c11p42

In this transformation of sulphurous substance from a higher material state, nearer to levity, to that of the solid crystal, we may behold an image of the generation of matter. For every physical substance and, therefore, every chemical element, exists originally as a pure function in the dynamic processes of the universe. Wherever, as a result of the action of gravity, such a function congeals materially, there we meet it in the form of a physical-material substance. In the same sense, sulphur and phosphorus, in their real being, are pure functions, and where they occur as physical substances, there we meet these functions in their congealed state.

c11p58

Another indication of the midway position of carbon is its ability to combine as readily with hydrogen as with oxygen, and, in these polar combinations, even to combine with itself. In this latter form it provides the basis of the innumerable organic substances in nature, and serves as the ‘building stones’ of the body-substances of living organisms. Among these, the carbohydrates produced by the plants show clearly the double function of carbon in the way it alternates between the states of starch and sugar.

c11p5

Our next task is to study certain fundamentals in regard to the different ways in which levity and gravity are found to be intertwined in combustible substances, manifesting through the difference of their relation to the process of combustion – that is, the process by which levity is restored to its original condition. It is the aim of the present chapter to show that by doing justice to the imponderable aspect of combustion, the way is opened to a view of the ‘elements’, as scientific chemistry understands them, which will be in line with our dynamic conception of matter.

c11p11

During the first hundred years after the establishment of the Contra-Levitatem maxim, man’s situation was in a certain sense the opposite of this. Then, people were struggling hard to get away from the old concept which saw in combustion nothing but the liberation of a super-terrestrial element from earthly fetters. This struggle found expression in a theory of heat which at that time greatly occupied scientific thinking. It is the so-called phlogiston-theory first proposed by the chemist Stahl (1660-1734).

c11p27

c11p43

One of the characteristics of the volcanic regions of the earth is the healing effect of substances found there. Fango-mud, for instance, which was mentioned in the last chapter, is a much-used remedy against rheumatism. This is typical of functional sulphur. We may truly characterize the earth’s volcanism as being qualitatively sulphurous. It is the sulphur-function coming to expression through a higher degree of ‘moistness’ in the relationship between gravity and levity which distinguishes volcanic regions from the rest of the otherwise ‘dry’ earth’s crust.

c11p59

c11p6

There is nothing surprising in the fact that a new conception of the chemical element can arise from a re-study of the process of combustion, if we remember that it was the picture of combustion, characteristic of the spectator-consciousness, which determined the conception of the chemical element as it prevails in modern science. Let us see how this conception came to pass historically in order to find where we stand to-day.

c11p12

This theory reveals the great uncertainty into which man’s thinking about the world of the senses had arrived at that time. Clinging to ideas inherited from antiquity, man’s consciousness was already so far restricted to the forming of pure matter-bound concepts that he was tempted to conceive heat as a material element. To this heat-substance the name ‘phlogiston’ was given. At the same time, under the Contra-Levitatem maxim, it was impossible to conceive of substance except as ponderable substance. This led to the conviction that whenever heat appears as a result of some treatment of matter (combustion or friction), the material substance subject to this treatment must lose weight.

c11p28

due order of succession, were seen to turn back on themselves circle-wise – or, more precisely, spiral-wise.