NEUOFFENBARUNG[Gr.01_004,01] We have yet to answer the third part of the question: why are mountains of unequal height? This third reason itself has three principal grounds. First, the high peaks must draw the upper region of air into motion around the earth. If there were too many such high mountains, too much of the upper air would be drawn along, and in time the air below would become almost permanently still.
[Gr.01_004,02] As there are only a few such heights, the upper air is compelled to turn with the earth at only a few points. The air farther from those peaks is merely set whirling in all directions. It is as when you draw a stick briskly through water: the water in front is driven along with the stick, while on either side you see many little rings and ripples following much more slowly and in their turn setting the adjoining water in motion.
[Gr.01_004,03] The rings are eddies that disturb the water down to a depth, while the ripples disturb its entire surface. A single stroke of a stick through water has often set quite a large pond in motion in time.
[Gr.01_004,04] That is a very important reason why only a small minority of mountains rise so high into the air.
[Gr.01_004,05] The second ground for this third principal reason is as follows.
[Gr.01_004,06] You will often have heard of the so-called glacier light. What is it all about?
[Gr.01_004,07] Some naturalists have explained it, rather clumsily, as lingering rays of the sun breaking over the broad northern horizon. That is entirely groundless and false. The light is purely positive and electromagnetic in nature, produced by the continual friction between the peaks and the air surrounding them.
[Gr.01_004,08] ‘Yes,’ you will say, ‘that may be so, but we still see no use in it. Even if their shining is itself the benefit, why are such great night lights set so sparingly around the earth? What good is glacier light, often hundreds of miles away, to someone living on a distant plain?’
[Gr.01_004,09] You would be right to ask if the light itself were the benefit, but with glacier light, which is comparatively scarce, that is not the case. The light is only the visible sign of a great benefit. What does that benefit consist in?
[Gr.01_004,10] Listen, and the matter will soon be clear to you.
[Gr.01_004,11] You know that a proper distribution of the electromagnetic fluid is indispensable to all natural life. If there were too many such peaks in a country, they would consume the fluid so completely that not an atom of it would reach the depths below. If there were no such high glaciated peaks, nobody below would be safe. At every step they would risk being struck dead by lightning readily forming in the air.
[Gr.01_004,12] That, then, is the real benefit of which the light is merely the visible sign.
[Gr.01_004,13] Someone may still object, ‘What benefit, then, do the broad plains of Poland, for instance, or parts of Hungary derive from the electromagnetic care of the Grossglockner?’
[Gr.01_004,14] I tell you that this glacier is so precisely situated that if it could move a single hour’s journey from its post, it would cease to be a glacier and become a bare, rocky mountain like so many others.
[Gr.01_004,15] It is a glacier solely because it stands at a point over which a principal electromagnetic current extends from the North Pole to the South Pole.
[Gr.01_004,16] The main current passes over all the glaciers of the Tyrol and Switzerland. Only an eastern branch passes where the Grossglockner stands. It takes in just enough of this current of life that, with the help of the other glaciers, it adequately governs all those lands, and its beneficial influence reaches across Europe and a considerable part of Africa.
[Gr.01_004,17] The great European plains just mentioned may have no glaciers of their own, but no current of comparable strength passes over them either. Everywhere there are smaller mountains in due proportion and number, fully able to regulate such smaller electrical currents.
[Gr.01_004,18] You will ask, ‘Why is there no single uniform current from the North Pole to the South Pole?’
[Gr.01_004,19] If you ask that, you must ask again, ‘Why does lightning never take a straight or universal course, so that it could at least strike everything down in one blow?’
[Gr.01_004,20] And you would have to ask, ‘Why does a brook, river or great stream flow only here and there, and never straight, when the rest of the plain needs water and irrigation just as much as the land along its banks?’
[Gr.01_004,21] Again you would have to ask, ‘Why are there so many large lakes in one country and not a trace of them in another?’
[Gr.01_004,22] A whole legion of questions might follow. Let these three superfluous ones suffice, first to show how much wiser I am than human beings. Being much wiser, I know best why I arranged the electromagnetic currents separately and traced out a definite course for them, along which our glaciers stand like well-placed milestones.
