242^ DR. CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 



cumstance to which modern travellers ascribe the present dry desert 

 state of Greece, in which several streams celebrated by the an- 

 cients have totally disappeared, leaving behind a dry and barren soil, 

 because the woods which contained their springs were wasted and 

 destroyed through barbarism and neglect. If, lastly, we consider how 

 essential an influence the course and deposition of rivers have upon the 

 surface of the earth ; how far all countries have been produced by their 

 rivers (as, for instance, Lower Egypt by the Nile, or the regions of 

 America, towards the lower part of the Mississippi, by the alluviations of 

 this river) ; we find here again the bond of mutual relation and affinity 

 which connects organized and unorganized terrestrial bodies by means 

 of vegetable life manifested with sufficient distinctness. 



The Animal Kingdom. 



As the plant may be considered a crystal continually developing it- 

 self in a constant change of its matter, in like manner the living ani- 

 mal body so nearly represents a plant which has reached a higher unity 

 and faculty of self-determination, that although the animal still remains 

 a part of a higher unity, and is closely bound to the earth by the ne- 

 cessities of life, yet this hold taken of the animal as compared with 

 that taken of the plant, is even less in degree than that which we ob- 

 serve in the plant as compared with the unorganized body. For this 

 very reason, the animal presents, among natural bodies, the most per- 

 fect idea of an organism (see p. 226) ; and as we can prove mathe- 

 matically that there are only three fundamental numbers (which are 

 continually repeated in all forms of perception, namely, unity, its di- 

 vision into duality, and the reunion of the unity and duality in trinity), 

 which are exemplified in our conception of space through the three- 

 fold dimension of length, breadth, and thickness, — in like manner the 

 threefold succession of inorganic vegetable and animal life exhibits the 

 members which together afibrd the idea of an organism, viz. multipli- 

 city, development, and unity. 



Since the addition of the idea of unity constitutes the perfect idea of 

 an organism, just as thickness, added to length and breadth, con- 

 stitutes the idea of a body, it is evident that the unity of the animal 

 body presents and affords in reality a perfect idea of an individual or- 

 ganism. We have already observed that the peculiarities of vegetable 

 life may very well be collectively ascribed to its want of inward self- 

 independence ; in a similar way we may deduce all the peculiarities of 

 the animal organism already alluded to, from the idea of perfect unity 

 •which is characteristic of animal life. 



Consequence the first. — If the plant, exposed alike to gravitation and 

 light, is divided into root and stem, into a terrestrial and an atmospheric 

 part, the animal, being more independent, is less bound to the organism 

 of the planet to which it originally belongs, and is consequently more 



