NEUOFFENBARUNGThe boundaries between nature’s kingdoms (12 March 1847)
1. To this day, naturalists have not been able to determine where the mineral kingdom merges into the plant kingdom, and where the plant kingdom merges into the animal kingdom; or where does the one kingdom end, and where does the other begin? Where is definitely the last and most perfect plant, after which no more plant stage comes, but immediately a first admittedly very imperfect animal takes it's place?
2. Behold, these are things which are still in great obscurity; for there are on the surface of the earth a great many plants which seem to be more of an animal than of a vegetable nature, and again there are animals which by far look more like plants than like animals. So there are also minerals, which could rather be taken for plants than for minerals, and again there are plants, which could rather be taken for minerals than for plants; and so there are also many animals, which still show plant-like extremities, and again there are plants, out of which an almost quite well formed animal looks out.
3. Since things are like this, everyone will easily see that an exact determination of the borders would be an extremely difficult piece of work for every natural scientist, and this mainly because there are still an enormous number of animal- and plant genera that are not yet known to natural scientists and will hardly ever become known; for the greatest number of the most curious plants and animals grow and dwell in the depths of the sea. The large submarine areas, however, are somewhat difficult to access for botanists and zoologists; therefore it is also difficult to make an acquaintance with the animals and plants of this moist terrain.
4. In addition, however, there are also a lot of animals and plants on the earth's surface itself, which are unknown to the natural scientists because these lands of the earth, which are somewhat inconveniently situated for their spirit of exploration, are themselves not yet known.
5. Naturalists are already wondering about corals, and it is not yet completely clear whether they belong to the mineral, plant or animal kingdom; for every naturalist knows that corals are formed by a kind of worms, which are very small, stick together and thus form a coral branch. The worms are certainly animals; But when they harden, their mass is as solid as precious stone, but the form in which these little animals gradually form by sticking together, resembles a defoliated little tree, which has branches, twigs and very small twigs. Thus this plant is, according to it's formation, a volume of countless animals, as mass a mineral, and as image and form, a little flower.
6. What the coral actually is, would be difficult to determine with an expression; but that the coral is that, as it was determined before, everyone can easily see and assume, thus in part animal, in part mineral, and in part, plant.
7. Similar to this plant are also the various metal flowers, which are formed together and all in the same way. In the sea, however, there are still a lot of small and large animals, which even more than the corals, include the three kingdoms in the most obvious way.
8. Let us consider, for example, the great octopus. This sure is the largest animal on earth; for in it's fully grown state it is over five hundred fathoms long, and about a hundred fathoms wide and thick. This animal has no definite shape, but when it sometimes comes to the surface of the sea, it resembles a rather plump island, which here and there shows a rather lush vegetation; On it's back grows not infrequently moss, sea-grass, and even small sea-trees, which even bear a red round fruit, which you have already seen yourself often, and especially with the gold workers, who set this fruit in gold, and sell
it as an ornament of a watchband.
9. This fruit, which is often found floating freely along the shores of the sea, usually grows and ripens on the back of our octopus, which is only driven to the surface of the sea by a nasty undersea weather. Besides these plants, however, one also finds a lot of red rock-like elevations on the back of this animal, which are not infrequently thrown off, and for a time, as long as they are not yet completely solidified, like dark red pumice stones float around on the surface of the sea and are often found on some seashores, sometimes even on solid land, where once a sea stood, under the name dragon's blood. This dragon's blood has a great similarity with red ironstone, sometimes also with the mercurial peritomic hornblende. This blood is entirely mineral, which is the only real thing found on the back of this animal.
10. In appearance, this animal is therefore a plant and a mineral at the same time; but if, unfortunately, a ship or sometimes several ships come to rest over the back of this enormous animal, then the animal quickly dives upward, lifting entire ship above sea level so that they soon topple over and, coming to rest out of the water, can no longer escape from this ground of certain doom; for once the animal sees that the ships on it's back are overturned, it raises from all sides a thousand dazzling white arms like large elephant trunks to a height of thirty fathoms, and in a thickness of not infrequently eight shoes in diameter.
11. Once it has pushed its arms out far enough, like the snail's horns, it then bends these terrible arms down to the ships lying on it's back, crushes them in an instant, and then with these thousand arms carries the crushed ship under itself into it's inordinately wide maw, and in this way consumes the whole ship with everything that was inside. In its stomach lies such a digestive power, that nothing resists it; it consumes stones, metals, wood, even diamonds so completely that not the smallest undigested residue remains.
12. But because this animal digests so many different things, it is then also explainable that on it's surface, as on the surface of a small water planet, a lot of vegetative and mineral post-formations appear.
13. Then one could also ask to which kingdom this being should be counted, to the animal kingdom, to the plant kingdom or to the mineral kingdom? For by virtue of it's shape, it is quite mineral in appearance, like a piece of earth or a piece of land on which there is quite a luxuriant growth of various plants; but since various plants occur on this creature, it could also be taken for a large tuber of a sea plant root, or as it were for an oversized undersea mimosa, which entwines itself around ships, as the small mimosa on land does around individual insects, and then pulls them down into it's flower chalice.
14. If someone illuminates these points quite critically, it will be just as difficult for him to classify this being into a certain realm, as it would be difficult for every natural scientist to classify the earth itself into a certain class; because the earth itself is to all appearances certainly mineral, because it produces such a tremendous amount of minerals on it's back, but it is also just as surely a plant, because it gives birth to so many plant-offspring, and even more surely it is an animal because it produces such a tremendously rich animal life.
15. From all this, however, something emerges that is strange for you, of course, at first sight. For at the very foundation there is neither a mineral, nor a plant, nor an animal kingdom separate in itself, but there is only one kingdom as a whole, and that is the kingdom of beings in a variety of forms, and everything is originally animal, and not mineral, and not plant; and therein the reason why the distinctions between the three supposed realms stand on perpetually equally loose and untenable feet.
16. Only in the order of the ascent of the beings are certain stages set, which everyone easily sees as separate; for he who cannot distinguish a rock from a tree, a tree from an ox, and finally an ox from a donkey, is, as you are wont to say: baptism and chrysam corrupted, and he will have a hard time with astronomy, and even harder with our theory about the spiritual earth.
17. But now that we know this, it will become easier and easier for us to listen to the activity of our spirits, which have already been discussed many times.