1762. Irritability belongs to the plant, but is only of that kind where the perception cannot express itself otherwise than by direct motion. In the sexual parts and probably in the highest leaf-formation, the plant is elevated to irritability; unto motion through simple perception, unto motion without design, to motion from mere lust or desire. The highest spiritual operation, of which the plant is capable, is irritability. But as everything which has attained its Highest, stands at the end of its development, so also has the plant terminated, when it has once exercised its power of irritability through copulation. SEXUAL MOTION. 1763. All the irritable motion of the vegetable may be confined or reduced to the movements of the stamen-filaments, the other movements being merely precursors of these. What, therefore, the stamina would achieve by their motion, that the irritability does in a general point of view. The motion of the stamina is directed merely upon the stigma, in order to impart the male pollen to the female body; and thus, simply to evoke the spiritual tension, which resides originally in the male semen, as in light-æther from the dead mass, but that originally dwells in the female seed as in the dark mass of earth. 1764. Now, since the stigma bears simply relation to the contents of the ovary, and conveys everything to this, and thus, to a female utricle, which is the middle of the plant, or its body proper; so in the motion of the male organs, the conatus or effort upon their part to introduce an elemental matter, or rather its spirit into this utricle, or this body, is rendered manifest or revealed. The highest Spiritual of the plant is accordingly not a mere motion in the general sense; but one that is definite and wholly special--_a motion of Ingestion_. The direction or design of the first _independent_ motion is therefore _Ingestion_; this again not being of a general, but a wholly definite import, namely, an ingestion of the _male_ organ into the _female_. 1765. The Male is, however, characterized by its self-substantial polarity, and by its self-intrinsic life; the Female by the want of polarity, by a heterodependent life. The act of ingestion thus depends upon polarization, upon evocation and maintenance of an independent life. The fruit is vivified by impregnation, ay, for the first time then obtains life; the female becomes self-active through the vital spirit received from the male; the body is kept alive by, and only by, ingestion. The act of ingestion is the act that tends unto the self-substantial, independent life.