216 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



It is true that this Plant-form in the pres- 

 ent case was taken for granted; it was, so to 

 speak, something externally picked up and 

 looked at in its outer organization. But the 

 question rises, how is this Form kept going, 

 for it is always in vital activity! This vege- 

 tal Form persists in reproducing and re-con- 

 stituting itself, being both the worker and the 

 wrought; what is continually being made is 

 the maker. Still it has to have material for 

 its work ; the living machine has to be fed not 

 only to keep the machine running, but to be 

 always re-making it. This brings us to con- 

 sider the second stage of the Plant-Organism : 

 its power of assimilating unto itself what is 

 different, of transforming Unlif e into Life. 



II. THE ASSIMILATIVE PROCESS or PLANT- 

 LIFE. In the present stage there is a pervas- 

 ive twofoldness which, though overcome for 

 a moment is posited always anew: the Plant 

 as living individual versus its elemental sur- 

 roundings which it has to assimilate in order 

 to live and reproduce its Form. So the sep- 

 aration between Plant and non-Plant, between 

 the formed and the unformed, comes to the 

 front; the vegetal individual is now to tackle 

 its opposite and to transmute it into its own 

 organism just through that organism. 



The ultimate life-unit of the Plant is the 

 cell, as already indicated ; thus we have again 



