837. The sea-salt is essential to water. It is the product of geogeny, has not entered the water from without, but been generated in it, and is constantly being regenerated, so long as light shines upon the sea. Properly speaking, sea-salt has been in the water from the beginning; but it was previously shrouded in the other earths, and could act substantially for the first time, when they had been separated from it. It has become salt, or water and earth-element by the agency of light. 838. The sea-salt has also been generated in opposition to the calcareous earths, and during its separation been rendered polar towards the latter. The salt mines are therefore associated with the last calcareous formation, the gypsum, and this it is also that determines their lamination. 839. As it may be said, that the metals separate into coal and sulphur, namely, pass over at their iron-extremity into coal, at their arsenical, into sulphur; so may it be said, that the earths separate into acids and alkalies; the one by the conversion of silica into fluoric acid, the other by that of calcareous earth into soda. Carbonic and sulphuric acid take possession of the calcareous earth; the hydro-oxide of the alkali. 840. The sea-salt has been the last to be separated from, because it was last generated in, the water. The salt beds belong to the last precipitation, by not having been mechanically thrown down, but as already observed and as their occurrence proves, by an alternating process of separation from the acidified lime. It is absurd to wish to explain the presence of common salt in the sea by a solution of saline beds. For where have the latter come from? 841. With the separation of the ore and the Inflammable out of the primary water and the confluence of the Earthy into marine salt, its metamorphosis upon the surface or when exposed to light is at an end. All forms of the planet have been successively developed out of the earth-element. It can attain no further to anything new, and if nature had not yet been concluded, that which in the sequel is still dynamically developed upon our earth, must be thus a product, which extends beyond the mineral kingdom. 842. As the fundamental earths lose themselves in pure carbon, in resin, and so in the vegetable world, so the series of corrosive earths resolves itself likewise in remnants of an organic, and that indeed the animal, kingdom. As the pit-coals and resins are associated with the metals and Inflammables, so are the fossil animal remains with the calcareous earth; and thus the voice of the organic world speaks already with force and clearness to those that hearken, from out the stones. 843. For the metamorphosis of the earths, nature has twice prepared herself, has planted at the same time two great points of origin, according to which all her action is directed, and which remain in constant correspondence with each other.