Matter as Part of Nature's Alphabet
In the preceding chapter we drew attention to the fact that any
spatially extended mass is under the sway of both gravity and levity.
We then saw that with the transition of matter from the solid via the
liquid to the gaseous state, not only does the specific gravity of the
substance decrease, but at the same time an increase takes place of
what we might call 'specific levity'. In the gaseous state, therefore,
we find gravity-bound matter becoming so far levity-bound that it
assumes the property of actively expanding in space.
Having once adopted the Goethean way of thinking-in-polarities, we may
feel sure that there is somewhere in nature a phenomenon which
represents the polar opposite of the levity-gravity relationship
peculiar to the gaseous state. In this latter state we find ponderable
matter so far brought under the sway of levity that its behaviour is of
a kind which van Helmont, when he first observed it, could not help
describing as 'paradoxical'. Where, we must now ask, do we find
imponderable essence so much under the sway of gravity that it shows
the correspondingly paradoxical features? In other words, where does
nature show levity concentrated in a limited part of space - that is,
in a condition characteristic of ponderable matter?
Such concentrations of levity do indeed exist in varied forms. One is
the 'warmth-body' represented by the blood-heat of the higher animals
and man. There is, however, an occurrence of this kind also on the
purely mineral level of nature, and it is this which has particular
significance for our present study of matter. We meet it in all
physical substances which have the peculiarity of being combustible.
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.
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.
*
With the establishment of the knowledge of a state of physical matter
which, as the definition ran, 'neither results from a combination of
other physical substances nor is resolvable into such', the conviction
arose that man's searching mind had reached 'rock-bottom'. This
conviction, however, was shaken when, with the discovery of radium, an
element became known whose property it is to disintegrate into two
other elements, helium and lead. Although this did not force science to
abandon the element-concept altogether, it became necessary to find a
new definition for it.
This definition was established by Professor W. Ostwald at the
beginning of the present century, when he stated that the chemical
element represents a condition of physical matter in which 'any
chemical change results in an increase of weight'. In this way, the
chemical concept of the element achieved a meaning which had actually
been implicit in it from its first conception. For its very formation
had been the outcome of the Contra-Levitatem maxim. The following
glance over the history of chemistry will show this.
The birth of chemistry as a science, in the modern sense, is closely
connected with a revolutionary change in the conception of what can be
called the chemical arch-process-combustion, or, to use a more
scientific term, oxidation. This change arose out of the
Contra-Levitatem maxim and the new conception of heat which this maxim
required. In the old doctrine of the four Elements, Heat had been
conceived as a manifestation of the element of Fire, and so, together
with Air, as belonging to the realm of the 'uncreated things'. Hence
the release of heat from created substance was always felt to be a
sacred act, as is shown by the fire rites of old.
Modern man's conception of the same process is revealed in the answer
one invariably receives from both layman and scientist when they are
asked what they understand by combustion. It is described as a process
through which oxygen combines with the combustible substance. And yet
this side of combustion, first observed by J. Priestley (1771), is
neither the one for the sake of which man produces combustion in the
service of his everyday life, nor is it at all observed by ordinary
sense-perception. Nevertheless, to describe the obvious fact, that
combustion is liberation of heat from the combustible substance, will
hardly occur to anyone to-day. This shows to what extent even the
scientifically untrained consciousness in our time turns instinctively
to the tangible or weighable side of nature, so that some effort is
required to confess simply to what the eye and the other senses
perceive.
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).
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.
The experiments of Lavoisier (1743-94), which he undertook following
Priestley's discovery of the role of oxygen in combustion, put an end
to this theory. These experiments are rightly regarded as the actual
beginning of modern chemistry. In Lavoisier we find an observer of
nature who was predominantly interested in what the scales could tell
about changes in substances. It was from this aspect that he
investigated the process of oxidation. What had already been observed
by a few others, though without being taken seriously by them, he found
confirmed - that, contrary to the phlogiston - theory, matter does not
lose weight through oxidation but gains weight. Further experiments
proved beyond doubt that in all chemical reactions the total weight of
the components remained constant. However much the substance resulting
from the chemical reaction of others might differ from these, its
weight always proved to be the same as their total weight. What else
could be concluded from the apparent unchangeability of weight
throughout all the chemical happenings in nature than that the
ponderable world-content was of eternal duration? We see here how much
modern chemistry and its concept of the chemical element has been ruled
right from the start by the one-sided gravity concept of the
onlooker-consciousness.
