210 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



Plant its earthy matter, its fixed element or 

 skeleton, which enables it to stand erect. (Of 

 course many Plants do not mount, but droop 

 and creep). The root, accordingly, fastens 

 the Plant to one place, and imparts firmness 

 to its body; grasping with its thousand little 

 fingers Mother Earth, it begins to suck. 



Worth repeating is the fact, as character- 

 istic of Plant-life, that the root can be meta- 

 morphosed into stem and branch, and made 

 to put forth leaves. The reason is that there 

 is no central subordination of parts or very 

 little; each organ is similar to the rest and 

 to the whole organism. Hence it comes that 

 each organ can so easily take the place of an- 

 other and of the total body. That is, the or- 

 gans of the Plant have autonomy and equal- 

 ity, but small centrality. There is indeed as- 

 sociation that of cells into the organ, that of 

 organs into the organism, that of organisms 

 into plant societies still this association is 

 relatively weak and immature all the way 

 through, in comparison with that of the ani- 

 mal. 



The leaf with its spreading system of buds 

 and branches, in other words the typical tree- 

 top, we arrange as the third member of the 

 Plant Organism as manifested in the outer 

 Form. Here we see the strong contrast with 

 the concentration of the stem which holds it 



