'Radiant Matter'
When man in the state of world-onlooker undertook to form a dynamic
picture of the nature of matter, it was inevitable that of all the
qualities which belong to its existence he should be able to envisage
only those pertaining to gravity and electricity. Because his
consciousness, at this stage of its evolution, was closely bound up
with the force of gravity inherent in the human body, he was unable to
form any conception of levity as a force opposite to gravity. Yet,
nature is built bipolarically, and polarity-concepts are therefore
indispensable for developing a true understanding of her actions. This
accounts for the fact that the unipolar concept of gravity had
eventually to be supplemented by some kind of bipolar concept.
Now, the only sphere of nature-phenomena with a bipolar character
accessible to the onlooker-consciousness 'was that of electricity. It
was thus that man in this state of consciousness was compelled to
picture the foundation of the physical universe as being made up of
gravity and electricity, as we meet them in the modern picture of the
atom, with its heavy electro-positive nucleus and the virtually
weightless electro-negative electrons moving round it.
Once scientific observation and thought are freed from the limitations
of the onlooker-consciousness, both gravity and electricity appear in a
new perspective, though the change is different for each of them.
Gravity, while it becomes one pole of a polarity, with levity as the
opposite pole, still retains its character as a fundamental force of
the physical universe, the gravity-levity polarity being one of the
first order. Not so electricity. For, as the following discussion will
show, the electrical polarity is one of the second order; moreover,
instead of constituting matter as is usually believed, electricity
turns out to be in reality a product of matter.
*
We follow Goethe's line when, in order to answer the question, 'What is
electricity?' we first ask, 'How does electricity arise?' Instead of
starting with phenomena produced by electricity when it is already in
action, and deriving from them a hypothetical picture, we begin by
observing the processes to which electricity owes its appearance. Since
there is significance in the historical order in which facts of nature
have come to man's knowledge in the past, we choose as our
starting-point, among the various modes of generating electricity, the
one through which the existence of an electric force first became
known. This is the rousing of the electric state in a body by rubbing
it with another body of different material composition. Originally,
amber was rubbed with wool or fur.
By picturing this process in our mind we become aware of a certain
kinship of electricity with fire, since for ages the only known way of
kindling fire was through friction. We notice that in both cases man
had to resort to the will-power invested in his limbs for setting in
motion two pieces of matter, so that, by overcoming their resistance to
this motion, he released from them a certain force which he could
utilize as a supplement to his own will. The similarity of the two
processes may be taken as a sign that heat and electricity are related
to each other in a certain way, the one being in some sense a
metamorphosis of the other. Our first task, therefore, will be to try
to understand how it is that friction causes heat to appear in manifest
form.
There is no friction unless the surfaces of the rubbed bodies have a
structure that is in some way interfered with by the rubbing, while at
the same time they offer a certain resistance to the disturbance. This
resistance is due to a characteristic of matter, commonly called
cohesion. Now we know that the inner coherence of a physical body is
due to its point-relationship, that is to the gravitational force bound
up with it. Indeed, cohesion increases as we pass from the gaseous,
through the liquid, to the solid state of matter.
Whilst a body's cohesion is due to gravity, its spatial extendedness
is, as we have seen, due to levity. If we reduce the volume of a piece
of physical matter by means of pressure, we therefore release
levity-forces previously bound up in it, and these, as always happens
in such cases, appear in the form of free heat. Figuratively speaking,
we may say that by applying pressure to matter, latent levity is
pressed out of it, somewhat like water out of a wet sponge.
The generation of free heat by friction rests on quite similar grounds.
Obviously, friction always requires a certain pressure. This alone,
however, would not account for the amount of heat easily produced by
friction. To the pressure there is in this case added a certain measure
of encroachment upon the unity of the material substance. In the case
of friction between two solid bodies, this may go so far that particles
of matter are completely detached from the cohesive whole. The result
is an increase in the number of single mass-centres on the earth, as
against the all-embracing cosmic periphery. This diminishes the hold of
levity on the total amount of physical matter present on the earth.
Again, the levity thus becoming free appears as external heat. (In the
reverse case when, for instance through melting, a number of single
physical bodies become one, free heat becomes latent.)
Both the diminishing of spatial extension and the breaking up of a
whole into parts entail an increase in the quality 'dry'. This applies
not only in the sense that the parts which have become independent
units are 'dry' in relation to each other - formerly coherent matter
being turned into dust - but also in the other sense, and one valid in
both cases, that levity and gravity are losing part of their previous
inter-connexion. If this twofold process of 'becoming dry' reaches a
certain intensity, the substances concerned, provided they are
inflammable, begin to burn, with the result that dry heat escapes and
dry ash is formed. We note that in each case we are dealing with a
change in the relationship between the poles of a polarity of the first
order.
We will now apply this picture of the process of friction to the
instance when, as a result of this action, electricity appears.
Originally the evoking of the electric condition was ascribed solely to
the nature of amber, the only substance known to possess this property.
