Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/907/en

The universal forces are fourfold in nature: they differentiate themselves into warmth ether, light ether, chemical ether (also called sound ether or number ether), and life ether. Under the working of the soul or astral body they unite into the etheric body, and this images itself forth in forms through the substances that work in the four elements of warmth, air, water, and earth. Through the central forces the plant delimits itself into its earthly gestalt; through the universal forces it stands in open relation to all directions. Thus the beech grows, relationally responsive to the in-streaming radiations of the cosmos, into a tree; the chicory into an herb; the meadow grass into a grass. Yet at the same time, through the working of substance within the four elements, they are bound to a particular place on earth. The universal nature of the etheric can create an image of itself in the earthly only in the multiplicity of individual things. Nature creates — wherever life can unfold, whether in primeval forest, savannah, meadow, or high moor — a site-appropriate diversity, a species diversity of plant forms. They stand in a spatial side-by-side, in which plants of the same species alternate as a rule with other species; in the untouched primeval forest, for example, trees of the same kind do not stand next to one another. The diversity of plant species at a given site is the principle that nature itself enacts. This diversity forms, together with all organisms living in and above the soil, a superordinate etheric-astral nexus of forces — or, ecologically speaking, a living space (biotope) and a community of living beings characteristic of that space (biocoenosis). It is this diversity that sustains endurance, health, and reproductive power in the household of nature. The merely physical-mineral tends toward fragmentation — an exemplary phenomenon