Together with the overcoming of the fallacy that heat is a ponderable
substance (full certainty was indeed established only some time later
through the investigations of Davy and Rumford into heat generated by
friction) - human thinking was led into a one-sided conception of
combustion which was merely the opposite of the one held earlier.
Whereas formerly man's mind was pre-eminently occupied by the
liberation of the imponderable element through combustion, it now
turned entirely to what goes on in the ponderable realm.
As we have seen, one outcome of this one-sided view of combustion was
the modern concept of the chemical element. To-day our task is to
overcome this concept by taking a step corresponding to the one that
led to it, that is, by a study of combustibility which does justice to
both sides of the process involved.
*
As objects of our observation we choose three chemical elements all of
which have the property of combustibility: Sulphur, Phosphorus, and
Carbon. As will become clear, our choice of these three is determined
by the fact that together they represent an instance 'worth a thousand,
bearing all within itself.
We begin by comparing Sulphur and Phosphorus. In their elementary state
they have in common the fact that any chemical change is bound up with
an increase in their weight. In this state both are combustible. Apart
from this similarity, there is a great difference between them, as the
way of storing them illustrates. For while elementary sulphur needs
only an ordinary container, phosphorus has to be kept under cover of
water in order to prevent the atmospheric oxygen from touching it. The
reason is that the combustible state is natural for sulphur, but not
for phosphorus, the latter's natural state being the oxidized one. This
different relationship of sulphur and phosphorus to the oxidizable
(reduced) and the oxidized state manifests itself in all their chemical
reactions.
To object here that the different reactions of the two substances are
due only to the difference of their respective temperatures of
ignition, and that above these temperatures the difference will more or
less disappear (all combustible substances at a sufficiently high
temperature becoming more or less similar to phosphorus), would not
meet the argument. For what matters here is just how the particular
substance behaves at that level of temperature on which the earth
unfolds her normal planetary activity. To ignore this would be to
violate one of the principles we have adopted from Goethe, which is
never to derive fundamental concepts of nature from observations
obtained under artificial conditions.
Sulphur and phosphorus are thus seen to represent two polarically
opposite tendencies with regard to the levity-gravity coherence which
breaks up when combustion occurs. In the case of sulphur, the
ponderable and imponderable entities appear to cling together; in the
case of phosphorus, they seem to be anxious to part. These two
different tendencies - which are characteristic of many other
substances and represent a basic factor in the chemical happenings of
the earth - are in their own way a pair of opposites. Since each of
them represents in itself a relationship between two poles of a
polarity-gravity and levity - so in their mutual relationship they
represent a 'polarity of polarities'. In Fig. 4 an attempt has been
made to represent this fact by a symbolic diagram.
In this figure the shaded part represents the imponderable, the black
part the ponderable entity. In the left-hand symbol both are shown in a
relationship corresponding to the one characteristic of sulphur; in the
right-hand figure the relationship is characteristic of phosphorus.
Here we have an instance of a kind of polarity which belongs to the
fundamentals of nature as much as does the levity-gravity polarity
itself. Wherever two poles of a polarity meet, they have the
possibility of being connected in two ways which in themselves are
again polarically opposite. Our further studies will bring up various
other instances of this kind, and will show us that part of the
epistemological trouble in which science finds itself to-day results
from the fact that the scientific mind has been unable to distinguish
between the two kinds of polarity - that is, as we shall say
henceforth, between polarities of the first order (primary polarities)
and polarities of the second order (secondary polarities).
In actual fact, the distinction between the two orders of polarity has
been implicit in the descriptions given in this book right from the
start. Remember, in this respect, how the picture of the threefold
psycho-physical structure of man, which has proved a master-key for
unlocking the most varied scientific problems, was first built up.
