701. If the earth-difference be generated in the illumined valleys, so must the earth-identity be produced in the dark valleys; for it is the absence of light alone that allows the purely Basic to subsist. This earth generated out of gravity is the ore.
702. The ore is a child and a treasure of darkness; where light is, it must vanish; it cannot endure its gaze. Metal when exposed to day is given up to annihilation, to oxydation.
703. Darkness is, however, no power, and can consequently be only the opportunity, not the cause of anything's happening. Other forces, instead of that of light, must have therefore operated in the production of ores. In order to discover these forces the relations of the ores must be carefully weighed or considered.
704. The ore is in a philosophic sense a reduced earth, and so reduced indeed that the basic principle has obtained the preponderance over the oxygenic or supporter of combustion, and attained unto substantiality.
705. In light, in the water forsooth when illuminated, the two earth-principles were already divided internally, but not completely separated; salt only originated, namely an acid and alkali.
706. The ore is, however, a salt wholly reduced, and indeed the reduced alkali has become metal, the reduced acid with the basis of hydrogen, Inflammable, namely, coal or sulphur.
707. Now as light was not able to produce such a separation in the free or full sense of the term, forces must thus have been present in the dark passages, which completed this separation.
708. Ore and Inflammable are the total salt dissevered, and this is the dissolution of the two; the former are blue and yellow, the latter is the compound green.
709. The processes of the formation of salt and of ore are both indeed processes of separation, but yet they stand opposite to, or rather transcend each other. Both mutually conditionate each other.
710. While the earths submitted to the action of light upon the surface of the planet are converted into salt, the process of the formation of ore takes place in the dark or under the earth; or while above the oxygen is predominant, the basic body is that below. The ore imparts upon a large scale its oxygen to the salt, and the salt bestows its basic body on the ores.