844. The main pole is granite. It is at once the primary pole, to which
the second main pole, the lime, is directed. The granite brings the
series through gneiss and mica-schist down to clay-and talc-slate, then
makes a sudden transition to the ores, and terminates at a boundary,
where pit-coals and resins conduct us into a new kingdom.
845. The lime rejects from itself the sand and sedimentary clay,
progresses through barytes and strontian up to gypsum, makes a sudden
bound or transition from thence to the salts, and terminates at a
limit, where corals and molluscous animals conduct us into a new
kingdom.
846. Salt concludes the growth of the earths; it is the eruption
or breaking out of the soul, as the metal was the body of earths
completed. Both finally pass into a higher world, the metal into the
_corporeal_, the salt into the _psychical_.
CHEMISM.
847. The spiritual activity, the soul of the earth has declared itself
in crystallization, the spirit of the metals in magnetism, that of
the Inflammables in electrism. The calcareous epoch is also the
manifestation of a peculiar activity, whose ultimate product is salt.
It has been already shown what the functions of the latter are, but the
signification of its acts has not yet been mentioned.
848. By the influence of light the water becomes elevated in its
oxygen-action, enters thus into tension with itself, and this
constitutes the tendency to solution which is the function of water.
The oxygenous water solicits the basic principle in the earth; this
issues forth, but still combined with its oxygen that has become free;
the formerly identical earth is a calcareous earth in a state of
tension with itself. What does not admit of being brought into a state
of tension, is thrown down as fundamental earth. Hitherto this process
was a mere process of solution, i. e. it had attained in the solid and
fluid only to tension, not to disseverment of the poles.
849. But the light always renders the water more oxygenous, and
therefore the earth always more basic; finally, the one portion of the
basic in the water, namely the hydrogen, separates itself, and becomes
peroxydized or the hydrochloric acid. A portion of the Basic in the
Earthy, namely the metallic body or carbon, separates itself also, and
the remainder becomes peroxydized or soda. As the calcareous earth
was at first dissolved in, and therefore one mass with, water, so at
present is the alkali also combined with the acid water; while both
dissolved in each other constitute salt.
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