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 conformity with its origin, a bladder or cyst that has been opened by light and air. The integument is a large cyst 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 external 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 the idea of the root, and becomes, by virtue of the influence of light and air, instead of an absorbent organ, an organ rather of decomposition—an evaporation's organ.