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It thus becomes clear how mistaken it is to attempt to cure deficiencies in plants by adding to the soil chemical substitutes for the trace-elements. In the condition in which this material is offered to the plant, it is truly ‘old’ material. In order to be able to use it functionally, the plant has first to convert it into the ‘young’ condition. This indeed happens whilst the material is rising in the plant combined with the juices drawn by the plant from the soil under the influence of levity-force. Only when this has occurred are the chemical elements able to serve the plant functionally. Thus, by trying to give help to the plant in this way, we injure it at the same time. For by forcing it to perform the operation described, its general life-forces are diminished. A seeming success brought about in this manner, therefore, will not last long.6

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There is, nevertheless, a way of helping the plant by adding to the soil certain material substances, provided these are first brought into a purely dynamic condition. That this can be done is a fact long since known, even if not recognized in its true significance. So far then, as serves the purpose of this book, we shall deal with it here.

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The method in question is associated with the school of medicine known as Homoeopathy, founded by the German doctor, Hahnemann. The word ‘homoeopathy’ means ‘healing through like’; the basic principle is to treat disease symptoms with highly diluted substances which produce similar symptoms if ingested in normal quantity. Experience has in fact shown that the physiological effect of a substance taken from external nature is reversed when the substance is highly diluted.

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The method of diluting, or ‘potentizing’, is as follows: A given volume of the material to be diluted is dissolved in nine times its volume of distilled water. The degree of dilution thus arrived at is 1:10, usually symbolized as Ix. A tenth part of this solution is again mixed with nine times its bulk of water. The degree of dilution is now 1:100, or 2x. This process is continued as far as is found necessary for a given purpose. Insoluble substances can be dealt with in the same manner by first grinding them together with corresponding quantities of a neutral powder, generally sugar of milk. After a certain number of stages the powder can be dissolved in water; the solution may then be diluted further in the manner described. Here we have to do with transfer of the quality of a substance, itself insoluble, to the dissolving medium, and then with the further treatment of the latter as if it were the original bearer of the quality concerned.

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This fact alone shows that potentization leads into a realm of material effects at variance with the ordinary scientific conception of matter. Moreover, we can carry the dilutions as far as we please without destroying the capacity of the substance to produce physiological reactions. On the contrary, as soon as its original capacity is reduced to a minimum by dilution, further dilution gives it the power to cause actually stronger reactions, of a different and usually opposite kind. This second capacity rises through stages to a variable maximum as dilution proceeds.

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A simple calculation shows – if we accept the ordinary scientific view as to the size of a molecule – that not a single molecule of the original substance will remain in the solution after a certain degree of dilution has been reached. Yet the biological and other reactions continue long after this, and are even enhanced.

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What this potentizing process shows is that, by repeated expansions in space, a substance can be carried beyond the ponderable conditions of matter into the realm of pure functional effect. The potentizing of physical substances thus gains a significance far wider than that of its medical use.7 There opens up, for example, the possibility of stimulating deficient functions in the plant by giving it the corresponding elements in homoeopathic doses. By this means the plant is brought into direct connexion with the relevant spiritual energy, and then left to carry out for itself the necessary process of materialization, instead of being forced by mere chemical additions to the soil first to potentize the substance itself.8

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The same principle holds good for man and beast. They also need ‘young material’ for their nourishment, so that the type active in them – which in animals is the group-soul of the species and in man is the single individual – can express its true form and character. (We saw earlier that the will requires ‘young’ material in order to penetrate into the material layers of the muscles, as happens when the limbs are set in motion). In this respect, the difference between ensouled creatures and plants is that, what is harmful to plants is natural for men and animals: when taking nourishment the latter are able to bring about quickly and purposefully a transformation of matter into the purely dynamic state. Their metabolic system is designed to enable them to take alien material from outer nature and to transform it through the forces of the various digestive enzymes; in the course of this process the material passes through a condition of complete ‘chaos’.

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In an age following van Helmont’s discovery of the gaseous state of matter and the statement of the Contra Levitatem maxim, men were bound to think that the circulation of atmospheric moisture was limited to the three stages of liquid, vaporous (peculiar to the clouds, etc.) and the invisible aeriform condition. Yet the role played by clouds in the myths of early peoples shows that they were once given a quite different status, between the ‘created’ and ‘uncreated’ worlds. Our observations lead to a corresponding conception, but along the path of knowledge, guided by sense-perception, as befits our own age.

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In discussing Howard’s discovery of the stages of cloud-formation we found something lacking, for it was clear that the three stages of cloud proper – stratus, cumulus and cirrus – have a symmetry which is disturbed by the addition of a fourth stage, represented by the nimbus. This showed that there was need for a fifth stage, at the top of the series, to establish a balanced polarity. We can now clear up this question of a fifth stage, as follows.