In the hundred different environments of its inhabitants, the oak plays an ever-changing role as object, sometimes with some parts, sometimes with others. The same parts are alternately large and small. Its wood is both hard and soft; it serves for attack and for defense.

If one wanted to summarize all the different characteristics shown by the oak as an object, this would only give rise to chaos. Yet these are only parts of a subject that is solidly put together in itself, which carries and shelters all environments---one which is never known by all the subjects of these environments and never knowable for them.

-- Uexküll, A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, p 132

---

---

---