Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

1756. Is the development of the animal kingdom in consciousness. The repetition of the animal creation is spiritually divisible into Anatomy (Zoogeny), Physiology (Zoonomy), and Zoology.

I.—ZOOGENY.

1757. Zoogeny represents the idea of the animal or the developmental history of the individual animal.

IRRITABILITY OF THE BLOSSOM.

1758. The Highest to which the vegetable kingdom could attain was the blossom; and of this the sexual parts are the completion. At the instant when the sex originated, the vegetable functions became of a nobler character; for the sexual organs are only the inferior organs refined or purified by light. The electrical and chemical process of the vegetable body are again represented, but in a spiritual manner, in the blossom. The functions of the fruit were none other than those of the elevated chemism; they were only the nobler processes of digestion and nutrition. As their purest expression of life, and that which has been produced simply by their co-operation, is the motion which resides in cellular tissue, so also was it this only, which obtained a preponderance in the fruit, and that indeed at the cost of the material processes. The germen obtained a kind of motion; yet this appears to be still imparted by material processes. In the corolla, however, this expression of life attained to completion. It is no longer simple nutrition or accumulation of sap that moves the stamina upon the female stigma, but a purely polar act; the Immaterial, the Spiritual produces the phenomena of life. These movements of copulation are by no means a coalescence, are not a nutritive act, nor the result of mechanical decissation, as is the case in many capsules; but true elevated vital actions. The parts reassume after the motion their first or original position, a feat which is performed by no capsule upon its dehiscence. Of these movements, those of the leaves in the sensitive plants, e. g. Hedysarum gyrans, are the antetypes or prefigurations. There consequently originates with the highest development of the light-organs in the plant, a motion independent of the material processes, and of the terrestrial elements.

1759. A motion, that is liberated from the terrestrial elements, is free from their mechanism; it simply obeys the nature of the æther, which is of a spiritual, or voluntary, kind.

1760. The essence of volition or free-will does not reside, in a physical sense, in the consciousness of the action, but in the autocrasy; or in the ability to perform an action, without external or terrestrial influence. The æther-actions have originated from special polarity. Independent movements must therefore be such as have been produced simply by polarity, apart from material intrusion.

1761. The ability or power upon the part of organic bodies to apprehend polar excitation, to move themselves simply by its means, and again to restore themselves to their former state, without regard being paid to a material process, I call Irritability. That organ is irritable which can move itself without any other object than that of automacy or self-motion.

1762. Irritability belongs to the plant, but is only of that kind where the perception cannot express itself otherwise than by direct motion. In the sexual parts and probably in the highest leaf-formation, the plant is elevated to irritability; unto motion through simple perception, 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 everything 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.