760. Two actions are necessarily manifested in iron, one clearing or dividing in so far as it is earth, and one to be identifying, in so far as it is metal. Iron is the fluctuation between oxydation and reduction, between light and gravity, and this conflict of the two latter is _Magnetism_. Magnetism is the spiritual function of the metals. 761. Magnetism belongs essentially to the metals only. What is not metal, is magnetic only according to idea or signification; it may be therefore aptly said, that such a body hath no magnetism, and that what has it, were metallic. 762. Magnetism is the direct property only of iron; this alone is the hybrid or heterogynous metal. 763. Magnetism appertains only to the other metals in as far as they are positions of iron; and is the more powerful, the nearer they stand in relation to iron. All metals are magnetic in idea, whether magnetism be manifested in them or not. 764. All metals have originated through magnetism, through the radial polarity, or the conflict of light and gravity. Magnetism is the action betwixt light and darkness, periphery and centre. Magnetism as being a metalgenerating action tends towards the centre of darkness of gravity. What in the earths and salts is the duplex tendency of crystallization, is in the metals the identifying magnetism, as an everlasting operation of attraction. 765. Magnetism is still, however, not identical with gravity. Gravity is the centre abstractedly from the periphery; but magnetism is the centre only in relation to the periphery or light. 766. Polarity belongs to the essence as well as the genesis of magnetism; the metal subsists only through a constant resistance against the universal process of oxydation, against the developmental process of the earth-principles, which the metal is always striving to conceal. The metal is altogether the most mysterious essence of the planet. This resistance to the disclosure of the Innermost of the earth is magnetism. Where magnetism has wholly attained this concealment, it renders the metal perfectly free and disappears, because it has become completely embodied. In the noble metals it has attained what it is still seeking in iron. 767. Magnetism is a linear action with two different extremities, like the primary radius. By one extremity magnetism runs towards the identical centre, by the other towards the partite, electrical periphery, towards the oxydized earths. One extremity will reduce, the other oxydize; one will become metal, the other earth. This is the difference between north and south pole, the former centre, the latter periphery. 768. There is no peculiar magnetic fluid, any more than there is a matter of light, heat and electricity. In magnetism the spirit only of the earth appears, as in light the spirit of heaven.