ABSTRACT
The Earth is the most eminent of all the planets. It is the middling planet, and exhibits individuality, and it owes this kind of existence solely to the permanence of its relations. Initially, the geological organism of the Earth was the product of the process in which its shape developed. The surface of the Earth bears evidence of its having supported vegetation and an animal world which are now extinct: at great depth, in immense stratifications, and in regions where these species of animals and plants do not thrive. Philosophy has an interest in rational and systematic legislation in the dismal condition of chaos, or in getting to know the temporal sequence and external causes by which this legislation has come into being. Steffens has also brought out this aspect of the matter, but he has gone too far in his interpretation of it by asserting that these formations have sprung out of a vegetable and animal terrestrial process.
