Volume Volume2\Physical Geography
Entry# 1000. The globe an organism.
Contents: Vol. 1 | Vol. 2
The globe an organism.
Nothing originates in a spot where there is no sentient, vegetable
and rational life; feathers grow upon birds and are changed every
year; hairs grow upon animals and are changed every year, excepting
some parts, like the hairs of the beard in lions, cats and their
like. The grass grows in the fields, and the leaves on the trees,
and every year they are, in great part, renewed. So that we might
say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the
soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which
the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood
the springs of water. The pool of blood which lies round the heart
is the ocean, and its breathing, and the increase and decrease of
the blood in the pulses, is represented in the earth by the flow and
ebb of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is the fire
which pervades the earth, and the seat of the vegetative soul is in
the fires, which in many parts of the earth find vent in baths and
mines of sulphur, and in volcanoes, as at Mount Aetna in Sicily, and
in many other places.
Footnote: Compare No. 929.
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