174 ONTOLOGY. 



846. Salt concludes the growth of the earths ; it is 

 the eruption or breaking out of the soul, as the metal 

 was the body of earths completed. Both finally pass into a 

 higher world, the metal into the corporeal \ the salt into 

 the psychical. 



CHEMISM. 



847. The spiritual activity, the soul of the earth has 

 p ^ ^ declared itself in crystallization, the spirit of the metals 



in magnetism, that of the Inflammables in electrism. 

 The calcareous epoch is also the manifestation of a pecu- 

 liar activity, whose ultimate product is salt. It has been 

 already shown what the functions of the latter are, but 

 the signification of its acts has not yet been mentioned. 



848. By the influence of light the water becomes ele- 

 vated in its oxygen-action, enters thus into tension with 

 itself, and this constitutes the tendency to solution which 

 is the function of water. The oxygenous water solicits 

 the basic principle in the earth; this issues forth, but 

 still combined with its oxygen that has become free ; the 

 formerly identical earth is a calcareous earth in a state 

 of tension with itself. What does not admit of being 

 brought into a state of tension, is thrown down as funda- 

 mental earth. Hitherto this process was a mere process 

 of solution, i. e. it had attained in the solid and fluid 

 only to tension, not to disseverment of the poles. 



849. But the light always renders the water more oxy- 

 genous, and therefore the earth always more basic; finally, 

 the one portion of the basic in the water, namely the 

 hydrogen, separates itself, and becomes peroxydized or 

 the hydrochloric acid. A portion of the Basic in the 

 Earthy, namely the metallic body or carbon, separates 

 itself also, and the remainder becomes peroxydized or 

 soda. As the calcareous earth was at first dissolved in, 

 and therefore one mass with, water, so at present is the 

 alkali also combined with the acid water; while both 

 dissolved in each other constitute salt. 



850. In this process therefore whole elements have 

 been taken only as one primary body, and they have 



