296. The fluid element must contain a preponderance of oxygen (85), and less hydrogen (15). There is also some carbon present in it. The carbon of water is to be sought in the slime of the sea, for the sea, and not fresh water, is the primary water.
297. The fluid element oxygen is the Water. Water in large as well as in small quantities, seeks to represent the globe, namely, to form drops. It possesses therefore the effort unto form, while it is always relapsing into formlessness. This oscillation between form and formlessness is the conception of fluidity, which is therefore essentially different from that of gasidity; it might be said that the latter were the arithmetic or constant change of numbers; but that fluidity were the combination of arithmetic with geometry.
298. If the essence of water consists in the contest between form and formlessness, it must thus seek to produce fluidity everywhere. Liquefaction is, however, called solution, namely, globules are formed, both on a large and small scale. The function of water is therefore solution. It dissolves the air, (imbibes it) like the earth.
299. Water is more difficult to analyze than air, because its poles are more fixed.
300. In the analysis of water, the body of heat emerges in a pure state as hydrogen, because the antagonism here subsists in an abrupt manner; in the air it is constantly changing. Hydrogen is therefore nitrogen wholly deoxydised.
301. If water is the oxygen-element, so is it the light-element or condensed light-æther; thus it is as little something absolutely new as the air.
302. Terrestrial life originates out of water, as does the cosmic life out of light. All form originates from water; for it is the general fluid, or that which strives towards form. Without water, there would be no life, no Solid and no Organic.
EARTH.
303. If the gravity of æther condenses itself, or the action of gravity be fixed in a quantity of æther, there originates immobility of the atoms, i. e. an effort upon their part towards a single direction, namely, simply towards the centre. The effort towards a single direction or towards the centre, is cohesion or rigidity.
304. The mass with fixed gravity is carbon. If therefore the carbonic acid of air, or the carbon of water, obtain the preponderance over the other elemental bodies, there thus originates the rigid centripetal element.