963. The life of the organic body is not a single but a threefold action, consisting of the actions of the three terrestrial elements, which become the three fundamental processes of the body, or of life, and in which _three_ processes galvanism consists.
964. The magnetic earth-process is virtually the formative; and in organic bodies is called the _nutrient_ process.
965. The process of nutrition is the principal process in the organic world. Its product or its basis is the fundamental mass of the body itself. As crystal and the process of crystallization are related to each other, so are the body and the process of nutrition.
966. The process of nutrition is the sustaining, and proper fundamental process of the organism.
967. It is present entire and indivisible in every part of the body. Whencesoever it is ablated or withdrawn, there is death.
968. It operates according to the laws of crystallization.
969. Its very forms are crystals modified by the organic mass or, what amounts to the same, by the other processes combined therewith. The organic body is an accumulation of an infinity of (organic) crystals (cells).
970. In the planetary process of formation, which is a process of crystallization, the organism is continually comprehended. It is the planetary body ever becoming; the latter is an organic body, which has ceased to become.
971. Another action, that helps to constitute the organic body, is the chemism, which is not only the process of liquefaction, but the process also of the formation or creation of new organic matter. It is known to us under the name of _Digestive process_.
972. The digestive process elevates the Inorganic up to the organic mass, like the chemism has converted the Earthy into carbonate of lime and finally into muriatic natron. The digestive process is the _process of the formation of mucus_. Regarded philosophically the nutritive juice (or chyle) is naught else than mucus. This is also correct in a physiological point of view.
973. The digestive process is the second organic process, in so far as it has been fashioned after the type of the water; but the first, in so far as every Organic has originated out of water.
974. As forming only the mucus it is not directly distributed in every part of the body like the nutritive process, which is the body or planet itself. But it interposes, or is mediate, everywhere.