Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

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 sea by 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 the corporeal, the salt into the psychical.

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.