NEUOFFENBARUNGThe composition of intelligence properties in living beings (8 March 1847)
1. When the metal iron is hammered, it becomes elastic. This elasticity is also a propertyum from above, and is identical with an orderly will-power which does not change from one day to the next. If this power is deflected by any available means, it will immediately revert to it’s former direction. This property force is one of the most widespread in the lower air sphere, and penetrates every atom of the air; that is why the air itself is elastic in the highest degree.
2. Even though this power comes from above, it penetrates the entire earthly globe, and it is the main reason for all movement within and upon it. It is the actual principle that causes movement and elasticity in all bodies. Only in fire does it wane, because it is set into a too great activity – but this most important power cannot perish. When red-hot iron seemingly loses it, the elastic power returns as soon as the iron has cooled off and is hammered again.
3. This propertyum is related to the light, because it consists of pure light atoms; According to the form it is spherical, or even better said: This propertyum is carried in an admittedly extremely small and highly transparent vesicle, which penetrates into all pores of the matter; If, as in the case of iron, the pores are rubbed and closed by hammering, so that these elastic propertyal bubbles cannot escape when this metal is bent, they immediately make their powerful presence felt when the iron is bent, and do not let it rest in the direction in which it was bent, but immediately drive it back again in that direction which is most corresponding to it's pressed position.
4. Several naturalists have called these atoms of light “ætheric light monads.” The designation is correct, because the term “monad” signifies “the valence of one of a property kind.” Since this propertyum originates from the light, it is highly peculiar, particularly in its intellectual sphere. It loves rest and seeks it with the greatest persistence. And for the reason that the very principle of peacefulness lies within itself, in every restriction and oppression, seeking the previous state of rest, it exerts the greatest moving force, which nothing can resist when it has been brought out of it's equilibrium by something.
5. Behold, this is therefore again a new propertyum – that is, a new intelligence in this metal, and it manifests itself in the apparently dead metal in the same way as it does in plants and animals; but from this it again follows that iron cannot possibly be a dead body, since one and the same intellectual force is active in it just as it is in animals, if it is excited by the right means.
6. In what does this property consist, then, so completely? In a small spark of light, incomprehensible to you, in the aforementioned bubble; this small spark of light is a psychological intelligence of persistent will, and remains quiet in it's little dungeon as long as it is not offended by any push or pressure; but if it is offended, then it awakens in it's shell, and breaks open it's walls, as the air does the walls of a bubble when it comes into it. If the pressure or impact is only slight and weak, it's existence is evidenced by a tremor, from which the sound usually originates. If, however, the pressure or impact becomes more violent, it tears it's shells and sparks forth as brightly shining sparks of fire; hence, in fire, too, this propertyum appears freely and destroys everything that comes in it's way.
7. I think, now that you have become acquainted with these propertys and have seen that they are really present in this metal just as they are in the plant- and animal kingdoms, what is to prevent us from assuming with just cause that animal life is also present in the metals and other minerals as well as in the animals themselves? For the individual intelligences are always the same, whether in minerals, plants or animals, only with the difference that in minerals, only very few intelligences appear united, while in plants, and especially in the more developed animal kingdom, a far greater quantity is already present; Where the mineral counts about 8, 9, 10, at the most up to 20 intelligences, there are already
many thousands with some plants, with some animals many millions and millions of times millions, and with the human being, countless amounts from all stars and from all atomic particles of the earth.
8. The more or less, however, does not exclude the animal life in the minerals, and that not because firstly, these intellectual propertya reveal themselves in all kinds of living animal forms to the armed eye of an explorer, and because secondly, these intelligences in the metals and minerals are the same to a hair as in the animals.
9. If you had such a microscope, which would magnify the objects about six million times, you would discover by means of this microscope in a single drop of water, an enormous number of the rarest animal forms; These forms are nothing but carriers of various individual intelligences, which continually meet in hostility, seize each other, and seemingly destroy each other; but in their place, a new form soon takes it's place, which absorbs all the earlier ones and, as it were, consumes them; when such a form has saturated itself sufficiently, it comes to rest and sinks to the bottom.
10. But when then an innumerable number of such figures have come to rest and have sunk, then they adhere firmly to each other in the rest as most related beings, and behold, out of it an apparently dead matter becomes for your eye. But it is by no means so; It is only a trapped number of individual intelligences, which can be dissolved and come to life again, and combined into another form, which work, as you already know, our already very well known spirits perform in exactly the same way as we have observed them in their activity in the plant kingdom.
11. And after we have thoroughly gone through this introduction, we want to go to the animal kingdom and see how the spirits work there.