152 ONTOLOGY. 



are the valleys with the calcareous and salt formations ; 

 and he who asks how has the ore originated, must forth- 

 with inquire as to what is the essence of the veins. 



719. The ore has not originated externally to the 

 veins and been at some time or other conducted into 

 them by means of water. For how should it thus 

 originate ? The reply is, a specific action must have been 

 at work in the fluid, which determined it to separate 

 ore and nothing else. But where is this ore-forming 

 action in the free space of water? Nowhere. And if 

 also the ore had been separated or diffused throughout 

 the whole mass of water, what a world- wonder is it that 

 it merely flowed into the veins and some stockworks ? 

 What prevented it from filling in large masses the 

 broader valleys ? The mechanical theorist upon metallic 

 veins must assume an attraction on the part of the veins 

 for the ore-particles in water ; but how could this 

 attraction have drawn these particles for miles in extent 

 out of the water ? and were this action strong enough, it 

 must still be gifted with greater power to produce or at 

 least separate the ore out of the water, that is found in 

 the empty spaces formed by the veins. 



720. Since ore has on a large scale separated from the 

 calcareous and salt formations like the Identical from the 

 Different, it has done so also upon a small scale in the 

 veins. There the same process of separation has pre- 

 ceded it. 



721. Now, however, nothing can be separated, i. e. 

 nothing be reduced, without the oxygen accumulating 

 upon something else. The Earthy must therefore sepa- 

 rate during the formation of metal into the Reduced and 

 Peroxydized. 



722. The reduced earthy is the metal or inflammable ; 

 the peroxydized, however, an earth proper. This earth 

 is called veinstone. 



723. The ore has only originated in opposition 

 to the vein-stone, and when this has taken the Dif- 

 ferent of the Earthy into itself. Therefore the vein- 

 stones are also different from the kind of rock in which 