There, 'body' and 'soul' represented a polarity which is obviously one
of the first order. By our observation of the human organism, in
relation both to the different functions of the soul and to the
different main organic systems, we further recognized the fact that the
ways in which body and soul are interrelated are polarically opposite
in the region of the brain and nerves and in the region of the
metabolic processes, which again results in two polarically opposite
activities of the soul, mental on the one hand, and volitional on the
other. In what we called the pole-of-consciousness and the pole-of-life
we therefore have a clear polarity of the second order, and so in
everything that is connected with these two, as our further discussions
will show.
Remembering that our first occasion to concern ourselves overtly with
the concept of polarity was in connexion with the four elements, we may
now ask whether the old doctrine did not embrace some conception of
secondary polarity as well as of primary polarity, and if so, whether
this might not prove as helpful in clarifying our own conceptions as
was the primary polarity, cold-warm. That this is indeed so, the
following description will show.
Beside the two qualities cold and warm the doctrine of the four
elements pointed to two further qualities forming in themselves a pair
of opposites, namely, dry and moist. Just as the four elements were
seen as grouping themselves in two pairs, Fire-Air on the one hand,
Water-Earth on the other, the first being characterized by the quality
warm, the second by cold, so were they seen to form two opposing
groups, Fire-Earth and Air-Water, of which one was characterized by the
quality dry, the other by the quality moist. Fig. 5 shows how the four
elements in their totality were seen to arise out of the various
combinations of the four qualities.
In this diagram the element Earth appears as a combination of the
qualities Dry and Cold; Water of Cold and Moist; Air of Moist and Warm;
Fire of Warm and Dry. As a result, Earth and Fire, besides representing
opposite poles, are also neighbours in the diagram. Here we encounter a
picture characteristic of all earlier ways of looking at the world: the
members of a system of phenomena, when ranked in due order of
succession, were seen to turn back on themselves circle-wise - or, more
precisely, spiral-wise.
In what way do the qualities dry and moist form a polarity of the
second order, and how do they represent the chemical polarity
characteristic of sulphur and phosphorus as well as all the other
secondary polarities dealt with in this book? To understand this we
must submit the couple dry-moist to the same scrutiny as we applied to
cold and warm in our earlier discussion of the four elements.
It lies in the nature of things that we instinctively associate these
qualities with the solid and liquid states of matter respectively. This
certainly agrees with the diagram given above, where the elements Earth
and Water are distinguished precisely by their connexion with these two
characteristics. Yet, in addition to this, the qualities dry and moist
are found to be characteristic also of Fire and Air respectively,
though with the difference that they are linked not with the quality
cold, as in the case of the lower elements, but with the quality warm.
So we see that the concepts Dry and Moist, as they lived in the old
picturing of them, mean a good deal more than we understand by them
to-day.
That these two respective attributes do not belong exclusively to the
solid and the liquid states of matter can be seen at once by observing
the different reactions of certain liquids to a solid surface which
they touch. One need only recall the difference between water and
quicksilver. If water runs over a surface it leaves a trail;
quicksilver does not. Water clings to the side of a vessel; again,
quicksilver does not. A well-known consequence of this difference is
that in a narrow tube the surface of the liquid - the so-called
meniscus - stands higher at the circumference than at the centre in the
case of water; with quicksilver it is just the reverse. In the sense of
the two qualities, dry and moist, water is a 'moist' liquid;
quicksilver a 'dry' one. On the other hand, the quality of moistness in
a solid substance appears in the adhesive power of glue.
Let us now see how, in accordance with the scheme given in Fig. 5, the
four qualities in their respective combinations constitute the four
elements. From the description we shall give here it will be realized
how little such ancient schemes were based on abstract thoughts, and
how much they were read from the facts of the world. Moreover, a
comparison with our description of the four stages of matter, given in
the previous chapter, would show how far the conceptual content of the
old doctrine covers the corresponding facts when they are read by the
eye of the modern reader in nature, notwithstanding the changes nature
has undergone in the meantime.