To-day we know that not the amber alone, but its coming together with
another substance of different nature, in this instance an animal
substance of the nature of hair or silk, is required. Whatever
substances we use for friction, they must always be different in
nature, so as to allow both kinds of electricity to appear at once.
Which of the two kinds imposes its presence the more strongly upon the
observer depends on purely extraneous conditions which have nothing to
do with the process itself.
Obviously, if we wish to understand the qualitative difference between
the two kinds of electricity, we must investigate the qualitative
difference in the material substances, which give rise to electricity
when they are rubbed together. We shall again follow the historical
line by examining the two substances which first taught man the polar
nature of electricity. They are glass and resin, after which, as we
mentioned, the two electricities were even named in the beginning.
Our functional conception of matter, developed earlier (Chapter XI),
allows us to recognize in these two substances representatives of the
Salt-Sulphur polarity. Indeed, glass as a mineral substance, which
actually owes its specific character to the presence of silicon in it,
clearly stands on the phosphoric-crystalline side, while resin, being
itself a sort of 'gum', on the sulphurous-volcanic side. In fact,
sulphur itself was soon found to be a particularly suitable substance
for producing 'resin'-electricity.
Now the usual way of producing one kind of electricity is by rubbing
resin (or sulphur, or ebonite) with wool or fur, and the other by
rubbing glass with leather. At first sight, it does not seem as if the
two counter-substances represent the required alchemic counter-poles to
resin and glass. For both hair and leather are animal products and
therefore seem to be of like nature. Closer inspection, however, shows
that they do obey the rule. For hair, like all horny substances, is a
dead product of external secretion by the animal organism. An
ur-phenomenal example of it, showing its kinship to glass-like
substances, is the transparent cornea of the eye, close to the
crystal-lens. Leather, on the other hand, is a product of the
hypodermic part of the body and, as such, belongs to those parts of the
organism which are filled with blood, and, therefore, permeated with
life. (Note as a characteristic of leather that it requires a special
treatment, tanning, to make it as immune from decay as hair is by
nature.) Hair and leather, therefore, represent in themselves a
salt-sulphur polarity, and thus fulfil the corresponding function when
brought together with resin or glass respectively.
What is true for the particular substances which originally led man to
discover the dual nature of electricity, holds good equally for any
pair of substances capable of assuming the electric state when rubbed
against each other. If we examine from this point of view the series of
such substances, as usually given in the textbooks on electricity, we
shall always find a substance of extreme salt-character at the one end,
and one of extreme sulphur-character at the other, the substances as a
whole forming a gradual transition from one extreme to the other. Which
kind of electricity appears on each, when submitted to friction,
depends on whether the counter-substance stands on its right or left,
in the series. It is the particular relation between the two which
makes them behave in one way or the other.
There are cases which seem to elude this law, and investigation has
shown that other characteristics of the rubbed bodies, such as surface
quality, can have a modifying influence. For lack of a guiding idea
they are treated in the textbooks as 'irregularities'. Observation led
by a true polarity concept shows that in these cases also the rule is
not violated. In this respect, interesting information can be gained
from the observations of J. W. Ritter (1776-1810), an ingenious
Naturphilosoph from the circle round Goethe, but to whom, also,
physical science is indebted for his discovery of the ultra-violet part
of the spectrum and of galvanic polarization. Among his writings there
is a treatise on electricity, giving many generally unknown instances
of frictional electricity which are in good accord with our picture and
well worth investigating. According to Ritter, even two crystalline
substances of different hardness, such as Calcite and quartz, become
electric when rubbed together, the softer playing the part of 'resin'
and the harder that of 'glass'.
These few facts connected with the generation of frictional electricity
are enough to allow us to form a picture of the nature of the polarity
represented by the two kinds of electricity.
We remember that in the case of the generation of heat through
friction, as a result of an encroachment upon the cohesion of the
material body involved, the relationship between levity and gravity in
it changes from 'moist' to 'dry' and that the effect of this is the
appearance of 'fire' and 'dust' as poles of a primary polarity. This
process, however, is altered when the bodies subjected to friction are
opposed to each other in the sense of a salt-sulphur polarity. The
effect then is that the liberated levity, under the influence of the
peculiar tension between the two bodies, remains bound in the realm of
substance and becomes itself split up polarically.
Clearly, then, in the case of electrical polarity we encounter a
certain form of gravity-bound levity, and this in a twofold way. Owing
to the contrasting nature of the two bodies involved in the process,
the coupling of gravity and levity is a polar one on both sides. The
electrical polarity thus turns out to be itself of the nature of a
secondary polarity.
Two more recently discovered means of evoking the electric condition in
a piece of matter confirm this picture. They are the so-called
piezo-electricity and pyro-electricity. Both signify the occurrence of
the electrical polarity at the two ends of an asymmetrically built
(hemimorphous) crystal, as the result of changing the crystal's spatial
condition. In piezo-electricity the change consists in a diminution of
the crystal's volume through pressure; in pyro-electricity, in an
increase of the crystal volume by raising its temperature. The
asymmetry of the crystal, due to a one-sided working of the forces of
crystallization, plays the same role here as does the alchemic
opposition between the two bodies used for the production of frictional
electricity.
