The ﬂuid state is, to all appearance, on the whole older than the solid, and plants as well as animal bodies are built up out of ﬂuid nutritive matter, which quietly takes on form in the case of the latter, admittedly, in obedience, primarily, to a certain original predisposition according to ends (which, as will be shown in Part must not be judged aesthetically, but teleologically by the principle of realism); but still all the while, perhaps, also following the universal law of the affinity of substances in the way they precipitate and freely form themselves.