886. Electrism has a basis; it is the air. Magnetism has a basis; it is the metal. Chemism has a basis; it is the salt. So has galvanism a basis; it is the organic mass.
887. Accordingly, what would be organic, must be galvanic; what would be alive, must be galvanic. Life is not different from organism, nor also from galvanism. For life is verily the vital process. But the vital process is an organic, galvanic process. Galvanism lies at the basis of all the processes of the organic world. They are either modifications of it, or only its combinations with other and still higher actions. A living thing, which is not galvanic, is a nonentity.
888. With galvanism consequently the first step has been made out of the inorganic into the organic kingdom. Every aught of nature, which has hitherto originated, is inorganic. These, however, were mere individualities. The character of the Inorganic consists consequently in something being a Singular, a moiety, or a metatype of a Singular; the character of the Organic in its being the metatype of a whole or round number. Organic things are internal self-exciting numbers; the inorganic things are fractions.
889. Every fraction is dead. No moiety can attain to life, for it does not receive its complement. What is simply fluid, cannot be organic, because it is not the totality of the planet. What is simply solid, cannot be organic. It is only a third of the organism. Every organism is produced according to the laws of galvanism, according to the law of the triplicity.
890. As the terrestrial magnetism is indeed only one, but includes an infinity of magnets, which are rendered manifest in the progress of the earth's life; so also in the great galvanism of the earth an infinite number of subordinate galvanic triplicities reside inclosed, which become gradually detached, and, instead of the universal galvanism, represent an infinity of individual galvanisms. The universal galvanism cannot exist, without establishing itself as an infinity of individual galvanisms. As magnetism is only associated with the net of metallic veins, so is the absolute only, with the universality of its finite positions. The number of organisms is infinite, both in coexistence as also in consecutive existence.