Scarcely had this thought passed through his mind than it induced another - that of a universal interrelationship between all possible forms of energy. This last idea so took possession of him that during the return voyage, as he himself related, he could scarcely think of anything but how to prove the correctness of his idea and what the consequences would be for the general view of nature. From the moment of his return he devoted his life to practical research into the connexion between the various manifestations of energy. It was in this way that he was led to the determination of the so-called mechanical equivalent of heat, shortly before the same discovery was made in a quite different manner by Joule.

It is in this sense that we may speak of the seismic movements of the earth as being caused by suction acting from without. In the same sense we may say that the upward movement of the saps in the plant (to which Ruskin pointed as being responsible for the apple appearing at the top of the tree) and with it the entire growth-phenomenon in the plant world, is due to peripheral suction.

At this point we may recall Goethe's reply to the botanist, Wolff, who had ascribed the metamorphosis of plant-organs from root to blossom to a gradual stunting or atrophy of their vegetative force, whereas it was clear to Goethe that simultaneously with a physical retrogression, there is a spiritual progress in the development of the plant. The fact that all Wolff's efforts to see clearly did not save him from 'seeing past the thing' seemed to Goethe an inevitable result of Wolff's failure to associate with the eyes of the body those of the spirit.

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.

What we observe in lightning is really an instantaneous execution of a process which runs its course continually in the atmosphere, quietly and unnoticed. It is the process by which water reverts from the imponderable to the ponderable condition, after having been converted to the former through levity set in action by the sun (as usually happens in a high degree just before a thunderstorm). We form a true picture of the course of a storm if we say that nature enables us to witness a sublime display of the sudden bringing to birth of matter in earthbound form. What falls to the ground as rain (or hail) is substantially identical with what was perceptible to the eye, a moment before, as a majestic light-phenomenon. The accompanying electrical occurrence is the appropriate counter-event at nature's lower boundary. Since the two form part of a larger whole they necessarily occur together; but the electrical occurrence must not be identified with the event in the heavens. The reason for their conjunction will become clear later, when we shall show how electrical polarity arises from the polarity between gravity and levity.

If one considers how slender a connexion there was between Mayer's observation on the sailors in Java and the idea of the quantitative equilibrium of all physical nature-forces, and if one contrasts this with the fanaticism he showed during the rest of his life in proving against all obstacles the correctness of his idea, one must feel that the origin of the thought in Mayer's mind lay elsewhere than in mere physical observations and logical deductions. Confirmation of this may be found in what Mayer himself declared to be his view concerning the actual grounds for the existence of a constant numerical association between the various manifestations of natural energy.

Considerations of this kind lead one to a picture in which the earth is seen to be surrounded and penetrated by a field of force which is in every respect the polar opposite of the earth's gravitational field. As the latter has its greatest intensity at its centre, which is identical with the centre of the earth's globe, so has the levitational field its greatest intensity at its circumference which is somewhere in the width of the universe. (Later considerations will enable us to locate its position more precisely.)

Exactly the same thing holds good for the sequence of physical states of matter which we are considering here. Observation of this sequence with the bodily eyes alone will show nothing but a reduction of the specific gravity of the material concerned. He who is at pains to observe also with the eye of the spirit, however, is aware of a positive increase of lightness going hand in hand with a decrease of heaviness. Regarded thus, the three ponderable conditions form what Goethe would have called a 'spiritual ladder'. As 'rungs' of such a ladder they clearly point to a fourth rung - that is, a fourth state in which levity so far prevails over gravity that the substance no longer has any weight at all. This picture of the fourfold transformation of matter calls for an inquiry into the transition between the third and fourth states, corresponding to the well-known transitions between the

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.

If one learns to view a thunderstorm in this way, its spiritual connexion with the earth's volcanic processes becomes manifest; there is in fact a polar relationship between them. For just as in volcanic activity heavy matter is suddenly and swiftly driven heavenwards under the influence of levity, so in a storm does light matter stream earthwards under the influence of gravity.