3155. As the animal life is not simply a single act of rigidification, but a repetition of the same, alternating with solution, so must the Protozoon again replace the mucus-granules which have been disposed of from its interior; it must eat.
3156. It is a matter of indifference for the philosophy, whether the reception of food is effected by one or several mouths. There are Acalephæ and even Intestinal worms (Entozoa), which absorb by several mouths, almost like plants.
3157. But in the animal the mouth or mouths is or are definite organic openings, not merely interspaces or pores as in the plants; for they rank in the signification of the blossoms, or of composite parts.
3158. It can be therefore said that every animal hath a mouth or mouths, and consequently a stomach or stomachs.
3159. Their motions consist in abbreviations or straitenings of the cyst. Indications can scarcely be present of the secretions of higher organs, such as the intestine, vessel, branchiæ, liver, and such like parts.
3160. On the contrary, developments of the tegument and nerves may occur, the former as cilia which serve also as organs of motion and as branchiæ, the latter as ocular points or rudimental eyes; for both are none other than nervose tegument. The mouth of these animals is still passive, and subordinated to the water. It is surrounded only by cilia, which by the vortices produced by their movements in the water, impel or draw the latter into the mouth and with it the food. Such animals are called Infusoria.
3161. As the Infusoria are the seed or vitellus itself, so also are they the very ovum, and require no special sexual parts for propagation. They absorb, and are so nourished, and if there is a sufficient quantity of the mass to admit again of its division into several points, they thus divide. A magnified Infusorial animalcule has become, as it were, an ovarium or a testis, which then produces seed by dissolving itself into the latter. They are a constant conflict of the organ and its product, of the Solid and Fluid, a vitelline and orchitic process.
Class 2. Intestinal, Albuminous Animals.
3162. With the separation of the cyst into an internal and external layer, or into intestine and tegument, the animal must necessarily ascend a stage higher, since it now contains two systems different from each other, and is consequently a double Infusorium.
3163. The form of the Intestinal animals passes gradually from that of the globe into the tube—Tubular animals.