Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/483/en

2. The group of animals connected with the element of water — the fishes. As the earthworm is a sculptor of the earthy-solid, so the fish is a sculptor of the water element. The head of the fish, with its differentiated sense organization, is clearly marked; yet it passes without transition into the trunk and metabolic member. All-predominating is the middle part, the trunk — a fine, rhythmically richly articulated, cartilaginous-ossified skeletal system. The vertebral chain traverses the body from tail fin to head, metamorphosing in the head into the cranial bones. To either side the rib arches curve outward — the fish-bones — which also envelop the abdominal organs. Externally they are overlaid by a layer of muscle that, in connection with the fins, lends the fish an extraordinary nimbleness and speed of movement. The earthworm takes earthly matter into its very digestive tract; not so the fish, which in its forward movement lets water stream through its gills. The water thereby enters, via the head, into direct relationship with the rhythmic trunk system; the fish provides itself with oxygen, which it draws from the water through the gills. The outer skin densifies into the coat of scales, through which the fish's form-gestalt delimits itself against the formless water, and through which it makes known its inner soul-nature outwardly in manifold coloration. The fish does not nourish itself, as the earthworm does, from dying life, but preferably from what unfolds in the water as plant and animal life. The fish extends its soul-nature beyond its bodily form out into the surrounding water. On the one hand it senses in its gliding passage the water streaming along its body, and on the other it generates through its movements the finest currents and eddies. Just as the fish owes its streamlined form to the element of water,

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