287. As heat is not merely indifferent æther, nor merely its motion or extension, but is the æther moved by the polarity of light, so is the hydrogen gas in the air not in a pure state, but converted by oxygen into nitrogen. The air is in every respect therefore an element that has undergone combustion, an oxyd of hydrogen and carbon.
288. The oxygen is that which is everywhere active, exciting, moving, and vivifying everything; it is the light in the Terrestrial. The nitrogen is inert, as it were mortified, and therefore mortifying or causing death; the former the +, the latter the-. The greatest activity among all terrestrial elements resides in the air, since all polarizations issue from it.
289. The changes in the air are accompanied by constant changes of temperature, for they are verily in themselves nothing else than changes of caloric-æther.
290. All subsequent elements must originate from or be condensations of air, even as this has arisen out of, and been a condensation of, the æther.
291. Condensations, however, are fixations of poles; the other elements differ therefore only from air by having other poles fixed in them.
292. Since the poles are at the same time fixed more internally on these elements, they can no longer have the gaseous form.
293. They must on this account contain more bulk and be therefore heavier.
WATER.
294. If the polarity of light becomes fixed in a certain quantity of the mass of æther, or the oxygen of the air obtains the preponderance, a less changing element originates possessing a more definite character, and the atoms of which adhere more strongly to each other than those of air.
295. This element has, in addition to the gaseous effort towards a general globe or periphery, the effort at the same time also to a centre, or to an individual globe. It is therefore neither elastic or gaseous. The effort of a mass to a special and general globe is a conflict betwixt form and want of form. This effort is called fluidity.