*
It is typical of the scientist of the past that he was dependent on
phenomena brought about by a highly developed experimental technique
for becoming aware of certain properties of the electrical force,
whereas for the realistic observer these properties are revealed at
once by the most primitive electric phenomena. We remember Eddington's
description of the positron as 'negative material', and his subsequent
remarks, which show the paradoxical nature of this concept if applied
to the hypothetical interior of the atom (Chapter IV). The quite
primitive phenomenon of electrical repulsion and attraction shows us
the same thing in a manner of which it is not difficult to form a
conception.
Modern physics itself, with the help of Faraday's field-concept,
describes these phenomena as caused by pressure - resulting from the
meeting in space of two similar electrical fields - and suction -
resulting from the meeting of two dissimilar fields. In the first case
the space between the two electrically charged bodies assumes a degree
of density, as if it were filled with some elastic material. In the
second instance the density of the space where the two fields
intermingle is lower than that of its surroundings. Here, clearly, we
have a state of negative density which acts on the electrically charged
bodies just as a lowering of pressure acts on a gas: in both cases
movement occurs in the direction leading from the higher to the lower
density. Electricity thus shows itself capable of producing both
gravity and levity effects, thereby once more confirming our picture of
it.
*
Our next task will be to examine the galvanic form of generating
electricity, in order to gain further light on our picture of the
electrical polarity.
Galvanism, as it became established through Volta's work, rests on
certain properties of the metallic substances of the earth. Compared
with the substances which may be used for producing electricity through
friction, the metals hold a mid-position. They are all essentially
mercurial substances. (In quicksilver, which for this reason was given
the name 'mercury' by the alchemists, this fact comes to an
ur-phenomenal appearance.) Among the many facts proving the mercurial
nature of the metals, there is one of particular interest to us. This
is their peculiar relationship to the processes of oxidation and
reduction.
Metals, in their metallic state, are bearers of latent levity, which
can be set free either through combustion or through corrosion. They
differ from one another by their relative degree of eagerness to enter
into and remain in the metallic, that is, the reduced state, or to
assume and keep the state of the oxide (in which form they are found in
the various metallic oxides and salts). There are metals such as gold,
silver, etc., for which the reduced state is more or less natural;
others, such as potassium, sodium, etc., find the oxidized state
natural and can be brought into and kept in the reduced state only by
artificial means. Between these extremes there are all possible degrees
of transition, some metals more nearly resembling the 'noble', others
more nearly the 'corrosive', metals.
We remember that it was the different relationship of sulphur and
phosphorus to reduction and oxidation which led us to envisage them as
ur-phenomenal representatives of the alchemic polarity. We may
therefore say that there are metals which from the alchemic point of
view more nearly resemble sulphur, others more nearly phosphorus,
whilst others again hold an intermediary position between the extremes.
It is on these differences among the various metals that their galvanic
properties are based.
Let us from this point of view contemplate the following series of
chemical elements, which is a representation of the so-called voltaic
series:
Graphite, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, Iron, Tin, Lead, Zinc,
Aluminium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium.
Any two of these metals constitute a voltaic cell. Its electromotive
force is determined by the distance in the series between the metals
used. Just as in the case of frictional electricity, the kind of
electricity which is supplied by a certain metal depends on whether the
other metal with which it is coupled stands to the right or to the left
of it in the series.1
Let us now see what happens in a galvanic cell when the two different
metals are simultaneously exposed to the chemical action of the
connecting fluid. Each metal by itself would undergo oxidation with
greater or less intensity, and the calorific energy hidden in it would
become free in the form of heat. This process suffers a certain
alteration through the presence of the second metal, which sets up an
alchemic tension between the two. Instead of a proper segregation of
the primary polarity, heat-dust (in this case, heat-oxide), the heat
remains matter-bound and appears on the surface of the two metals in a
secondarily split form as positive and negative electricity.
The similarity between this process and the frictional generation of
electricity is evident.
*
Our observations have shown that the emergence of the electric state,
whether it be caused by friction or galvanically, depends on matter
entering into a condition in which its cohesion is loosened - or, as we
also put it, on its being turned into 'dust' - and this in such a way
that the escaping levity remains dust-bound. This picture of
electricity now enables us to give a realistic interpretation of
certain phenomena which, in the interpretation which the physicist of
the past was bound to give them, have contributed much to the
tightening of the net of scientific illusion.
Some sixty years after Dalton had established, purely hypothetically,
the theory of the atomistic structure of matter, scientific research
was led to the observation of actual atomistic phenomena. Crookes found
electricity appearing in his tubes in the form of discrete particles,
with properties hitherto known only as appertaining to mass. What could
be more natural than to take this as evidence that the method of
thought developed during the past era of science was on the right
course?
