719. The ore has not originated externally to the veins and been at some time or other conducted into them by means of water. For how should it thus originate? The reply is, a specific action must have been at work in the fluid, which determined it to separate ore and nothing else. But where is this ore-forming action in the free space of water? Nowhere. And if also the ore had been separated or diffused throughout the whole mass of water, what a world-wonder is it that it merely flowed into the veins and some stockworks? What prevented it from filling in large masses the broader valleys? The mechanical theorist upon metallic veins must assume an attraction on the part of the veins for the ore-particles in water; but how could this attraction have drawn these particles for miles in extent out of the water? and were this action strong enough, it must still be gifted with greater power to produce or at least separate the ore out of the water, that is found in the empty spaces formed by the veins. 720. Since ore has on a large scale separated from the calcareous and salt formations like the Identical from the Different, it has done so also upon a small scale in the veins. There the same process of separation has preceded it. 721. Now, however, nothing can be separated, i. e. nothing be reduced, without the oxygen accumulating upon something else. The Earthy must therefore separate during the formation of metal into the Reduced and Peroxydized. 722. The reduced earthy is the metal or inflammable; the peroxydized, however, an earth proper. This earth is called _vein-stone_. 723. The ore has _only_ originated in opposition to the vein-stone, and when this has taken the Different of the Earthy into itself. Therefore the vein-stones are also different from the kind of rock in which they occur, and that through greater differentialization; they have even receded for the most part into acid and alkaline poles, as calc-spar, fluor-spar, heavy-spar, which are the usual vein-stones. All vein-stones are oxyds and as a rule, those in which the oxygen is freely manifested, namely as acid. The vein-stones were the sheath of the ore, which could first appear when this sheath had withdrawn itself. 724. The metal stands in relation to the vein-stone. Thus in argillaceous vein-stones we commonly meet with iron, manganese; in the quartzoze with gold; in the calcareous with lead, &c. There are here also extremes. There are vein-stones, called sterile veins, in whose antagonism no metal has been formed; and there are veins, that are merely filled with metal, such as the Stockwerke, Lager. 725. Since the ore and the vein-stones thus originate together, and in such a manner that they conditionate each other; their fundamental mass must have been one, and a separating force, which is not light, must have operated upon them.