Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

227. This is the genesis of the planetary system, but everything has become, and remained as it became, at one stroke. The moon can never have existed as an orbitar ring around the earth in time, or else it had been solid. Being once solid, it can no more coagulate into a globe. Still less, however, have the planets originated from conjoined moons. From whence then have the moons come? The solar system has not arisen mechanically, but dynamically; it has not become what it is by being projected or hurled from the hand of God, nor by impulses and aberrations; but by polarization according to eternal laws, according to the laws of light.

228. As a necessary number of planetary productions exists, so also is their magnitude, distance and velocity a determinate one. No planet, whatever its situation, has attained that by chance. Were the earth larger, it must also have occupied some other place, and have had another velocity, another density of mass, &c.

229. The coagulating matter of æther must collect into a larger mass in the centre than in the periphery. The centre will exist everywhere, and the periphery comes only to its behalf as if it were a scaffold or prop only to existence. The sun can only be the principle of the determination of the planets by the preponderance of its mass. Our sun comprises above 700 planetary systems in itself.

230. Sun and planet are mutually conditionated; both have originated at the same time, the former as the positive pole, the latter as the negative, as the necessary counterpoint, or the one as 0, the other as ±. The hypothesis, which surmises that the planets have come from another solar system, is not maturely considered. For how have they there originated? Such explanations are mere child's play. Sun and planet are in idea but one piece, only one line with two different extremities. The same act which polarizes the sun polarizes also the planets out of chaos. One and the same æther that has become positive, is called sun, when negative, it is called planet. Both are only a single globe of æther, the centre of which is called sun, the periphery, planet. The latter belongs to the sun, like a stone though detached from, belongs to, the earth; its rotation is therefore similar, but retarded.

c. FORM

231. The sun cannot be in the absolute middle of the solar system, on account of its antagonism with the planets, which would likewise become the centre. The collective mass of the planets is the secession of the sun from the centre. The situation of the sun or the degree of its excentricity bears relation to the polar force of the planets. The form, under which the solar system really exists, cannot therefore be the sphere, but the ellipse, i. e. the duplicity of the centre.

232. The sphere is only the type of the universe, of the æther, but not of the solar system nor the Finite. No Finite is absolutely spherical. As the real universe can only exist in a bicentral condition, so is there in this respect also no universal central body. It is there, but under the form of bicentrality, as sun and planet. God only is monocentral. The world is the bicentral God, God the monocentral world, which is the same with monas and dyas. The primary polarity, the dyas, the radiality, the light establishes itself in nature as bicentrality, which is the cosmogenic expression for self-manifestation or self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is a living ellipse.

233. The bicentrality determines the distance of the planets from the sun. If the sun as the active pole be strong or energetic, the planets will occupy a remote situation; if it be feeble or weak, one that is near. The strength of the polar energy depends, however, upon the quantity of the mass. Were the mass of the sun less, all the planets would range nearer to it; were it greater, they would be all driven further off, as electricity repels the pith-balls of elder-wood; more than this the planets are not towards the sun, but even less. The energy of the solar polarization depends not merely upon its magnitude, but also upon the velocity of rotation, which harmonizes with the former; the latter, however, depends upon the original velocity of rotation of the æther. The velocity of the rotation of æther being assumed as definite, that of the sun must be definite also, and with this everything accords.

234. The circumvolution of the planets around the sun is a polar process of attraction and repulsion, by virtue of the primary law in the solar system, by virtue of the light. The planet then can only be repelled in the neighbourhood of the sun from the sun, when it has the same solar pole in itself, when it has become positive; and can only attract it at a distance from the sun, when it has received the opposite pole to the sun, or has become negative.

235. This is only conceivable in that the planet, while it draws nearer to the sun, extinguishes in itself by its own power the negative pole, and produces on the contrary the positive pole, or becomes a sun; and that, as it removes itself from the sun, it again extinguishes the positive solar pole, and generates the negative planetary pole within itself. This substantial production of alternating poles upon the planet takes place through the diversity of its surface as water and land, through the oblique position of its axis, whereby summer and winter are produced, through the processes, or through the life that is upon it, through the processes of decomposition and combination effected by water, through the revival and death of vegetation, and even the white colour of snow. The planet discharges its pole in the neighbourhood of the sun, like a cork pellet, and reloads of itself at a distance from the sun; and thus oscillates to and fro, like the hammer in an electrical bell. The course of the planets takes place with the greatest ease. It is everywhere no force of weight, of impulse, but of the easiest self-motion. The planet revolves by its own force to and from the sun, like the blood circulates to and from the heart.