795. The Inflammables are consequently those that succeed next to the salts or water-minerals. Their determining element is in this respect also the air; that of the ores is therefore the fire.
796. The Inflammable, as being the reduced acid, must have the strongest affinity for oxygen. A body, which by its own force, attracts the oxygen from the air, so that it appears luminous, is called combustible.
797. The generating spirit of the Inflammables coincides with the spirit of air, and thus with electricity. The generating spirit of metals coincides with the light; it is the radial action in the Massive, or magnetism.
798. Electricity has become embodied in the Inflammable, i. e. idioelectric; in metal, light has become embodied, i. e. idiomagnetic.
799. Now, as the Inflammable exists under two forms, with the preponderance of the earth-nature as coal, and with that of the air-nature as sulphur, so must the electricity appear fixed chiefly in the latter. This fixation is the idioelectricity.
800. As electricity is in its essence a constantly dualized agent, so can only one pole belonging to it become fixed. In sulphur this is what has been called the negative pole.
a. SULPHUR.
801. As the air stands opposed to the earth, so must sulphur to coal. The latter is thus endowed with positive electricity.
802. Coal is, however, the fundamental body of the metals. The metals are consequently related as positive electrics to sulphur. Sulphur is air-metal or idio-negative; metal is earth-or idiopositive sulphur. Sulphur therefore occurs almost solely with metals, as iron, pyrites, glance; yet frequently with arsenic, the metal that resembles it, e. g. in realgar.
803. Sulphur is the basis of all idioelectrism, and this property occurs only in bodies, in so far as they are positions of sulphur.