204 BIOLOGY. 



but what is in nature to originate therein ; impossible, 

 that any thing new be born by it. Everything in nature 

 is only repetition of an Antecedent or something that has 

 gone before. How could the organism be aught else, 

 how aught else than the focus of the four elements ! 



SECOND KINGDOM. 



VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



1037. The Vegetable Kingdom is the individual de- 

 velopment of the three planetary elements. 



I. PHYTOGENY. 



1038. Phytogeny represents the developmental history 

 of individual plants, or, properly speaking, the idea of 

 the plant. 



1039. To the plant belong all the definitions that have 

 been hitherto deduced. It is an organism fettered to the 

 earth, is developed only apart from water, only in the 

 dark, in the earth ; is associated with the metal, with the 

 carbon ; is a magnetic needle that has been attracted out 

 of the earth into the air towards the light. Seeds germi- 

 nate better if they have been protected beforehand from 

 the access of light; the radicle sinks, indeed, into the 

 earth, because it obeys the gravity, the quiescence or 

 rest ; but it is therein maintained, because it is there 

 humid and dark. This is a reason that has not yet been 

 connoted, for the plant having been fettered to the 

 earth. There are indeed plants which also take root in 

 water, but the water is still darker than the air. The 

 root has, in this respect, completely the character of the 

 metal, that is a child of darkness. 



1040. Consisting for the greatest part of carbon, plants 

 are associated with the pit-coals, through these pass over 

 into the carbon of the clay-slate rocks ; finally, through 

 the black-lead unto the iron. In like manner, through 



