D.—SALTS.
Salt-periods.
827. So long as the basis of the acid is an earthy, such as carbon or sulphur in the carbonic and sulphuric acids, does the earthy also obtain the preponderance, and the lime as well as the gypsum or sulphate of lime are precipitated as insoluble bodies.
828. It is only through the influence of light constantly becoming more powerful by reason of the solid land under the water that the oxydation of water rises to the highest degree, so that this element finally converts itself into an acid, or hydro-oxide. This process must be regarded as a decomposition of water, whereby a portion of the hydrogen forms sulphur with the carbon, the rest with the oxygen an hydro-oxide.
829. The hydro-oxide is hydrochloric acid. This acid must be regarded as peroxydized hydrogen. Its signification is thus that of being water itself, or a whole element with a preponderance of oxygen. It attains this rank by its constituent parts, namely, the two general gaseous primary bodies, by its distribution as a whole element around the earth; by its occurrence as an earth-formation in rock-salt; finally, by its presence in all vegetable and animal juices. Hydrochloric acid is the type of all acids, as the iron is of all metals. All acids are but imitations of the hydrochloric. All abide by the signification of water, or are conversions of elements or earths by oxydation into an hydroid condition.
830. Between the acidified water and the Earthy a higher antagonism now emerges. The Earthy separates a part of its carbon from the carbonic acid and sulphur, so that the rest remains behind peroxydized, and makes its appearance as an alkali.
831. The alkali is to be regarded as the last conversion of calcareous earth in respect to water. It is an earth, whose oxygen has converted itself with a portion of its carbon into acid and been set free; a salt halved upon the basic side. This general alkali, that has originated in water, issodaor natrom.
832. Alkali and acid are the last antagonism in the earthy, moieties, which can never subsist without each other.
833. The alkali is corrosive, because it seeks water and acid, in order to perfect itself; acid is pungent to the taste, because it seeks earth or alkali.
834. Their antagonism is the highest antagonism between water and earth; it is also the representation ofthe antagonism between fire and the terrestrial elements, or also between light and gravity. Therefore this antagonism has a cosmic or universal signification.
835. The combination of this antagonism is thesea-orcommon salt.
836. Sea-salt is the universal salt. All other salts are to be regarded only as metamorphoses of it, as well as the acids only conversions of the acid of common salt, and the alkalies of soda.
837. The sea-salt is essential to water. It is the product of geogeny, has not entered the water from without, but been generated in it, and is constantly being regenerated, so long as light shines upon the sea. Properly speaking, sea-salt has been in the water from the beginning; but it was previously shrouded in the other earths, and could act substantially for the first time, when they had been separated from it. It has become salt, or water and earth-element by the agency of light.
838. The sea-salt has also been generated in opposition to the calcareous earths, and during its separation been rendered polar towards the latter. The salt mines are therefore associated with the last calcareous formation, the gypsum, and this it is also that determines their lamination.
839. As it may be said, that the metals separate into coal and sulphur, namely, pass over at their iron-extremity into coal, at their arsenical, into sulphur; so may it be said, that the earths separate into acids and alkalies; the one by the conversion of silica into fluoric acid, the other by that of calcareous earth into soda. Carbonic and sulphuric acid take possession of the calcareous earth; the hydro-oxide of the alkali.
840. The sea-salt has been the last to be separated from, because it was last generated in, the water. The salt beds belong to the last precipitation, by not having been mechanically thrown down, but as already observed and as their occurrence proves, by an alternating process of separation from the acidified lime. It is absurd to wish to explain the presence of common salt in the seaby a solution of saline beds. For where have the latter come from?
841. With the separation of the ore and the Inflammable out of the primary water and the confluence of the Earthy into marine salt, its metamorphosis upon the surface or when exposed to light is at an end. All forms of the planet have been successively developed out of the earth-element. It can attain no further to anything new, and if nature had not yet been concluded, that which in the sequel is still dynamically developed upon our earth, must be thus a product, which extends beyond the mineral kingdom.
842. As the fundamental earths lose themselves in pure carbon, in resin, and so in the vegetable world, so the series of corrosive earths resolves itself likewise in remnants of an organic, and that indeed the animal, kingdom. As the pit-coals and resins are associated with the metals and Inflammables, so are the fossil animal remains with the calcareous earth; and thus the voice of the organic world speaks already with force and clearness to those that hearken, from out the stones.
843. For the metamorphosis of the earths, nature has twice prepared herself, has planted at the same time two great points of origin, according to which all her action is directed, and which remain in constant correspondence with each other.
844. The main pole is granite. It is at once the primary pole, to which the second main pole, the lime, is directed. The granite brings the series through gneiss and mica-schist down to clay-and talc-slate, then makes a sudden transition to the ores, and terminates at a boundary, where pit-coals and resins conduct us into a new kingdom.
845. The lime rejects from itself the sand and sedimentary clay, progresses through barytes and strontian up to gypsum, makes a sudden bound or transition from thence to the salts, and terminates at a limit, where corals and molluscous animals conduct us into a new kingdom.
846. Salt concludes the growth of the earths; it is the eruption or breaking out of the soul, as the metal was the body of earths completed. Both finally pass into a higher world, the metal into thecorporeal, the salt into thepsychical.
CHEMISM.
847. The spiritual activity, the soul of the earth has declared itself in crystallization, the spirit of the metals in magnetism, that of the Inflammables in electrism. The calcareous epoch is also the manifestation of a peculiar activity, whose ultimate product is salt. It has been already shown what the functions of the latter are, but the signification of its acts has not yet been mentioned.