The same phenomena appear in quite a different light when we view them
against the background of the picture of electricity to which our
observations have led. Knowing that the appearance of electricity
depends on a process of atomization of some sort, we shall expect that
where electricity becomes freely observable, it will yield phenomena of
an atomistic kind. The observations of electricity in a vacuum,
therefore, yield no confirmation whatsoever of the atomistic view of
matter.
The same is true of the phenomena bound up with radioactivity, which
were discovered in direct consequence of Crookes's work. We know that
the naturally radioactive elements are all in the group of those with
the highest atomic weight. This fact, seen together with the
characteristics of radioactivity, tells us that in such elements
gravity has so far got the upper hand of levity that the physical
substance is unable to persist as a spatially extended, coherent unit.
It therefore falls asunder, with the liberated levity drawn into the
process of dispersion. Seen thus, radioactivity becomes a symptom of
the earth's old age.
*
Before entering into a discussion of the question, which naturally
arises at this point, as to how levity and gravity by their two
possible ways of interaction - 'sulphurous' or 'saline' - determine the
properties of so-called positive and negative electricity, we shall
first study the third mode of generating electricity, namely, by
electromagnetic induction. Along this way we shall arrive at a picture
of the magnetic force which corresponds to the one already obtained of
electricity. This will then lead us to a joint study of the nature of
electric polarity and magnetic polarity.
The discovery of the phenomena we call electromagnetic depended on the
possibility of producing continuous electrical processes. This arose
with Volta's invention. When it became necessary to find a concept for
the process which takes place in an electric conductor between the
poles of a galvanic cell, the concept of the 'current', borrowed from
hydrodynamics, suggested itself. Ever since then it has been the rule
to speak of the existence of a current within an electric circuit; its
strength or intensity is measured in terms of a unit named in honour of
Ampere.
This concept of the current has had a fate typical of the whole
relation of human thought to the facts connected with electricity. Long
after it had been coined to cover phenomena which in themselves betray
no movement of any kind between the electrical poles, other phenomena
which do in fact show such movements became known through Crookes's
observations. Just as in the case of atomism, they seemed to prove the
validity of the preconceived idea of the current. Soon, however,
radiant electricity showed properties which contradicted the picture of
something flowing from one pole to the other. The cathode rays, for
instance, were found to shoot forth into space perpendicularly from the
surface of the cathode, without regard to the position of the anode. At
the same time Maxwell's hydrodynamic analogy (as our historical survey
has shown) led to a view of the nature of electricity by which this
very analogy was put out of court. By predicting certain properties of
electricity which come to the fore when its poles alternate rapidly, he
seemed to bring electricity into close kinship with light. Mathematical
treatment then made it necessary to regard the essential energy process
as occurring, not from one pole to the other, but at right angles to a
line joining the poles (Poynting's vector). This picture, however,
satisfactory though it was in the realm of high frequency, failed as a
means of describing so-called direct-current processes.
As a result of all this the theory of electricity has fallen apart into
several conceptual realms lying, as it were, alongside one another,
each consistent in itself but lacking any logical connexion with the
others. Although the old concept of the electric current has long lost
its validity, scientific thought (not to speak of the layman's) has not
managed to discard it. To do this must therefore be our first task, if
we want to attain to a realistic picture of electromagnetism.
*
While keeping strictly to the historical order of things, we shall try
first to form a picture of what happens when we connect two
electrically charged bodies by a conductor. We know that we rightly
describe the change of the dynamic properties of the part of space, in
which the two bodies are present, by saying that a certain electric
field prevails in it. This field possesses different 'potentials' at
its various points and so there exists a certain potential difference
between the two electric charges. What then happens when a so-called
'conductor' is brought into such a field?
From the point of view of the field-concept, conductivity consists in
the property of a body not to allow any change of potential along its
surface. Such a surface, therefore, is always an equipotential. In the
language of alchemy, conductivity is a mercurial property. In the
presence of such a body, therefore, no Salt-Sulphur contrasts can
obtain. In view of what we found above as the mean position of the
metals in the alchemic triad, it is significant that they, precisely,
should play so outstanding a role as electrical conductors.
If we keep to pure observation, the only statement we can make
concerning the effect produced by the introduction of such a body into
the electric field is that this field suddenly disappears. We shall see
later in which direction this vanishing occurs. For the present it is
sufficient to have formed the picture of the disappearance of the
electrical condition of space as a result of the presence of a body
with certain mercurial properties.
Nothing else, indeed, happens when we make the process continuous by
using a galvanic source of electricity. All that distinguishes a
galvanic cell from the sources of electricity used before the time of
Volta is its faculty of immediately re-establishing the field which
prevails between its poles, whenever this field becomes extinguished by
the presence of a conductor. Volta himself saw this quite correctly. In
his first account of the new apparatus he describes it as 'Leyden jars
with a continuously re-established charge'. Every enduring electrical
process, indeed, consists in nothing but a vanishing and
re-establishment of the electrical field with such rapidity that the
whole process appears continuous.
