Lecture III

If this is studied vividly, one also receives a view of forces self-metamorphosing, forces that are active there within the plant. One receives a view of how, on the one hand, there is a formative force active in the process of plant formation that works from below upward. On the other hand it is also possible to behold the force that retards, which in the root still, works strongly as the force of gravity but which, as the plant wrestles itself free from the earthly substance out into the air, is able to work together in another way with the upward-striving force. We then reach an interesting stage, a stage very helpful in understanding how in plant formation during this upward-striving process certain salts, potassium salts, are deposited in the birch bark; this is simply the result of the interaction of the forces working downward with the forces working upward, tending toward protein-formation, you could say, toward what I would like to designate as the albuminizing force formation.