The element Fire reveals its attributes of warm and dry in a behaviour
which combines a tendency to dynamic expansion with a disinclination to
enter into lasting combination with the other elements.
Correspondingly, the behaviour of the element Earth unites a tendency
to contraction with an inclination to fall out of conjunction with the
other elements. Thus the attribute, dry, belongs equally to pure flame
and sheer dust, though for opposite reasons. Distinct from both these
elements are the middle elements Water and Air; with them the
attribute, moist, comes to expression in their tendency both to
interpenetrate mutually and to absorb their neighbours - the liquid
element absorbing solid matter and the aeriform element taking up heat.
What distinguishes them is that water has a 'cold' nature, from which
it gains its density; while air has a 'warm' nature, to which it owes
its tendency to expand.
In the most general sense, the quality 'moist' applies wherever two
different entities are drawn into some kind of intimate relationship
with one another; 'dry' applies where no such relationship prevails.
Seen thus, they reveal themselves as a true polarity of the second
order, for they describe the relationship between two entities which
already exists, and, in the case of the four elements, are themselves a
polarity. As such, they characterize precisely those polar
relationships of the second order on which the threefold structure of
man, we found, is based. For from the physical, as much as from the
superphysical aspect the nerve-system represents the 'dry' part, and
the metabolic system the 'moist' part of man's being. The same is true
of the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world at both
poles. Here we have the antithesis between the 'dry'
onlooker-relationship of the intellect to the world, conceived as a
mere picture whose essence remains outside the boundaries of the soul,
and the 'moist' intermingling of the will-force with the actual forces
of the world.
*
It needs no further explanation to realize that sulphur and phosphorus,
by the way in which levity and gravity are interlinked in each of them,
are representatives of these very qualities 'moist' and 'dry'. As such
they are universally active bearers of these qualities in every realm
of nature's varied activities, as their physical presence in such cases
confirms. Consequently, sulphur is found in the protein-substances of
the human body wherever they are bearers of metabolic processes, while
the presence of phosphorus is characteristic of the nerves and bones.
(Although its full significance will become clear to us only later, the
fact may here be mentioned that the composition of the bone-material in
the different parts of man's skeleton, as scientific analysis has
shown, is such that the content of phosphate of calcium in proportion
to carbonate of calcium is higher in all those parts which are
spherically shaped, such as the upper parts of the skull and the upper
ends of the limb-bones.)
In particular the plant reveals clearly the functional significance of
phosphorus as the bearer of the quality 'dry'. For its healthy growth
the plant needs the quality 'dry' in two places: at the root, where it
unites with the element earth, and in the flower, where it opens itself
to the fire element. Root and flower as distinct from the middle parts
of the plant are both 'dry' formations. In a still higher degree this
applies to the seed, which must separate itself from the mother plant
to produce a separate new organism. All these are functions in the
plant which, as was mentioned in the last chapter, require phosphorus
for their healthy performance.
Our examination of phosphorus and sulphur from the functional point of
view throws light also on their effect on the alternating conditions of
waking and sleeping, necessary for the life of the higher organisms.
This rhythmic change, which affects especially the nervous system, is
an alternation between the qualities dry and moist. Disturbance of this
alternation in one direction or the other makes it difficult for the
organism to react in full wakefulness or normal sleep. It follows that
treatment with phosphorus or sulphur in suitable preparations,
according to the nature of the disturbance, can be beneficial.
If we study the functional properties of such substances we see that
they can teach us a rational understanding of therapeutic practices,
which otherwise must remain mere results of trial and error. The same
applies to phosphorus and sulphur treatment in cases where in the
functionally 'dry' bone system or in the functionally 'moist' metabolic
system of the organism the wrong quality predominates. If the bones
remain too 'moist' there is a tendency to rickets; against this,
certain fish-oils are a well-known remedy on account of their highly
phosphoric nature. Conversely, the application of sulphur can help
where weakness of the metabolic forces produces rheumatic or gouty
sediments in parts of the body whose function is to serve by their
mobility the activities of the will. In this case the abnormal
predominance of the quality 'dry' can be counteracted by the medical
application of sulphur.