Here, also, pure observation of the effect of a conductor in an
electric field tells us that its action consists in the annihilation of
the field. There is no phenomenon which allows us to state that this
process takes place along the axis of the conductor. If we wish to
obtain a picture of the true direction, we must consider the condition
of space which arises in place of the electric condition that has
disappeared.
With the possibility of turning the cancellation of the electrical
condition of space into a continuous process, it became possible to
observe that the neutralization of electric charges entails the
appearance of heat and magnetism. We must now ask which are the
qualities of electricity on the one hand, and of heat and magnetism on
the other, which account for the fact that where electricity
disappears, the two latter forces are bound to appear. Since magnetism
is the still unknown entity among the three, we must now deal with it.
*
Unlike electricity, magnetism was first known in the form of its
natural occurrence, namely as a property of certain minerals. If we
follow the same course which led us to start our study of electricity
with the primitive process of generating it, we shall turn now to the
basic phenomenon produced by a magnetic field already in existence.
(Only when we have learnt all we can from this, shall we proceed to ask
how magnetism comes into being.) Obviously, we shall find this basic
phenomenon in the effect of a magnet on a heap of iron filings.
Let us, to begin with, compare a mass of solid iron with the same
quantity of it in powdered form. The difference is that the powder
lacks the binding force which holds the solid piece together. Now lei
us expose the powdered iron to the influence of a magnet. At once a
certain ordering principle takes hold of the single particles. They no
longer lie at random and unrelated, apart from the inconspicuous
gravitational effect they exert on one another, but are drawn into a
coherent whole, thus acquiring properties resembling those of an
ordinary piece of solid matter.
Read thus, the phenomenon tells us that a part of space occupied by a
magnetic field has qualities which are otherwise found only where a
coherent solid mass is present. A magnetic piece of solid iron,
therefore, differs from a non-magnetic piece by giving rise in its
surroundings to dynamic conditions which would otherwise exist only in
its interior. This picture of the relatedness of magnetism to solidity
is confirmed by the fact that both are cancelled by heat, and increased
by cold.2
By its magnetic properties iron thus reveals itself as a substance
capable of assuming the condition of solid matter to a degree
surpassing ordinary solidity. As an exceptional kind of metal it forms
the counter-pole to mercury, in which the solid-fluid condition
characteristic of all metallic matter is as much shifted towards the
fluid as in iron it is to the solid. (Note in this respect the peculiar
resistance of iron to the liquefying effect which mercury has on the
other metals.)
This picture of magnetism enables us to understand at once why it must
occur together with heat at the place where an electric polarity has
been cancelled by the presence of a conductor. We have seen that
electricity is levity coupled in a peculiar way with gravity; it is
polarized levity (accompanied by a corresponding polarization of
gravity). An electric field, therefore, always has both qualities,
those of levity and of gravity. We saw a symptom of this in electrical
attraction and repulsion, so called; the attraction, we found, was due
to negative density, the repulsion to positive density, imparted to
space by the electrical fields present there. Now we see that when,
through the presence of a conductor, the electrical field round the two
opposing poles vanishes, in its place two other fields, a thermal and a
magnetic, appear. Clearly, one of them represents the levity-part, the
other the gravity-part, of the vanished electric field. The whole
process reminds one of combustion through which the ponderable and
imponderable parts, combined in the combustible substance, fall apart
and appear on the one hand as heat, and on the other as oxidized
substance ('ash'). Yet, between these two manifestations of heat there
is an essential qualitative difference.
Although, from our view-point, magnetism represents only one 'half of a
phenomenon, the other half of which is heat, we must not forget that it
is itself a bipolar force. Thus, despite its apparent relation to
gravity it does not represent, as gravity does, one pole of a primary
polarity, with heat as the other pole. Rather must it carry certain
qualities of levity which, together with those of gravity, appear in a
polarically opposite manner at its two poles. (Details of this will be
shown later when we come to investigate the individual qualities of the
two poles of magnetism and electricity.) Hence the heat that forms the
counterpart to magnetism cannot be pure levity either. As the result of
a certain coupling with gravity, it too has somehow remained
polarically split.
This can easily be seen by considering the following. Unlike the
levity-gravity polarity, in which one pole is peripheral and the other
point-centred, both Doles of the electrical polarity are point-centred;
both are located in physical space, and thereby determine a definite
direction within this space. It is this direction which remains a
characteristic of both the magnetic and the thermal fields. The
direction of the thermal field as much as that of the magnetic is
determined by its having as its axis the conductor joining the poles of
the antecedent electrical field. Both fields supplement each other in
that the thermal radiation forms the radii which belong to the circular
magnetic lines-of-force surrounding the conductor.3
Our picture of the process which is commonly called an electric current
is now sufficiently complete to allow us to make a positive statement
concerning the direction in which it takes place. Let us once more sum
up: In order that this process may occur, there must be present in an
electrically excited part of space a body which does not suffer the
particular polarization of space bound up with such a field. As a
result, the electrical field disappears, and in place of it appear a
thermal field and a magnetic field, both having as their axis the line
connecting the two poles. Each of them spreads out in a direction at
right angles to this fine. Obviously, therefore, it is in this radial
direction that the transformation of the electrical into the
thermo-magnetic condition of space must take place.