[Gr.01_004,23] That gives us the second ground for the third principal reason, and leaves us with a third.
[Gr.01_004,24] You will surely ask yourselves, ‘Anyone who can produce another reason must know how to add up more than five ones!’
[Gr.01_004,25] Yet I tell you that this third ground is the most important and effective. It is also the closest to you, and you would discover it first if, in natural terms, the eyes of your soul were more short-sighted than they are. Short-sightedness of the soul is a very good thing. The farther the soul can see, or the better it understands mathematics, the more it lets its eyes wander among distant fixed stars. Meanwhile it all but loses sight of the hairs around its own eye.
[Gr.01_004,26] ‘What, then, is the third ground for the third principal reason?’ you will ask.
[Gr.01_004,27] Have a little patience. I will lead you to it and see whether you cannot grasp it with your hands. Pay attention.
[Gr.01_004,28] Have you never wondered why you have only two arms, and only five fingers on each arm, or rather on each hand? Why are the arms not at least twice as long, with many more fingers?
[Gr.01_004,29] Have you never asked why you have no more than two eyes and two ears, and why they are all on just one side of the body, at least as far as the eyes are concerned? An eye on your back and perhaps an ear on one hand might come in useful.
[Gr.01_004,30] Have you never considered why a tree ordinarily has only one branch that reaches highest, while the others naturally stand lower? There are questions enough. Let us see whether they lead us to the third ground.
[Gr.01_004,31] What are your eyes for? Any child can answer: to see with, or, more precisely, to perceive the illuminated forms of things outside us.
[Gr.01_004,32] We have answered this difficult question without trouble and can see that two eyes are quite sufficient for the purpose.
[Gr.01_004,33] Now for the next difficult question. What are our ears for? Children will soon answer that too: ‘So that we can hear, or, more precisely, so that within ourselves we can perceive the movements and encounters of things outside us.’
[Gr.01_004,34] So much for that difficult answer. Experience shows that two ears are ample for the purpose. One might sooner say that many people already have too much in their two ears, as in their two eyes.
[Gr.01_004,35] Now come the hands. What are the hands for?
[Gr.01_004,36] I think we can quite properly spare ourselves an answer to that question.
[Gr.01_004,37] Experience in every age since Adam has shown more than amply that two hands suffice for every task, for with these two hands people have done, and undone, more than enough.
[Gr.01_004,38] Does the third ground still not occur to you?
[Gr.01_004,39] Listen, then. Every human and animal body, and even a tree, shrub or plant, needs certain extremities through which to enter into correspondence with the world outside. So does the earth. Our glaciers are its eyes, ears and hands. By their means it enters into all kinds of correspondence on its long journey round the sun and with the sun through the vast solar realm. First comes the important correspondence of sight, for you may believe that the planets do not travel their orbits blindly. Secondly, the earth must enter into correspondence to receive the harmonious fruits of the great movements of other worlds, of the movements of ether and light, and of currents of all kinds upon itself. Thirdly, it must use these extremities to perform the actions it needs in order to regulate its own motion, contribute to the regular motion of other worlds and carry out all the useful functions already made known to you.
[Gr.01_004,40] That is the third and, on a little reflection, surely the most important ground for the existence of such glaciers, for their being far fewer in number than other mountains, and for the places where they stand.
[Gr.01_004,41] We have now set out as much of the natural usefulness of these mountains as you need to know. Do not imagine the circle is closed. Each point made here has infinitely many useful ramifications, and each atom has a definite and quite distinctive effect.
[Gr.01_004,42] So manifold are the benefits of such a father of mountains and lands that the most perfect angelic spirit, with the readiest tongue and the simplest language, would have enough to say for a whole eternity.
[Gr.01_004,43] I need say no more. For all the natural benefits such a mountain contains, a single spiritual benefit, of which you will hear later, already outweighs them all.
[Gr.01_004,44] What follows will make perfectly clear, and in fitting brevity, all that you now scarcely dimly suspect.
[Gr.01_004,45] Let that be enough again for today.