*
Having observed the action of sulphur and phosphorus in the laboratory
and in living organisms, we will now turn to phenomena of a
macrotelluric nature which reveal the participation of sulphur and
phosphorus. There, sulphur points unmistakably to the earth's
volcanism. It is a fact that, wherever mineral sulphur occurs in the
earth, there we find a spot of former or present volcanic activity.
Similarly, there is no such spot on the earth without sulphur being
present in one form or another. Hence the name Solfatara for the
fumarole described in Chapter IX.
Once again it is the Solfatara which offers us a phenomenon, this time
in connexion with the special role sulphur plays in its activities,
which, regarded with the eye of the spirit, assumes the significance of
an instance 'worth a thousand'.
In spite of the very high temperature of the sulphurous fumes emitted
from various crevices on the edge of the Solfatara, it is possible,
thanks to the complete dryness of the fumes, to crawl a little way into
the interior of these crevices. Not far away from the opening of the
crevice, where the hot fumes touch the cooler rock surface, one is met
by a very beautiful spectacle - namely, the continual forming, out of
nothing as it seems, of glittering yellow sulphur crystals, suspended
in delicate chains from the ceiling.
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.
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.
*
To develop a corresponding picture of the function of phosphorus, we
must try to find the macrotelluric sphere where this function operates
similarly to that of sulphur in volcanism. From what has been said in
the last chapter it will be evident that we must look to the
atmosphere, as the site of snow-formation. It is this process which we
must now examine more closely.
In the atmosphere, to begin with, we find water in a state of vapour,
in which the influence of the terrestrial gravity-field is
comparatively weak. Floating in this state, the vapour condenses and
crystallization proceeds. Obeying the pull of gravity, more and more
crystals unite in their descent and gradually form flakes of varying
sizes. The nearer they come to earth, the closer they fall, until at
last on the ground they form an unbroken, more or less spherical,
cover.
Imagine a snow-covered field glistening in the sun on a clear, quiet
winter's day. As far as we can see, there is no sign of life, no
movement. Here water, which is normally fluid and, in its liquid state,
serves the ever-changing life-processes, covers the earth in the form
of millions of separate crystals shaped with mathematical exactitude,
each of which breaks and reflects in a million rays the light from the
sun (Plate V). A contrast, indeed, between this quiet emergence of
forms from levity into gravity, and the form-denying volcanism surging
up out of gravity into levity, as shown by the ever-restless activity
of the Solfatara. As we found volcanism to be a macrotelluric
manifestation of functional sulphur, we find in the process of
snow-formation a corresponding manifestation of functional phosphorus.
In the formation of snow, nature shows us in statu agendi a process
which we otherwise meet in the earth only in its finished results,
crystallization. We may, therefore, rightly look upon snow-formation as
an ur-phenomenon in this sphere of nature's activities. As such it
allows us to learn something concerning the origin in general of the
crystalline realm of the earth; and, vice versa, our insight into the
'becoming' of this realm will enable us to see more clearly the
universal function of which phosphorus is the main representative among
the physical substances of the earth.
It has puzzled many an observer that crystals occur in the earth with
directions of their main axes entirely independent of the direction of
the earthly pull of gravity. Plate VI shows the photograph of a cluster
of Calcite crystals as an example of this phenomenon. It tells us that
gravity can have no effect on the formation of the crystal itself. This
riddle is solved by the phenomenon of snow-formation provided we allow
it to speak to us as an ur-phenomenon. For it then tells us that matter
must be in a state of transition from lightness into heaviness if it is
to appear in crystalline form. The crystals in the earth, therefore,
must have originated at a time when the relation between levity and
gravity on the earth was different from what it is, in this sphere,
to-day.
The same language is spoken by the property of transparency which is so
predominant among crystals. One of the fundamental characteristics of
heavy solid matter is to resist light - in other words, to be opaque.
Exposed to heat, however, physical substance loses this feature to the
extent that at the border of its ponderability all matter becomes
pervious to light. Now, in the transparent crystal matter retains this
kinship to light even in its solid state.
