Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

236. The planet cannot, however, be diverted from its course, because the other heavenly bodies, probably the comets, do not act mechanically but only polarly upon it. By means of this polarity they maintain themselves always at a distance, even as the sun keeps itself at a distance from the planets. In addition to this, the polar tension between the comet and the sun is stronger than between the comet and the planets. The perturbations of the planets depend upon their polar relations to each other. Although the planets have a centrifugal tendency, they are not thrown by a prodigious mechanical force in the direction of the tangent, and then drawn back by an attractive force of the sun, that has no import or meaning; but they course in a playful manner round the sun. A theory of attraction of this kind has no physical sense. Such an attraction is a Qualitas occulta, an angel which flies before the planets. It does not create the world by impulses and strokes, but only by vivification.

237. Were the planet dead, it could not be attracted or repelled by the sun; it would have from the very beginning always maintained a similar pole in itself, and it could therefore only move in a circular manner around the sun. The circular motion or course around the sun is not generally conditioned by the polarity of the planets, but depends upon the primary rotation. Proportionably to the mutual interchange of polar operation between the sun and planet, the latter would only approach the sun in the line of the apsides, and thus remove from it; but by the primary rotation it is conducted around it. The elliptical path is consequently the result of rotation and of the polar or linear interchange of operation between the two heavenly bodies.

238. The moon would keep a wholly circular path around the sun, if it were not disturbed by the earth, were it not through the difference of the earth's poles to passively retain also different polarities; for the moon is in itself dead.

239. The moon is not attracted more forcibly by the earth than the sun; and therefore it remains not by the earth. The sun exercises more polar action, more photal action upon it than the earth, and yet it falls not into the sun, for the very same reason that the earth itself does not fall in. The moon is forsooth to be regarded as itself a planet with a definite charge of electricity, which is always equably maintained by light; as such it rotates circularly about the sun. But it rotates in the same path wherein the earth rotates; therefore the latter operates upon it and draws it in its strange serpentine line around the sun.

240. The more living a planet is, by so much the more excentric is its path, because it enters into great opposition with the light.

241. If polarization by light be the cause of the attraction and repulsion of the planets from the sun, so is it also the cause of the distance of the planetary masses generally. The individual distance of the several planets is determined by the energy of their own polar excitation. Planets, which possess a strong polar energy, must range further than the others from the sun. This polar energy is, however, dependent upon the magnitude and density of the mass, upon the level state or unevenness of the surface, upon the capacity for heat, upon the quantity of water, upon the position of the axis in regard to the path, upon the possible processes of vegetation; it is thus not to be determined. Before vegetation was upon the earth, there were other processes, e. g. the aqueous precipitations, that changed the polarity; so that the path might formerly have been different to what it subsequently was or is now.

242. Planets are consequently those bodies which possess in themselves a peculiar degree of polarity and a substantial change of the same, whereby their individual distance and the nature of their paths are determined.

COMETS.

243. The comets are heavenly bodies, devoid of a persistent grade of polarity, and without any substantial change in the same. They obtain their polarity solely from the sun, like the cork-pellet from the electrical machine. The comet is therefore repelled as far from the sun as there is still an action between it and the polarity that has been imparted to the comet.

244. At the point where all antagonism between comet and sun ceases, the former must remain stationary, and resolve itself again into æther. This is the case with those comets that never return. These comets are temporal coagulations of æther by light, and thus continued creation.