This picture of the electro-thermo-magnetic happening, as regards its
direction, is in complete accord with the result obtained (as indicated
earlier) by the mathematical treatment of high-frequency phenomena.
Once more we see that quite primitive observations, when properly read,
lead to findings for which scientific thought had to wait until they
were forced on it by the progress of experimental technique - as even
then science was left without a uniformly valid picture of the dynamic
behaviour of electricity.
Further, we can now see that when we apply electricity to practical
purposes, we are in fact seldom using electricity itself, but other
forces (that is, other combinations of gravity and levity) which we
make effective by making electricity disappear. The same is true of
most of the methods of measuring electricity. As a rule, the force
which sets the instrument in motion is not electricity but another
force (magnetism, heat, etc.) which appears in the place of the
vanishing electricity. Thus the so-called intensity of an electric
current is actually the intensity with which the electricity in
question disappears! Electricity serves us in our machines in the same
way that food serves a living organism: it gets itself digested, and
what matters is the resulting secondary product.
Just as alterations in the electrical condition of space give rise to
the appearance of a magnetic field, any alteration of the magnetic
state of space gives rise to the appearance of an electrical field.
This process is called electromagnetic induction. With its discovery,
the generation of electricity through friction and in the galvanic way
was supplemented by a third way. By this means the practical use of
electricity on a large scale became possible for the first time. If our
picture of the two earlier processes of generating electricity is
correct, then this third way must also fit into the picture, although
in this case we have no longer to do with any direct atomization of
physical matter. Our picture of magnetism will indeed enable us to
recognize in electromagnetic induction the same principle on which we
found the two other processes to rest.
Magnetism is polarized gravity. Hence it has the same characteristic of
tending always to maintain an existent condition. In bodies subject to
gravity, this tendency reveals itself as their inertia. It is the
inertia inherent in magnetism which we employ when using it to generate
electricity. The simplest example is when, by interrupting a 'primary
current', we induce a 'secondary current' in a neighbouring circuit. By
the sudden alteration of the electric condition on the primary side,
the magnetic condition of the surrounding space is exposed to a sudden
corresponding change. Against this the magnetic field 'puts up' a
resistance by calling forth, on the secondary side, an electrical
process of such direction and strength that the entire magnetic
condition remains first unaltered and then, instead of changing
suddenly, undergoes a gradual transformation which ideally needs an
infinite time for its accomplishment (asymptotic course of the
exponential curve). This principle rules every process of
electromagnetic induction, whatever the cause and direction of the
change of the magnetic field.
We know that electromagnetic induction takes place also when a
conductor is moved across a magnetic field in such a way that, as the
technical term goes, it 'cuts' the field's lines of force. Whereas the
process discussed above is employed in the transformer, this latter
process is used in generation of electricity by dynamo. We have seen
that a magnetic field imparts to the relevant part of space qualities
of density which otherwise prevail only in the interior of solid
masses. We remember further that the appearance of electricity, in the
two other modes of generating it, is caused by the loosening of the
coherence of the material substance. A similar loosening of the
coherence of the magnetic field takes place when its field-lines are
cut by the movement of the conductor across it. Just as heat occurs
when we move a solid object through a liquid, electricity occurs when
we move a conductor across a magnetic field. In each case we interfere
with an existing levity-gravity relationship.
*
Having established thus far the picture of both electricity and
magnetism which shows each as an outcome of certain levity-gravity
interactions, we now ask how, in particular, negative and positive
electricity on the one hand and north and south magnetism on the other
are determined by these interactions. Let us again begin with
electricity.
We remember that Galvani was led to his observations by the results of
Walsh's study of the electric fishes. While Galvani clung to the view
that in his own experiments the source of the electrical force lay
within the animal bodies, Volta saw the fallacy of that. He then
conceived the idea of imitating with purely inorganic substances the
set-up which Galvani had come upon by accident. The paradoxical result
- as he himself noticed with surprise - was that his apparatus turned
out to be a close replica of the peculiar organ with which the electric
fishes are endowed by nature. We must now take a closer view of this
organ.
The electric organ of such a fish consists of many thousands of little
piles, each made up of a very great number of plates of two different
kinds, arranged in alternating layers. The two kinds differ in
substance: in one case the plate is made from a material similar to
that present in the nervous system of animals; in the other the
resemblance is to a substance present in the muscular system, though
only when the muscles are in a state of decay. In this way the two
opposing systems of the animal body' seem to be brought here into
direct contact, repeated many thousands of times.
