FIRE. 47 



world. The heat seeks to destroy the line, which the 

 light endeavours to establish ; heat seeks to produce 

 homogeneity in the Dissimilar, light to effect the reverse. 

 Heat is slow in its motion ; with it the mass of aether 

 must continually move, or move whither it will operate ; 

 light, however, acts spiritually and rapidly, without 

 motion of the mass, but only glides continually with the 

 latter. Heat is not created, it is no special matter dif- 

 ferent from aether. There is no body of heat. 



205. Heat is everywhere where the aether is, and must 

 consequently be regarded as a sphere. Heat is not pre- 

 sent merely in the columns of aether between the heavenly 

 bodies, but everywhere. Therefore heat does not move 

 itself in the direction of the line, but it extends itself on 

 all sides, as real space. 



FIRE. 



206. Light and heat were the first phenomena of the 

 world. Heat with light, however, are Fire. Fire is the 

 totality of aether, is God manifested in his totality. God, 

 previous to his determination to create a world, was 

 darkness ; in the first act of creation, however, he 

 appeared as fire. There is no higher, more perfect sym- 

 bol of divinity than fire. God's whole consciousness, apart 

 from individual thoughts, is fire. The Holy Scriptures 

 therefore usually admit of God appearing under the form 

 of a fire, as a fiery bush, a flame. The world is none other 

 than a rotating globe of fire. 



207. Everything that is, has originated out of fire; 

 everything is only cooled, rigidified fire. As everything 

 has become out of Sre, so must everything to be anni- 

 hilated have recourse to fire. If finite things be only fire 

 singly posited, so must every change occurring in the 

 same be an igneous change. Nothing changes in the 

 world but fire. The essential change of things take place 

 only by fire. 



~ 



!^4*~J vH^' 



