1766. The blossom dies, so soon as, by ingestion, it has attained this independent life. If we assume that it could not die, but retain the life that was momentarily won for several instants; then this would happen only by repetition of the first act, whereby it had obtained in an instant a self-substantial life; and thus by repetition of the ingestion. By ceaseless ingestion only can the blossom gain a lasting, self-substantial life of motion. 1767. But such a blossom, when self-dependently subsisting, could not continue in further union with the vegetable stock or trunk, for this is no longer requisite for its life's support; through the first act of vivification, through the once sprinkled pollen, it virtually becomes detached and falls as fruit to the ground; as a fruit certainly, or as a female body, unto which is wanting the _continued_ excitation produced by the male coition. A fruit thus detached or fallen off, and retaining the male filaments, which ceaselessly exercise the function of ingestion, will be of necessity engaged in constant motion; will be a blossom, that incessantly practises copulation. 1768. As in this blossom the motion of ingestion is that alone which sustains it, and nothing more can flow to it from a stem; so also will this blossom be occupied in constant motion; and it consequently comes to pass that the action, which broke forth at the last and instantaneously in the plant, being thus the highest or most individualized, is here the first, inferior, and most general action, or one that lies at the foundation of all other processes. The free blossom is naught but movement of ingestion. 1769. The blossom, however, concentrates in itself all the lower vegetable processes, is itself naught but the aggregate of such processes repeated in the body of the light; thus the blossom, having been set free, is a vesicle of ingestion endowed with all terrestrial functions. ANIMAL FORMATION. 1770. The vegetable blossom loses its definition as plant, so soon as it has acquired self-substantial life; it loses its definition, because as blossom, it simply lives in light, while the plant must half dwell in darkness; it loses it, because the copulating motion can be frequently self-repeated. 1771. The self-moveable or automatic blossom has consequently passed over into a new kingdom, or into one whose very definition is the self-substantial motion.