ZOOGENY. 323 



som includes all vegetable parts. It may be said that 

 the plant has been immersed in the earth, water, and 

 air ; these three elements having, on the contrary, been 

 immersed in the animal. The animal is in respect to 

 them the continent, the planet ; they, however, are the 

 continent in respect to the plant. Thus the relations 

 to the world are completely reversed in both. 



1774. An animal is a floral vesicle freely separated 

 from the earth, and living alone through its own motion 

 in the water and air. And here it is not locomotion 

 that is treated of, since this by no means belongs to the 

 animal's essence. Yet on this account the poor oyster 

 was formerly adduced as an argument against this animal 

 character, but unjustly ; for would a man frozen up in an 

 ice-block lose his character as an animal? The oyster 

 opens its shell and shuts it too, as well as the crocodile 

 opens and shuts its jaws. 



ANIMAL SIGNIFICATION. 



We will now proceed to knit or associate with this 

 genetic or physiological, the physio-philosophical mode of 

 development. 



1775. Every Organic originates from a mucus-point. 

 If this mucus-point occur in the darkness, it thus be- 

 comes a terrestrial organism, a plant ; if it enter into the 

 light, which is only possible in the water and in air, it 

 thus becomes a solar organism, independent of the planet, 

 self-moving around itself like the sun, an animal. 



1776. An animal is a light-mucus-vesicle, a plant, so 

 far as the root is concerned, a darkness-mucus-vesicle ; 

 but it works its way unto air and light, and becomes a 

 light-mucus-vesicle in the blossom. 



1777. A free blossom is consequently to be philo- 

 sophically regarded as equivalent to the primary mucus- 

 vesicle, which has at once developed itself in the water. 

 Now, such an aqueo-mucus-vesicle is directly that which 

 the blossom can first become through a series of deve- 

 lopments, and by divestures of the Dark. 



1778. The plant is an animal retarded by the dark- 



