Elements of Physiophilosophy

by Lorenz Oken

578. The analysing principle cannot be a something internal residing in the planet itself. But all that it is, it is through antagonism with the sun. This antagonism is light. This it is that divorces or separates the elements from their matrix; it is light, which has sundered the æther into the twofold air, and the air again into the denser elements, water and earth, separating the oxygen from the nitrogen and later on from the carbon, which must be taken up in water as an oxide.

579. At the commencement of the separation the fluid must be the first to emerge, because the cohesion or fixation of the poles is possible only in a successive manner, yet not as if water were according to its determination to be the first and the Earthy the second in the order of production. As the oxygen separated from the air to create water, so also must the carbon that was left have been precipitated from the water and metamorphosed into earth. Thence and thence only may we venture to say, that the earths originated out of water; for, properly speaking, they arose as absolutely for themselves as air and water; but as air succeeded æther, and water air, so did the earth the water.

580. Whatever be the bulk of the mass of water, to the same extent is the Earthy, or the germ of the Earthy, diffused throughout it. The whole is a fluid mass of earth. Light, however, penetrates the mass of water as a transparent body. As translucency is not a mechanical but a dynamic act, or process of differentialization in matter; so does this earth-water become separated into a mass of oxygen and carbon, or into ordinary water and into the earth-element.

581. The genesis of the earths is a process of conduction of light. All transparency is a formation of earth; for it is a separation of the Aqueous from the body of gravity. Where non-transparency exists, there has earth been already formed.

582. As the conducting process of light is an act of deoxydation, so are the earths at the same time also deoxydized by precipitation, and this in four stages which indicate the elements whereby light operates upon the Basic in water; or it might be said, by the four colours of, or by coloured, light. We already know that the earth, which presents in itself the most dismembered character is the calcareous earth; but that those which have preserved a more identical character in themselves are the silicious, argillaceous, and talcose earths. These earths may be viewed as those in which the lime has absorbed a proportion of oxygen, which has in it become carbonic acid. There is indeed only one earth-substance in water. In this substance, which is neither silex nor calx, the polar principle has distributed itself, and that very portion, which has obtained the most thereof, has become calcareous earth.

583. The calcareous earth has originated in the upper parts of the aqueous globe, the other earths, however, in the depths, in the middle of that globe; for in the upper regions of the water, the light can exert a greater polarizing influence, and therefore that very earth is generated which stands nearest to the æther or to the light, viz. the different calcareous earth. But in the depths of the water, the light loses its energy, and is no longer in a condition to elicit the Oxygenous in the Basic; thereby identical and more fixed earths originate.

GRANULAR ROCK OR GRANITE.

584. The differenced calcareous earth has been associated with the differential water, remained for a longer period identical with and dissolved in it, and was therefore the last to be precipitated from it. The silicious earth with its neighbours must necessarily have been the first to separate from the water, as it is in a proper sense, that earth from which all water has been withdrawn. Two periods of precipitation exist therefore in geogeny, one that of the identical or fundamental earths, and one of the internally subdivided calcareous earths.

585. The silicious, argillaceous, and talcose earths must occupy, from their having been first precipitated, the middle of the planet. The water being earthy everywhere, had everywhere the capacity to become earth; but different earths originated, where the light was different in the fluid mass of earth. In pure light, or that upon the surface, the Earthy dualized itself into calcareous earth; in situations, where the light exercised less influence, the Earthy became talcose, still deeper argillaceous earth; lastly, at such a depth where the light could scarcely reach, the Earthy became a pure Earthy or silicious earth.

586. Precipitation, both upon a large and small scale, is a process of crystallization; the integral parts of the planet originate, like the nucleus and the perfected crystal, through central action and polar action. The integral forms of the planet impart the crystalline granule or its joints.