by still passing
away and dissolving into the earth, which they had previously excreted, as
if they were the first feeble effort of detachment. The power seems to
step forward from out the inorganic world only to fall back again upon it,
still, however, under a new form, and under the predominance of the more
active pole of magnetism. The product must have the same connexion,
therefore, with azote, which the first rudiments of vegetation have with
carbon: the one and the other exist not for their own sakes, but in order
to produce the conditions best fitted for the production of higher forms.
In the polypi, corallines, &c., individuality is in its first dawn; there
is the same shape in them all, and a multitude of animals form, as it
were, a common animal. And as the individuals run into each other, so do
the different genera. They likewise pass into each other so
indistinguishably, that the whole order forms a very network.

As the corals approach the conchylia, this interramification decreases.
The tubipora forms the transition to the serpula; for the characteristic
of all zoophytes, namely, the star shape of their openings, here
disappears, and the tubiporae are distinguished from the rest of the corals
by this very circumstance, that the hollow calcareous pipes are placed
side by side, without interbranching. In the serpula they have already
become separate. How feeble this attempt is to individuate, is most
clearly shown in their mode of generation. Notwithstanding the report of
Professor Pallas, it still remains doubtful whether there exists any
actual copulation among the polypi. The mere existence of a polypus
suffices for its endless multiplication. They may be indefinitely
propagated by cuttings, so languid is the power of individuation, so
boundless that of reproduction. But the delicate jelly dissolves, as
lightly as it was formed, into its own product, and it is probable that
the Polynesia, as a future continent, will be the gigantic monument, not
so much of their life, as of the life of Nature in them. Here we may
observe the first instance of that general law, according to which Nature
still assimilates her extreme points. In these, her first and feeblest
attempts to animalize organization, it is latent, because undeveloped, and
merely potential; while, in the human brain, the last and most consummate
of her combined energies, it is again lost or disguised in the
subtlety(15) and multiplicity of its evolut