320 BIOLOGY. 



elevated to irritability ; unto motion through simple per- 

 ception, 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 every- 

 thing 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-aether, 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 direc- 

 tion or design of the first independent motion is there- 

 fore Ingestion ; this again not being of a general, but a 

 wholly definite import, namely, an ingestion of the mala 

 organ into \hQ female. 



1765. The Male is, however, characterized by its self- 

 substantial polarity, and by its self-intrinsic life; the 

 Eemale by the want of polarity, by a heterodependent 

 life. The act of ingestion thus depends upon polariza- 



