1039. To the plant belong all the definitions that have been hitherto deduced. It is an organism fettered to the earth, is developed only apart from water, only in the dark, in the earth; is associated with the metal, with the carbon; is a magnetic needle that has been attracted out of the earth into the air towards the light. Seeds germinate better if they have been protected beforehand from the access of light; the radicle sinks, indeed, into the earth, because it obeys the gravity, the quiescence or rest; but it is therein maintained, because it is there humid and dark. This is a reason that has not yet been connoted, for the plant having been fettered to the earth. There are indeed plants which also take root in water, but the water is still darker than the air. The root has, in this respect, completely the character of the metal, that is a child of darkness. 1040. Consisting for the greatest part of carbon, plants are associated with the pit-coals, through these pass over into the carbon of the clay-slate rocks; finally, through the black-lead unto the iron. In like manner, through their hydrogenous import, they pass over into the inflammable asphalts, and through these unto sulphur. Metal and sulphur have, in the Geogeny, announced themselves as the precursors, or harbingers, of the vegetable world. In this respect, also, can the vegetable kingdom be regarded as the mineral kingdom, that, having continued to grow, has become alive. The ore, which becomes organic, becomes carbon or plant. PARTS OF THE PLANT. 1041. The character of each development consists in the separation of the Indifferent or Chaotic into its ideas or actions, i. e. the development of every system is first completed, when it is divided into as many substantial systems as it numbers factors, or has processes in itself. 1042. Although the plant is only essentially a planetary-organism, it must yet be developed unto an æther- or light-organism; and it therefore divides into planetary- and solar-or light-organs. 1043. The planetary organs are those that have the earth-, water-, and air-process above them, and which are made known in the root, the stalk and foliage, which together constitute the vegetable stem. 1044. The light-organs begin to be stirring in the blossom, and are divulged as sexual organs. They are a repetition of the trunk. 1045. The vegetable body divides therefore into two great principal parts, which are synotypes of each other, into _trunk_ and _blossom_ or _inflorescence_. If we regard the vegetable trunk empirically; it is then divisible into three stages, whereof each consists of the organs of the three fundamental processes, which seek to separate from each other. a. The first stage is that of the _three tissues_ namely of the parenchyma, medulla or pith; of the _cells_, _ducts_, and _tracheæ_ or _spiral vessels_.