7 By attending Chladni's lectures on his discovery in Paris the French physicist Savart became acquainted with this phenomenon and devoted himself to its study. Chladni and Savart together published a great number of these figures.
8 Understanding the attributes of the chemical ether enables us to see in their right perspective Rudolf Steiner's suggestions to farmers for the preparation of the soil and for keeping healthy the crops growing on it. Attempts have been made to dismiss these suggestions by calling them 'mysticism' and 'mediaeval magic'. Both terms are titles of honour if we understand by the one the form of insight into the supersensible realm of nature acquired by the higher mode of reading, and by the other a faculty of nature herself, whose magic wand is the chemical or sound-ether.
9 See Eddington's humorous and at the same time serious treatment of this problem in his Philosophy of Physical Science.
10 Of the difference between external and internal ether-action more will be said in the concluding chapter.
CHAPTER XX
Pro Anima
Thy functions are ethereal,
As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind,
Organ of vision! And a Spirit aëreal
Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind.
W. WORDSWORTH
(a) THE WELL-SPRINGS OF NATURE'S DEEDS AND SUFFERINGS
As our observations have shown, gravity and levity not only exist side by side as a primary polarity; the manifold interaction of their fields gives rise to all sorts of secondary polarities. Obviously, this interaction must be brought about by a further kind of force to which gravity and levity are subordinate.