297. The fluid element oxygen is the _Water_. Water in large as well as in small quantities, seeks to represent the globe, namely, to form drops. It possesses therefore the effort unto form, while it is always relapsing into formlessness. This oscillation between form and formlessness is the conception of fluidity, which is therefore essentially different from that of gasidity; it might be said that the latter were the arithmetic or constant change of numbers; but that fluidity were the combination of arithmetic with geometry. 298. If the essence of water consists in the contest between form and formlessness, it must thus seek to produce fluidity everywhere. Liquefaction is, however, called solution, namely, globules are formed, both on a large and small scale. The function of water is therefore solution. It dissolves the air, (imbibes it) like the earth. 299. Water is more difficult to analyze than air, because its poles are more fixed. 300. In the analysis of water, the body of heat emerges in a pure state as hydrogen, because the antagonism here subsists in an abrupt manner; in the air it is constantly changing. Hydrogen is therefore nitrogen wholly deoxydised. 301. If water is the oxygen-element, so is it the light-element or condensed light-æther; thus it is as little something absolutely new as the air. 302. Terrestrial life originates out of water, as does the cosmic life out of light. All form originates from water; for it is the general fluid, or that which strives towards form. Without water, there would be no life, no Solid and no Organic. EARTH. 303. If the gravity of æther condenses itself, or the action of gravity be fixed in a quantity of æther, there originates immobility of the atoms, i. e. an effort upon their part towards a single direction, namely, simply towards the centre. The effort towards a single direction or towards the centre, is cohesion or rigidity. 304. The mass with fixed gravity is carbon. If therefore the carbonic acid of air, or the carbon of water, obtain the preponderance over the other elemental bodies, there thus originates the rigid centripetal element. 305. The heavy, rigid, carbon-element is the _Earth_. The earth is neither gaseous nor fluid. The earth contains a preponderance of carbon, with a tolerable quantity of oxygen, and a slight amount of hydrogen and nitrogen. The earth is an oxyd of carbon. 306. If fire is indicated by + 0-, the air then corresponds to the-, the water to +, the earth to the 0. The earth is therefore the Identical, water the Indifferent, air the Different; or the first the centre, the second the radius, the last the periphery of the general globe or of fire. The earth is naught but an accumulation of points. If radii occur in it, it happens only because all points have not place in the middle point.