886. Electrism has a basis; it is the air. Magnetism has a basis; it
is the metal. Chemism has a basis; it is the salt. So has galvanism a
basis; it is the organic mass.
887. Accordingly, what would be organic, must be galvanic; what would
be alive, must be galvanic. Life is not different from organism, nor
also from galvanism. For life is verily the vital process. But the
vital process is an organic, galvanic process. Galvanism lies at the
basis of all the processes of the organic world. They are either
modifications of it, or only its combinations with other and still
higher actions. A living thing, which is not galvanic, is a nonentity.
888. With galvanism consequently the first step has been made out of
the inorganic into the organic kingdom. Every aught of nature, which
has hitherto originated, is inorganic. These, however, were mere
individualities. The character of the Inorganic consists consequently
in something being a Singular, a moiety, or a metatype of a Singular;
the character of the Organic in its being the metatype of a whole or
round number. Organic things are internal self-exciting numbers; the
inorganic things are fractions.
889. Every fraction is dead. No moiety can attain to life, for it does
not receive its complement. What is simply fluid, cannot be organic,
because it is not the totality of the planet. What is simply solid,
cannot be organic. It is only a third of the organism. Every organism
is produced according to the laws of galvanism, according to the law of
the triplicity.
890. As the terrestrial magnetism is indeed only one, but includes an
infinity of magnets, which are rendered manifest in the progress of the
earth's life; so also in the great galvanism of the earth an infinite
number of subordinate galvanic triplicities reside inclosed, which
become gradually detached, and, instead of the universal galvanism,
represent an infinity of individual galvanisms. The universal galvanism
cannot exist, without establishing itself as an infinity of individual
galvanisms. As magnetism is only associated with the net of metallic
veins, so is the absolute only, with the universality of its finite
positions. The number of organisms is infinite, both in coexistence as
also in consecutive existence.
891. An organism is an individual in the rigid sense of the word,
because it is ruined, so soon as one of its three members parts from
the rest. In this sense only are there properly speaking organic
individuals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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