848. By the influence of light the water becomes elevated in its oxygen-action, enters thus into tension with itself, and this constitutes the tendency to solution which is the function of water. The oxygenous water solicits the basic principle in the earth; this issues forth, but still combined with its oxygen that has become free; the formerly identical earth is a calcareous earth in a state of tension with itself. What does not admit of being brought into a state of tension, is thrown down as fundamental earth. Hitherto this process was a mere process of solution, i. e. it had attained in the solid and fluid only to tension, not to disseverment of the poles.
849. But the light always renders the water more oxygenous, and therefore the earth always more basic; finally, the one portion of the basic in the water, namely the hydrogen, separates itself, and becomes peroxydized or the hydrochloric acid. A portion of the Basic in the Earthy, namely the metallic body or carbon, separates itself also, and the remainder becomes peroxydized or soda. As the calcareous earth was at first dissolved in, and therefore one mass with, water, so at present is the alkali also combined with the acid water; while both dissolved in each other constitute salt.
850. In this process thereforewholeelements have been taken only asoneprimary body, and they havecombined with each other like the two primary bodies. The water has no longer become an element or Equiponderant, but an Oxygenous, a true light-body; the earth has no longer continued a total earth of equal specific gravity, but by relative peroxydation has become an Aqueous, a Soluble. The salt has thus from the union of the two lower elements, seeing that each was of no more value than one primary body, become anewelement.
851. This process converts the elements again into their primary condition, creates new elements and thus actually new matters. It is therefore a struggle of the elements with their primary bodies, a separation and interchange of the same. Such a process is calledChemism. This is the essence or interpretation of chemism, viz. the creation of new elements out of the old, by the reduction of these to the nature of the primary bodies.
852. Chemism, which separates or combines, ranks a step higher than the process of solution, which has the power only of heterogynizing, but not of separating. Thus the electrical spark separates and combines in combustion, while the tension of air enforces only evaporation. Chemistry drives the elements to their utmost. In water the oxygen is the predominating; it becomes, however, perfect first in the acid of salt. In the earth the body of gravity prevails; but it becomes first of all predominant in soda.
853. The opposition of the two primary bodies has been represented in the two inferior elements as chemical tension, and the combination of these primary elements is a chemical product.
854. Chemism is moreover a process of combustion, in which, however, a whole element supplies the place of oxygen, and a whole element the place of the base. It is an elementary process of combustion.
855. Chemism is the metatype of primary creation, both from its being a material process of combustion, as from its creating new elements. It is the union of the antagonism between æther and terrestrial matter occurring within the circle of the terrestrial elements. Chemism is a true conversion of substances according to their fixation.
856. All chemism takes place only in water; not only because the particles can move therein, but because chemism is a process of combustion of the elements themselves. The inferior elements, however, such as water and earth, can only undergo combustion with each other, because the two are moreover related to each other as æther and mass; or as oxygen and base, for the two, so to speak, have become unipolar. Without Fluid and Solid we cannot think of chemism.
857. The chemism of air is in the beginning electricity and then the true process of combustion; both are similar, but different in position. In the process of combustion both elements are unipolar in the air, thus moieties; but in chemism two elements unite so as to constitute a Whole. The product of air-chemism is water, as the product of earth-chemism is salt. Water and salt fall into one position, but transcend each other, even as the process of combustion invades the province of chemism. The relation of electrism to chemism has now been expressed in the clearest manner. The one is chemical tension of air, but chemism is the electrical tension of earth and water.
858. Chemism is related to magnetism, as salt is to metal, as the sedimentary to the primary periods. The whole sedimentary period is a product of chemism, as the whole primary period is a product of magnetism; salt and metal are only the last evolution of these periods, and the products for whose sake all the preceding actions and formations have taken place; granite and lime with their ramifications, are but the stems, upon which metal and salt are borne as blossoms.
859. Magnetism and chemism are thus the creating agents for the solid nucleus of the earth, and through both is it completed. The process of earth-formation is a magneto-chemism.
860. Regarding the earth as an entire crystal, magnetism is the Determinant of its polar axes and polar radii, while chemism is the same in respect to its integral parts.
861. All terrestrial action is an interchange of these two functions or souls, which are none other than the living gravity and the living light upon the planet. The electricity, like the heat, only maintains them in eternal tension or extension.
862. Chemism is the process of space, density, quiescent heat; therefore the latent heat or the temperature must change in every chemical process. Chemism is related to magnetism, as heat is to gravity, to electricity like as to light. Crystallization is point, magnetism line, electrism surface, chemism cube, or expressed according to their powers: O0, O1, O2, O3.
863. Nothing can become solid without taking water into admixture with it. This water is the water of admixture. Nothing also can assume form, without taking water into itself—water of crystallization.
864. In so far as magnetism is active in crystallization, it renders the water identical, basic, and this therefore becomes solid; the water is not as water in a crystal, but it first becomes so by separation.
865. All chemical processes are based on the union of bodies, which are elements, but which, like acids and alkalies, have assumed the nature of the primary bodies.
866. The elective affinities are based upon the polarizibility or transmutability of the Fluid and the Solid into the primary bodies. That is decomposed and combined, which during admixture maintains the animation in the strongest degree unto the origin. What cannot be so reduced, is precipitated, as is silex. The chemism is a bin-elementary process, and therefore constitutes the termination of this period of creation, or of the mineral kingdom. So soon as a tri-elementary process originates, the products pass over into a new kingdom.