332. Through light the negative, its opposite or the basic, pole has been evoked in matter. The sun is self-posited as oxygen against the planet as Azotic or phlogiston; hydrogen and carbon. Light therefore deoxydises the bodies; it converts them into itself, into a polar principle. Acids placed in the light become deoxydised; nitric acid, muriate of silver. Oxygen is developed in light out of water. In like manner the constituent parts of the air continue separated only through light. INFLEXION. 333. The light tends from the sun to the earth, not merely because the polarization in accordance with its nature streams forth from the centre to the periphery, because the light is radiality; but because the earth is the basic pole of the sun. It is thus polarity, and not simply the straight line, which light obeys. Light tends to the centre of the earth, because between this and the sun the tension oscillates. The line of tension is only between the two centres. 334. In whatever direction light may fall upon the earth, it must strive towards the middle point. Those bodies that have in themselves the earthy nature, attract the light, not by virtue of an hidden quality, but out of the antagonism with the sun; now it may proceed either from greater density or from true basic import. 335. Rays of light, which pass close to the earth, as rays of tension between the sun and another star, become, from the polarity of the earth being stronger than that of the star, diverted from their straight direction and drawn towards the middle point. This diversion of light from its direct course is called _Inflexion_. 336. It is chiefly basic bodies that inflect the light towards themselves. No such body has an infinite shadow. In other respects, all bodies inflect because they are much denser than light. TRANSLUCENCY AND REFRACTION. 337. Light, as an Ætherial, permeates matter, and must on that very account pass toward the middle point of the earth, because it is virtually none other than the tension of both middle points, the earth and the sun. Originally therefore the light must have gone through the earth. 338. This permeation is not, however, mechanical but dynamic, and is indeed necessarily a propagation of the tension of æther through the matter. 339. Matter is susceptible of the same polarization of which the æther is susceptible, because it is on no account different from the æther; the polarization only takes place more slowly. 340. The transmission of light is called _Translucency_.