A similar message comes from the, often so mysterious, colouring of the
crystals. Here again nature offers us an instance which, 'worth a
thousand', reveals a secret that would otherwise remain veiled. We
refer to the pink crystals of tourmaline, whose colour comes from a
small admixture of lithium. This element, which belongs to the group of
the alkaline metals, does not form coloured salts (a property only
shown by the heavier metals). If exposed to a flame, however, it endows
it with a definite colour which is the same as that of the
lithium-coloured tourmaline. Read as a letter in nature's script, this
fact tells us that precious stones with their flame-like colours are
characterized by having kept something of the nature that was theirs
before they coalesced into ponderable existence. In fact, they are
'frozen flames'.
It is this fact, known from ancient intuitive experience, which
prompted man of old to attribute particular spiritual significance to
the various precious stones of the earth and to use them
correspondingly in his rituals.
Crystallization, seen thus in its cosmic aspect, shows a dynamic
orientation which is polarically opposite to that of the earth's
seismic activities. Just as in the latter we observe levity taking hold
of ponderable matter and moving it in a direction opposite to the pull
of gravity, so in crystallization we see imponderable matter passing
over from levity into gravity. And just as we found in volcanism and
related processes a field of activity of 'functional sulphur', so we
found in snow-formation and related processes a field of activity of
'functional phosphorus'. Both fields are characterized by an
interaction between gravity and levity, this interaction being of
opposite nature in each of them.
Here, again, sulphur and phosphorus appear as bearers of a polarity of
the second order which springs from the two polarically opposite ways
of interaction between the poles of the polarity of the first order:
levity-gravity.
*
As in man there is a third system, mediating between the two polar
systems of his organism, so between sulphur and phosphorus there is a
third element which in all its characteristics holds a middle place
between them and is the bearer of a corresponding function. This
element is carbon.
To see this we need only take into consideration carbon's relationship
to oxidation and reduction respectively. As it is natural for sulphur
to be in the reduced state, and for phosphorus to be in the oxidized
state, so it is in the nature of carbon to be related to both states
and therefore to oscillate between them. By its readiness to change
over from the oxidized to the reduced state, it can serve the plant in
the assimilation of light, while by its readiness to make the reverse
change it serves man and animal in the breathing process. We breathe in
oxygen from the air; the oxygen circulates through the blood-stream and
passes out again in conjunction with carbon, as carbon dioxide, when we
exhale. In the process whereby the plants reduce the carbon dioxide
exhaled by man and animal, while the latter again absorb with their
food the carbon produced in the form of organic matter by the plant, we
see carbon moving to and fro between the oxidized and the reduced
conditions.
Within the plant itself, too, carbon acts as functionary of the
alternation between oxidation and reduction. During the first half of
the year, when vegetation is unfolding, there is a great reduction
process of oxidized carbon, while in the second half of the year, when
the withering process prevails, a great deal of the previously reduced
carbon passes into the oxidized condition. As this is connected with
exhaling and inhaling of oxygen through carbon, carbon can be regarded
as having the function of the lung-organ of the earth. Logically
enough, we find carbon playing the same role in the middle part of the
threefold human organism.
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.
When the plant absorbs through its leaves carbonic acid from the air
and condenses it into the multiple grains of starch with their peculiar
structure characteristic for each plant species, we have a biological
event which corresponds to the formation of snow in the meteorological
realm. Here we see carbon at work in a manner functionally akin to that
of phosphorus. Sugar, on the other hand, has its place in the saps of
the plants which rise through the stems and carry up with them the
mineral substances of the earth. Here we find carbon acting in a way
akin to the function of sulphur.
This twofold nature of carbon makes itself noticeable down to the very
mineral sphere of the earth. There we find it in the fact that carbon
occurs both in the form of the diamond, the hardest of all mineral
substances, and also in the form of the softest, graphite. Here also,
in the diamond's brilliant transparency, and in the dense blackness of
graphite, carbon reveals its twofold relation to light.
