Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

1298. As being the rib of the ovary the style is the last ramuscular extremity of the stalk, which is resolved into mucus upon the stigma.

1299. Stamen-filament is related to style, as leaf to stalk, thus as air to earth, as Differencing to Differencizable, as electrism to chemism or rather nutrition. This is the lower comparison; in a true sense they are related as light to heat.

1300. The light is the Active, the heat the Passive; light the Moving, heat the Moveable; light the Vitalizing, heat the Inactive, or that which becomes vitalized; light the spirit, heat the matter—male and female principle. Thus are corolla and pistil related to each other.

3. SEED.

1301. The root repeats itself in the interior of the ovary under the æther-form. The root ascends out of the earth to become an organ of gravity.

1302. After the leaves have been made independent in the corolla, and the stalk in the pistil, the root also separates and appears as a free organ, as Seed.

1303. The seeds are necessarily in the interior of the ovary; for the cellular organ can first appear, after the leaf-and stalk-buds have opened as corolla and ovarium. The blossom is a bulb, the external testa or covering of which is the leaf-, the mediate the stalk-, and lastly, the internal the root-vesicle. The stalk is adherent to the leaves, the root to the stalk; so also the seeds to the ovary, and this to the corolla.

1304. The seeds are developed in the ovary under the same relations in which the root is developed in the earth, namely, in the dark.

1305. The darkness does not allow the chemical body to attain unto difference; therefore the sap within the capsule must, instead of separating itself into spiral vessels and leaf-substance, continue to remain there undivided and without form, i. e. in the condition of simple granules, or germs of future cells.

1306. The seeds, like the root, are a mass of cells; like it they contain an accumulation of mucus, but of course more highly-formed, being separated into flour, starch, acid matter, oil, and such like substances.