MATTER. 159. Points, which strive towards the centre, are compressed, because they would all occupy one and the same spot. These points, however, are forces, which take up space and therefore exclude other points. A space that excludes another is _Matter_. Everything which has been said of gravity holds good in respect to matter; for matter is only another word for gravity. A heavy thing is a material thing. 160. To the totality of a thing belongs not merely its figure nor its tension or motion simply, but also its _gravity_. This is, however, a whole sphere. Matter is, consequently, a total position of the primary act, a trinity of ideas. 161. Matter has been imparted with space and time. All space is material; ay, matter is itself the space and the time, the form and the motion; for space is nothing special, but only extended or formed force. It is here also shown that the nothing does not exist. There is as little nothing in the universe as there is an 0 in mathematics. So soon as the nothing is, there is something. The whole universe is material, is nothing but matter; for there is the primary act eternally repeating itself in the centre. The universe is a rotating globe of matter. 162. But the universe is an acting gravity, a matter, in which the centroperipheric antagonism is active; it is therefore _everywhere matter only, which acts_. There is no activity without matter, but also no matter without activity, both being one; for gravity is itself the activity, and itself the matter. Matter is only limited activity. A matter which does not move is not; it can only subsist through continuous origination, through life. There is no dead matter; it is alive through its being, through the eternal that is in it. Matter has no existence in itself, but it is the Eternal only that exists in it. Everything is God, that is there, and without God there is absolutely nothing.