Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

1780. The animal is a whole solar system, the plant only a planet. The animal is therefore a whole universe, the plant only its half; the former is microcosm, the latter microplanet.

ANIMAL PLACE.

1781. No animal can become developed beneath the earth, or where it is absolutely dark and dry. None simply or solely in air. Water is the origin or source of all animals.

1782. They have originated upon the sea-shore, but not in the midst of the sea, nor in that of the land. The deluge cast up the first men. They were littoral inhabitants, and without doubt carnivorous, as savages still are. For whence could they have obtained also fruits, cabbage, and turnips?

SENSATION.

1783. In so far as the animal vesicle is a whole solar system, to it, the characters that transcend the plant, such as motion, belong.

1784. But motion is not that alone which is displayed in the floral cyst when it has become solar; but with it there is yet something higher bestowed.

1785. Like light or sun the vesicle has the principle of its polarization or determination in itself; and it is certainly itself which moves its organs in conformity with this self-determination; but it is withal in antagonism towards the elements, like the sun is towards the planets. Through this antagonism the sun is destined unto the development of light. Although the light is its own product, still it perceives the object toward which the æther-polarity is directed. This perception of the direction, whither motion should act by means of the central polarity, is in the animal called Sensation.

1786. Sensation is the relation of the Central to the Peripheric, of the sun to the planet; motion is the relation of the periphery to the centre, of the planet to the sun. The Animal emerges into being from the alternating play of the supremest antagonism in the heavenly bodies, the Vegetable from that of the terrestrial antagonisms.

1787. Emission of light is discharging or unloading of the sun achieved by the influence of the planets; sensation is unloading of the animal by objects, by the world, and by its own organs.