NEUOFFENBARUNGSubstance and matter, power and material (2 March 1847)
1. A so-called moral saying, admittedly somewhat bad and not quite correctly describing the matter, reads: Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris [Remember man, you are dust and to dust you will return -tr]. This saying, in the word dust, indeed also denotes a total dissolution of the body, but it is incorrect in it's meaning, because everyone understands by dust those crushed earth and stone particles which the wind easily picks up and carries into the air. It can also mean the even finer sun dust, which is admittedly somewhat finer than the road dust. If the body were dissolved into such a dust, it would be of little help to it and it's soul; for the very finest dust, which can still be seen in the natural world, is nevertheless always matter, and cannot unite with the soul and the spirit as long as it still remains matter. Better than dust would be: property soul atom; such an atom is no longer material, but substantial. But between matter and substance, there is a sky-high difference.
2. In order to grasp the whole thing quite properly, you must know this difference exactly. Take a magnet, what is visible of it, that is matter; But what attracts or repels in the magnet, is substance. This substance cannot be seen with the fleshly eye; the eye alone is not the sole guide and announcer of the existence of soul- or spiritual things, but man has other senses which are closer to the soul than the sight, which is approximately the outermost sense of man. Hearing is already deeper; the smell and the taste even deeper, and completely united with the soul, is the feeling, or the sense of touch.
3. If someone then brings two magnets closer to each other, he will soon feel the mutual pull, and that is enough to draw the conclusion also for his external senses that there must be a special, even if invisible, force or substance in the magnet, which causes such a pull.
4. Here everyone easily notices the difference between matter and substance. Also with a so-called electric machine, everybody easily distinguishes the material from the substance. The glass pane, the friction pads, the metal conductor and some more bottles, are matter. When the machine stands still, nothing that approaches the machine feels any movement; but if the machine is brought into movement, then the substance resting in it and in the air is excited, and if someone approaches the machine, he immediately feels a pulling at his hair, and if he approaches even more, he will also see the substance in crackling sparks, which sometimes sting significantly, and if they are stronger, cause muscle spasms. Such an electric spark, although visible in the material time and in the material space, is however no more matter, but soul-like substance or force, which rests in the matter; if it is excited, then it expresses immediately an all-pervading force, to which no material obstacle can be opposed as inhibiting.
5. Here you have again a good example of matter and substance. Consider the gunpowder you know well, which consists of sulfur, salniter and coal dust. The grain is still and falls, like any other matter, from the height into the depth; but there is a lot of substantial force bound in the grain. If this substance is excited by something similar to it, it tears it's prison into atomic pieces in a flash and then enters the sphere of it's freedom. Fire is related to this substance and is therefore the means of it's excitation; there it also shows itself as a substantial force to which no obstacle of nature can set barriers. Thus, the substantial force is also present in water, which is excited by a high degree of heat. If someone wants to imprison this force, it will break every enclosing vessel, no matter how strong it is, and then expand in it's freedom. So there is also a substance in almost every matter; it only depends on how and by what means it can be excited in order to manifest itself.
6. The natural scientists, these not seldom very vain natural fools, have discovered certain basic forces in all matter, as there are the attracting and repelling force, of which the attracting one was assumed to be known as the cohesion or gravity, and the repelling one as the centrifugal force. In addition, the
elasticity or the expansive force, the divisibility and the penetrability of matter have been treated in a very learned way and have also been classified among the basic forces of matter; if only these learned natural geeks, as living beings themselves, had taken only one step further, and had given a place in their fascicles to the all-controlling and all-fulfilling life force, they would have long since made a quite enormous step forward in their knowledge, and would not have had to weigh and dissect dead forces, which is utter nonsense, But they would have had to deal immediately with that basic condition of all existence, in which they would have recognized themselves and all matter from the correct, only effective, true point of view already for a long time, perfectly and easily; But in this way, which is actually the most stupid and ridiculous thing, the living grope around in nothing but dead forces, and in the end they even want to prove that the living force is a mixture and composite of nothing but dead forces!
7. Oh shuddering nonsense above all nonsense! In which logic can an acting force be regarded as dead? Can there be anything more nonsensical than to submit a dead reason to certain apparent effects, which would be just as good if one assumed no reason at all for any effect; For dead is in certain respects still less than nothing, and only a thing can be regarded as dead – and that as long as it has been banished from some sphere of action; and man's soul and spirit can be dead, if they have contracted through the bad application of their trial of freedom the proper necessity to go again into that captivity, in which they are cut off from any effective work.
8. But if in and at the matter working forces are discovered, then they are not dead, but alive and intelligent; because without intelligence in one or the other certain kind, an effect can be thought just as little as without force.
9. But as the force can be recognized from the effect, so also the intelligence of the force can be recognized from the always uniformly ordered planimetric theory. Does not the growth of grass and the growth of every other plant proceed according to an inner planimetric theory, which can be easily recognized by anyone who has ever seen a plant? The same is the case with decay, and with all phenomena, to which forces must be submitted, from which everyone can easily draw the conclusion:
10. Where nothing but effects are seen, there must be just as many forces as effects; and because all these effects are organized and planned, there must also be just as many intelligences as there are forces; and from this conclusion it becomes understandable that matter consists of pure souls – thus intelligences – which can be temporarily held by higher forces and intelligences according to order and necessity. But when the time of detention is over, the individual intelligences awaken and reunite as original substance in that being in which they were originally formed out of Me, the Creator; and this reunification is then partly the work of the intelligences themselves, and partly, however, of the higher spirits already known to you.