Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/1072/en

The synthesized nitrogen salts fulfil the concept of manuring only in appearance. They do not manure — they drive and hypertrophy the plant reproductively into a watery mass-lushness. The study of the phenomena arising in this connection with respect to physiology and form-building is exceedingly instructive and calls forth, almost of itself, the demand that the concept of manuring be grasped anew. "The plant lives [...] directly with earth and water." In the purely watery milieu, plant (and likewise animal) life develops up to the lower stages of evolution; in the moisture-permeated earth it unfolds its root activity. It grows actively downward into the element of the earthy-solid and develops in the region of the root hairs a metabolic activity in the opening-up of mineral materials and the breaking-down of organic materials, as well as a sense activity toward everything "that is earth [salt; note by the author] and water." Manuring therefore means enlivening the earth directly, "and that is not possible if one proceeds in a mineralizing way." A manuring that enlivens the earth itself encompasses a threefold: