340 BIOLOGY. 



limit of the body is tegument or cellular tissue, so can 

 this assumption take place everywhere. Adoption of what 

 is external into an organic body is absorption. 



1879. Absorption originates from the antagonism of 

 the body with the earth, which is organizable, and thus 

 with the mucus. 



1880. We call this slime or mucus, nutritive matter. 

 Wherever such matter can operate upon the body, a 

 corresponding organ of absorption, and thus a cell or 

 integument, will be formed. 



1881. The whole body is surrounded by integument; 

 it was originally nothing but integument. 



1882. The essence of the integument consists in 

 absorption, or in the intervention of the chemical process. 



1883. The integument is the root of the animal. 



1884. The animal cellular mass is, however, in con- 

 formity with its origin, a bladder or cyst that has been 

 opened by light and air. The integument is a large 

 bladder not closed all round, but open at one end. It is 

 the open floral cyst, which has just become an animal. 

 The original integument is thus Intestine. The intestine 

 is the water-organ. 



1885. The integument presents therefore to the ex- 

 ternal world, or to the nutritive matter, two parietes or 

 walls, an external and an internal. 



1886. Both walls are opposed to each other like 

 light and darkness, like air and water. The external is 

 the light- and air-wall, the internal the darkness- and 

 water- wall. 



1887. It is consequently only the internal wall that 

 stands in the same relation as the root. The internal 

 is " par excellence" root, and is thus a main organ of 

 absorption. 



1888. The external wall comes under the idea of the 

 stem-bark, and in so far only as this has a root-nature in 

 itself, is it likewise absorbent. 



1889. As upon the external animal wall the light and 

 air constantly operate for without light indeed no animal 

 originates so is this wall more and more removed from 