In Fig. 6 an attempt has been made to represent diagrammatically the
function of Carbon in a way corresponding to the previous
representation of the functions of Sulphur and Phosphorus.
*
By adding carbon to our observations on the polarity of sulphur and
phosphorus we have been led to a triad of functions each of which
expresses a specific interplay of levity and gravity. That we encounter
three such functions is not accidental or arbitrary. Rather is it based
on the fact that the interaction of forces emanating from a polarity of
the first order, produces a polarity of the second order, whose poles
establish between them a sphere of balance.
Through our study of levity and gravity in the matter-processes of the
earth, a perspective thus opens up into a structural principle of
nature which is actually not new to us. We encountered it at the very
beginning of this book when we discussed the threefold psycho-physical
order of man's being.
In the days of an older intuitive nature-wisdom man knew of a basic
triad of functions as well as he knew of the four elementary qualities.
We hear a last echo of this in the Middle Ages, when people striving
for a deeper understanding of nature spoke of the trinity of Salt,
Mercury and Sulphur. What the true alchemists, as these seekers of
knowledge called themselves, meant by this was precisely the same as
the conception we have here reached through our own way of studying
matter ('Salt' standing for 'functional phosphorus', 'Mercury' for
'functional carbon'). Only the alchemist's way was a different one.
This is not the place to enter into a full examination of the meaning
and value of alchemy in its original legitimate sense (which must not
be confused with activities that later on paraded under the same name).
Only this we will say - that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an
impulse which, at a time when the onlooker-consciousness first arose,
led to the foundation of a school for the development of an intuitive
relationship of the soul with the world of the senses. This was to
enable man to resist the effects of the division which evolution was
about to set up in his soul-life - the division which was to give him,
on the one hand, an abstract experience of his own self, divorced from
the outer world, and on the other a mere onlooker's experience of that
outer world. As a result of these endeavours, concepts were formed
which in their literal meaning seemed to apply merely to outwardly
perceptible substances, while in truth they stood for the spiritual
functions represented by those substances, both within and outside the
human organism.
Thus the alchemist who used these concepts thought of them first as
referring to his own soul, and to the inner organic processes
corresponding to the various activities of his soul. When speaking of
Salt he meant the regulated formative activity of his thinking, based
on the salt-forming process in his nervous system. When he spoke of
Mercury he meant the quickly changing emotional life of the soul and
the corresponding activities of the rhythmic processes of the body.
Lastly, Sulphur meant the will activities of his soul and the
corresponding metabolic processes of the body. Only through studying
these functions within himself, and through re-establishing the harmony
between them which had been theirs in the beginning, and from which, he
felt, man had deviated in the course of time, did the alchemist hope to
come to an understanding of their counterparts in the external cosmos.
Older alchemical writings, therefore, can be understood only if
prescriptions which seem to signify certain chemical manipulations are
read as instructions for certain exercises of the soul, or as advices
for the redirection of corresponding processes in the body. For
instance, if an alchemist gave directions for a certain treatment of
Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, with the assertion that by carrying out
these directions properly, one would obtain Aurum (gold), he really
spoke of a method to direct the thinking, feeling and willing
activities of the soul in such a way as to gain true Wisdom.1
*
As in the case of the concepts constituting the doctrine of the four
elements, we have represented here the basic alchemical concepts not
only because of their historical significance, but because, as
ingredients of a still functional conception of nature, they assume new
significance in a science which seeks to develop, though from different
starting-points, a similar conception. As will be seen in our further
studies, these concepts prove a welcome enrichment of the language in
which we must try to express our readings in nature.
1 Roger Bacon in the thirteenth, and Berthold Schwartz in the
fourteenth century, are reputed to have carried out experiments by
mixing physical salt (in the form of the chemically labile saltpetre)
with physical sulphur and - after some initial attempts with various
metals - with charcoal, and then exposing the mixture to the heat of
physical fire. The outcome of this purely materialistic interpretation
of the three alchemical concepts was not the acquisition of wisdom, or,
as Schwartz certainly had hoped, of gold, but of ... gunpowder!