169. The matter, which is the direct position of God, which fills the whole universe, which is the time in a state of tension and motion, the formed space, the heavy primary essence, I call the _Primary matter_, the matter of the world, cosmic matter, _Æther_. The æther is the first realization of God, the eternal position of the same. It is the first matter of creation. Everything has consequently originated out of it. It is the highest, divine element, the divine body, the primary substance = 0 +-. 170. The æther fills out the whole universe, and is, consequently, a sphere, yea, the world's sphere itself; the world is a rotating globe of æther. 171. The sphere of æther, not as yet individualized, I call _chaos_. From the beginning was chaos, and this was æther, and unto the end will chaos become æther. The æther is the apparent nothing, and thus it is the chaos. This was not the latter and not the former, but an existing nothing. 172. The æther is the imponderable matter, because it is gravity and totality itself, because it is the infinite matter. 173. The æther has no life; it is the only mortuum, because it is the heavy 0. In æther, however, reside all the principles of life, all numbers; it is the substratum, the essence of life. There is only one universal substratum in nature. HEAVENLY BODY, POINT, CENTRE, GRAVITY. 174. Everything which emerges out of æther and is posited as a finite matter, can be nought else than a repetition of the sphere. 175. The æther subdivides into an endless number of subordinate rotating spheres, and so it must, because the world is not a whole devoid of parts, but only a whole in the parts, only a repetition of _positions_. The chaotic sphere of æther consists essentially at one and the same time of an infinity of spheres. 176. A chaos has never existed. The General never exists, but only the Particular. Chaos was from eternity a multiplicity of ætherial globes. Chaos is only postulate. 177. Every sphere of æther is complete in itself and closed, and therefore rotating around its axis and around the universal axis of the æther. 178. The new rotation in the heavenly bodies condensed in the periphery of the æther, follows as a necessary result, on account of the unequal velocity of its outwardly and inwardly lying points. 179. Every individual sphere has _two_ motions in itself; the one depends upon the representation of the primary act in itself by the _special_ rotation; the other re-attempts to regain the primary centre, through the _general_ rotation around the universal axis.