ZOOGENY. 321 



tion, upon evocation and maintenance of an independent 

 life. The fruit is vivified by impregnation, ay, for the 

 first time then obtains life; the female becomes self- 

 active through the vital spirit received from the male ; 

 the body is kept alive by, and only by, ingestion. The 

 act of ingestion is the act that tends unto the self-sub- 

 stantial, independent life. 



1766. The blossom dies, so soon as, by ingestiou, it 

 has attained this independent life. If we assume that it 

 could not die, but retain the life that was momentarily 

 won for several instants ; then this would happen only 

 by repetition of the first act, whereby it had obtained in 

 an instant a self-substantial life ; and thus by repetition 

 of the ingestion. By ceaseless ingestion only can the 

 blossom gain a lasting, self-substantial life of motion. 



1767. But such a blossom, when self-dependently sub- 

 sisting, could not continue in further union with the 

 vegetable stock or trunk, for this is no longer requisite 

 for its life's support ; through the first act of vivification, 

 through the once sprinkled pollen, it virtually becomes 

 detached and falls as fruit to the ground ; as a fruit 

 certainly, or as a female body, unto which is wanting 

 the continued excitation produced by the male coition. 

 A fruit thus detached or fallen off, and retaining the 

 male filaments, which ceaselessly exercise the function of 

 ingestion, will be of necessity engaged in constant 

 motion ; will be a blossom, that incessantly practises 

 copulation. 



1768. As in this blossom the motion of ingestion is 

 that alone which sustains it, and nothing more can flow 

 to it from a stem ; so also will this blossom be occupied 

 in constant motion ; and it consequently comes to pass 

 that the action, which broke forth at the last and in- 

 stantaneously in the plant, being thus the highest or most 

 individualized, is here the first, inferior, and most general 

 action, or one that lies at the foundation of ah 1 other 

 processes. The free blossom is naught but movement 

 of ingestion. 



1769. The -blossom, however, concentrates in itself 



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