In the electric fishes, accordingly, sensation and will are brought
into a peculiar interrelation. For the will-pole is related to its
bodily foundation in a manner which otherwise obtains only between the
nervous system and the psychological processes co-ordinated with it.
These fishes then have the capacity to send out force-currents which
produce in other animals and in man 'concussion of the limbs', or in
extreme cases paralysis and even death. Through describing the process
in this way we realize that electricity appears here as metamorphosed
animal will, which takes this peculiar form because part of the
animal's volitional system is assimilated to its sensory system in an
exceptional manner.
It is known to-day that what nature reveals so strikingly in the case
of the electric fish, is nothing but the manifestation of a principle
at work in the bodies of all beings endowed with sensation and volition
- in corporeal terms, with the duality of a nervous and a muscular
system - and therefore at work also in the human body. Observation has
shown that the activities of these two systems in man and animal are
accompanied by the occurrence of different electric potentials in
different parts of the body. Plate A, Fig. iii, shows the distribution
of the two polar electric forces in the human body. The bent lines in
the diagram stand for curves of equal electric potential. The straight
line between them is the neutral zone. As might be expected, this line
runs through the heart. What seems less obvious is its slanting
position. Here the asymmetry, characteristic of the human body, comes
to expression.
If we remember that the nervous system represents the salt-pole, and
the metabolic system the sulphur-pole, of the human organism, and if we
take into account the relationship between levity and gravity at the
two poles, we can see from the distribution of the two electricities
that the coupling of levity and gravity at the negative pole of the
electrical polarity is such that levity descends into gravity, while at
the positive pole gravity rises into levity. Negative electricity
therefore must have somehow a 'spherical' character, and positive
electricity a 'radial'.
This finding is fully confirmed by electrical phenomena in the realm of
nature most remote from man (though it was an effort to solve the
enigma of man which led to the discovery of this realm). Since
Crookes's observations of the behaviour of electricity in a vacuum it
is common knowledge that only the negative kind of electricity occurs
as a freely radiating force (though it retains some properties of
inertia), whereas positive electricity seems to be much more closely
bound to minute particles of ponderable matter. Here again we find
gravity-laden levity on the negative side, levity-raised gravity on the
positive.
The same language is spoken by the forms in which the luminous
phenomena appear at the two poles of a Crookes tube. Fig. i on Plate A
represents the whole phenomenon as far as such a diagram allows. Here
we see on the positive side radial forms appear, on the negative side
planar-spherical forms. As symbols of nature's script, these forms tell
us that cosmic periphery and earthly centre stand in a polar relation
to each other at the two ends of the tube. (Our optical studies will
later show that the colours which appear at the anode and cathode are
also in complete accord with this.)
At this point in our discussion it is possible to raise, without risk
of confusing the issue, the question of the distribution of the two
electric forces over the pairs of substances concerned in the
generation of electricity both by friction and in the galvanic way.
This distribution seems to contradict the picture to which the
foregoing observations have led us, for in both instances the
'sulphurous' substances (resin in one, the nobler metals in the other)
become bearers of negative electricity; while the 'saline' substances
(glass and the corrosive metals) carry positive electricity. Such a
criss-crossing of the poles-surprising as it seems at first sight - is
not new to us. We have met it in the distribution of function of the
plant's organs of propagation, and we shall meet a further instance of
it when studying the function of the human eye. Future investigation
will have to find the principle common to all instances in nature where
such an interchange of the poles prevails.
While the electric field arising round an electrified piece of matter
does not allow any recognition of the absolute characteristics of the
two opposing electrical forces, we do find them revealed by the
distribution of electricity in the human body. Something similar holds
good for magnetism. Only, to find the phenomena from which to read the
absolute characteristics of the two sides of the magnetic polarity, we
must not turn to the body of man but to that of the earth, one of whose
characteristics it is to be as much the bearer of a magnetic field as
of gravitational and levitational fields. There is significance in the
fact that even to-day, when the tendency prevails to look for causes of
natural phenomena not in the macrocosmic expanse, but in the
microscopic confines of space, the two poles of magnetism are named
after the magnetic poles of the earth. It indicates the degree to which
man's feeling instinctively relates magnetism to the earth as a whole.
In our newly developed terminology we may say that magnetism, as a
polarity of the second order, represents a field of force both of whose
poles are situated within finite space, and that in the macro-telluric
mother-field this situation is such that the axis of this field
coincides more or less with the axis of the earth's physical body. Thus
the magnetic polarization of the earth as a letter in nature's script
bids us rank it alongside other phenomena which in their way are an
expression of the earth's being polarized in the north-south direction.
The Austrian geographer, E. Suess, in his great work The Countenance of
the Earth, first drew attention to the fact that an observer
approaching the earth from outer space would be struck by the onesided
distribution and formation of the earth's continents. He would notice
that most of the dry land is in the northern hemisphere, leaving the
southern hemisphere covered mainly with water. In terms of the basic
elementary qualities, this means that the earth is predominantly 'dry'
in its northern half, and 'moist' in its southern.
