B. VEGETABLE TISSUES.
4. Cellular Tissue.
1846. There are three, and only three constituent forms essential to the animal substance, the point, the globe, and the line; equivalent to centre, periphery, and radius.
1847. Out of these three all other forms, of whatever kind, are developed, through degradation unto vegetable structure. This form can be none other than the Cell-form. In the animal there are therefore four fundamental forms, while in the vegetable only one occurs.
1848. The cellular form may be also called the water in the animal, the globe-form the earth, the fibrous the air, the point-form the fire. Thus is the animal even in its tissues a whole universe, for it cannot otherwise be thought of.
1849. The cellular substance is the last division of the point-substance, because the nervous granule becomes hollow. A true cellular tissue first makes its appearance therefore in the higher animals.
1850. Bone, flesh and nerve are the highest organs of the animal; the viscera, which mostly consist of cellular tissue, will indicate the Vegetative in the animal. Proper animal organs can only present the above-mentioned triplicity. What is not bone, flesh or nerve, is not animal, but vegetable.
1851. Nerve, flesh and bone are mutually excited, and are independent of the cellular tissue. They are moreover the animal in the animal, the thoroughly Free and Voluntary.
1852. These three substances have therefore nothing to do with the three terrestrial processes; they do not digest, respire, nourish nor transport about the galvanic sap, but live for themselves or to their own satisfaction.
1853. The origination of the three inferior substances out of the nervous mass, is perfectly similar to the original creative process of the three terrestrial elements from the æther. The animal organism is a second world-creation, for in the organic æther an organic air, earth and water, have been produced, or it has itself become these through fixation of the poles. This capacity for resemblance between the organic and inorganic elements is marvellous; but yet there would be more to wonder at, ay, it would be thoroughly incomprehensible, if the organic elements had been created according to some other type.