conveys nothing but air, though this is effected by means of a medium or vehicle, which is the undecomposed mucus (blood). It is an air-tube, that has been self-substantially dismembered from the skin, in order to become a special independent air-tube, or such as is commensurate with animal nature.
1969. In the artery the external integument has been repeated in the nutritive system, and hence the galvanism has become of a continuous character.
1970. The artery must therefore be the highest vessel, the most total of all terrestrial processes. For it is the air-duct united with the intestinal vessel. It contains mucus, which carries the properties of both poles of the body in itself; there is oxydized mucus.
1971. The artery contains the whole body, lung and intestine, in short, the whole animal, (whereas it was previously dispersed in two vessels,) in a fluid state within itself. From the artery therefore nutrition will directly take place; from it the animal will be formed.
1972. The air or respiratory vessels may be viewed as arteries carried to the very extreme. In the lung the arterial system has attained its highest purity, the oxygen only, without the indifferent substance, being contained therein. The trachea is the roughest artery—Arteria aspera.
1973. The arterial system, in accordance with its signification, makes its first appearance in water, because the aquatic mode of respiration is less energetic, and thus the mucus is more feebly decomposed. The Mollusca, snails, and many worms have a perfect arterial system. The branchiæ do not, like respiratory tubes, pass into the body, as in insects; but there are vessels which take up the oxygen and convey it into the body.
1974. As lung and absorbent belong to the pure air or the pure water, so do artery and vein to the water combined with the air. The two former are therefore present only where aerial respiration occurs, and the two latter where water merely is respired.