Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

4. Functions of the Earth.

CRYSTALLIZATION.

438. The earth-element is the highest result of combustion in creation, the highest fixation of æther. The earth is the æther represented as centre in the Material, or it is the identification of all polar binary division in the Terrestrial, independently of oxydation; therefore its parts are motionless, be they dust or compact masses. The earth is the corporeal gravity, the substance as a perfectly simple position without emergence out of itself, the 0, the terrestrial monas. The earth is consequently the heaviest and densest element, and is that which must include the middle point of our own and every planet.

439. In the middle of the planet there is only earth, and nothing else; the middle is not hollow, does not contain any central fire as has been imagined, nor air, and the science of Geogeny will show that no metal also could be contained in the interior of the earth.

440. In the air both material principles are only associated with each other, in water they are mixed, but in the earth identified, blended together.

441. The earth is to the other elements what the sun is to the planets, namely, the basis, the centre and that the mathematical as well as the dynamic centre. That this is the part played by the earth-element is proved not only by its character, but also by its volume. The earth-element exceeds the other elements in mass as much as the sun does the planets; the water is only the vascular system in the flesh of the earth-element; while the air is only the expression of the limit or in other words its integument.

442. Everything therefore that now occurs upon the planet develops itself out of the earth, the water and the air being only the auxiliaries of generation. The Earthy is developed in the water by the air. As creation has been closed with the earth, so may the solid materials, which are now and then found upon the planet apart from the earth, not be products of the first creation, but only developments of the planet when created and cosmically completed.

443. The earth as material gravity is solid. It has, however, originated out of the fluid, therefore by a process of cohesion; this is called the Process of Crystallization.

444. The process of crystallization is perfectly equivalent to the process of fixation of the æther, and is only the termination of the same. As light at any spot in the world-space creates a central point, the nucleus of a comet, around which more of the mass of æther is constantly accumulating till it finally coagulates into the solid condition; so does the process of crystallization evoke some particular spot, point or nucleus in the water, wherein the crystallizing forces are excited, which attract the mass that is susceptible of fixation and fashion it into a crystal. The process of crystallization is a process of fixation, and with it also is furnished the theory of crystallization. The process of crystallization is a process of polarization, and one indeed that proceeds from a centre; or, properly speaking, the point, from which the polarizing process emerges in a fluidity that is fixable or in other words susceptible of crystallization, becomes a central point, a middle point and virtually the middle point of the crystal.

445. The process of polarization does not originate absolutely in the fluid, any more than light has the power of concentrating or crystallizing itself in any given part of the æther; but by an external determination. This is a granule, a projecting point in the vessel or in the hollow of the earth, in which the crystals originate. The crystal never begins in the middle of the fluid, but only on its walls or on the surface. The point of polarization or of crystallization has been granted; now this is polar towards the fluid, and works therefore by polarizing upon it, and through this water also passes over into the crystal, forming what is called water of crystallization.