In this fact we have a symbol which tells us that the earth represents
a polarity of the second order, with its 'salt'-pole in the north and
its 'sulphur'-pole in the south. Hence the magnetism called 'North'
must be of saline and therefore spherical nature, corresponding to the
negative pole in the realm of electricity, while 'South' magnetism must
be of sulphurous - i.e. radial-nature, corresponding to positive
electricity. Moreover, this must hold good equally for the fields of
magnetic force generated by naturally magnetic or artificially
magnetized pieces of iron. For the circumstance that makes a piece of
matter into a magnet is simply that part of the general magnetic field
of the earth has been drawn into it. Of especial interest in this
respect is the well-known dependence of the direction of an
electrically produced magnetic field on the position of the poles of
the electric field.
*
The insight we have now gained into the nature of electricity has led
us to the realization that with every act of setting electromagnetic
energies in motion we interfere with the entire levity-gravity balance
of our planet by turning part of the earth's coherent substance into
cosmic 'dust'. Remembering our picture of radioactivity, in which we
recognized a sign of the earth's old age, we may say that whenever we
generate electricity we speed up the earth's process of cosmic ageing.
Obviously this is tremendously enhanced by the creation of artificial
radioactivity along the lines recently discovered, whereby it has now
become possible to transmute chemical elements into one another, or
even to cancel altogether their gravity-bound existence.
To see things in this light is to realize that with our having become
able to rouse electricity and magnetism from their dormant state and
make them work for us, a gigantic responsibility has devolved upon
mankind. It was man's fate to remain unaware of this fact during the
first phase of the electrification of his civilization; to continue now
in this state of unawareness would spell peril to the human race.
The fact that modern science has long ceased to be a 'natural' science
is something which has begun to dawn upon the modern scientific
researcher himself. What has thus come to him as a question finds a
definite answer in the picture of electricity we have been able to
develop. It is again Eddington who has drawn attention particularly to
this question: see the chapter, 'Discovery or Manufacture?' in his
Philosophy of Physical Science. It will be appropriate at this point to
recall his remarks, for they bear not only on the outcome of our own
present discussion, but also, as the next chapter will show, on the
further course of our studies.
Eddington starts by asking: 'When Lord Rutherford showed us the atomic
nucleus, did he find it or did he make it?' Whichever answer we give,
Eddington goes on to say, makes no difference to our admiration for
Rutherford himself. But it makes all the difference to our ideas on the
structure of the physical universe. To make clear where the modern
physicist stands in this respect, Eddington uses a striking comparison.
If a sculptor were to point in our presence to a raw block of marble
saying that the form of a human head was lying hidden in the block,
'all our rational instinct would be roused against such an
anthropomorphic speculation'. For it is inconceivable to us that nature
should have placed such a form inside the block. Roused by our
objection, the artist proceeds to verify his theory experimentally -
'with quite rudimentary apparatus, too: merely using a chisel to
separate the form for our inspection, he triumphantly proves his
theory.'
'Was it in this way', Eddington asks, 'that Rutherford rendered
concrete the nucleus which his scientific imagination had created?' One
thing is certain: 'In every physical laboratory we see ingeniously
devised tools for executing the work of sculpture, according to the
designs of the theoretical physicist. Sometimes the tool slips and
carves off an odd-shaped form which he had not expected. Then we have a
new experimental discovery,'
To this analogy Eddington adds the following even more drastic one:
'Procrustes, you will remember,' he says, 'stretched or chopped down
his guests to fit the bed he constructed. But perhaps you have not
heard the rest of the story. He measured them up before they left the
next morning, and wrote a learned paper On the Uniformity of Stature of
Travellers for the Anthropological Society of Attica.'
*
Besides yielding a definite answer to the question of how far the
seemingly discovered facts of science are manufactured facts, our newly
won insight into the nature of the electric and magnetic polarties
throws light also on the possibility of so handling both that their
application will lead no longer to a cancellation, but to a true
continuation, of nature's own creative deeds.
An example of this will appear in the next part of our studies, devoted
to observations in the field of optics.
1 Note that the series starts on the left with graphite, i.e. with
carbon. This substance appears here as a metal among metals, and indeed
as the most 'noble' of all. Electricity in this way reveals a secret of
carbon well known to the mediaeval alchemist and still known in our day
to people in the Orient.
2 There is even a gas which assumes magnetic properties when exposed to
extreme cold-oxygen in the solid state.
3 By watering plants with water that had been exposed to heat from
different sources, E. Pfeiffer has shown in the chemical laboratory of
the Goetheanum that heat engendered by means of electricity is 'dead'
heat. It follows that it is not the same for human health whether the
heat used for cooking or heating purposes is obtained by burning wood
or coal, or by means of electricity.