Gifts of Heaven · Volume 1 · Chapter 98

About the interaction between the kingdoms of nature

8th December 1840, from 9:45 am until after 12 pm

Writer: K.G.L. – S. – Andr and Ans H.

[1] As far as the respiratory organs in plants are concerned, there are in general none other than those of which circumstantial mention was made in the previous communication(*1). However, as with all things of this world, they may be in their extremes still so dissimilar in their kinds, yet there are particular connections between all these things , so that nobody knows any more exactly where the one class of these things actually ends and another begins.

[2] You will not only notice this intermingling of things in the natural world between classes, but even in things of one and the same kind, in minerals or plants and animals. Consider for instance limestone, and you will already see in it the most important transition gradations. This stone is in the first beginnings of it's existence a solid and hard stone and does not differ in this stage not much from a pebble. From this hardest form it changes, until it finally becomes so soft that there is no longer any significant difference between it and an only somewhat solid clay. And such similarities exist from one species to another throughout all minerals. And this approach is not only specific, but also formal.

[3] And as it is the case with the minerals, so it is also with the plants and animals. Just look at the different genera of the apple tree! Who can determine where this genus of trees begins and where it ends? Likewise, the quantity of species of the vine will have to be noticed; but who knows where the vine begins and where it ends? And yet, as already mentioned, between each genus there are perpetual transitions from one to the other. And no genus stands alone in such a way that it does not stand in some kind of connection with a preceding and a following genus.

[4] But the same is also the case with the animals, considered only once all races of one and the same animal species. Who can claim and show where a race begins, where it's climax is and where it ends?

[5] Take the dog, for example, and try to determine where this generation begins and where it ends, and determine the culmination point of this animal and indicate which dog is the most "dog".

[6] But I say that all these genera, classes, and races merge into one another just as the waves of the world's sea, since no-one will be able to determine which of these countless waves that trouble the surface of this great body of water is the first, the middle, and the last.

[7] But I say, and every simple man will also say: There is no first, nor a middle, nor a last one! But one wave drives the other and passes into the other, without it being anything else in this rocking transition than what it was before, namely water. It is just no longer at the previous place, but, after having displaced an earlier surge, it now surges at this place, while again a following one pushes it.

[8] To understand this picture still more correctly, think of a circle, which would be divided exactly into equal degrees. Now tell yourselves, how would anyone be able to say: "This or that degree is the first!" But I say: Why do you quarrel about the primacy of a degree, since one is like the other and it is all the same which one you take for the first. And it may easily be that all will see this and say: Since one is like the other, and each is separated from the other by an equal space, we do not become wiser by such useless quarreling; but let the next best be the first, and from there we count on. So we have designated the first, then it will be a given which one is to be the last."

[9] Just as all this behaves, so behaves the circle of things in the natural world. One always passes imperceptibly into the other, like one wave into the other.

Footnotes (*1) About the breathing of plants, November 22, 1840