697. There was a time in which the veins stood empty, as well as a time in which the primary valleys were empty, namely unreplenished with gneiss, mica-schist, and such like minerals.
698. Geogeny takes two directions; the one passes upon the periphery into the splitting action of light, the other into the abyss, where darkness reigns.
699. The valleys were the condition that conduced to the differentialization of the earths, because in them light had power to produce the highest polarity. By the valleys the Earthy has been separated into its principles; silex has separated into clay and talc, to which finally carbonate calcareous earths and salts succeeded.
700. The Earthy cannot subsist in its identity in the broad valleys; the earth cannot be represented as the pure symbol of gravity. All bodies that have originated upon the _surface_ of the planet are oxydes or salts.
701. If the earth-difference be generated in the illumined valleys, so must the earth-identity be produced in the dark valleys; for it is the absence of light alone that allows the purely Basic to subsist. This earth generated out of gravity is the ore.
702. The ore is a child and a treasure of darkness; where light is, it must vanish; it cannot endure its gaze. Metal when exposed to day is given up to annihilation, to oxydation.
703. Darkness is, however, no power, and can consequently be only the opportunity, not the cause of anything's happening. Other forces, instead of that of light, must have therefore operated in the production of ores. In order to discover these forces the relations of the ores must be carefully weighed or considered.
704. The ore is in a philosophic sense a reduced earth, and so reduced indeed that the basic principle has obtained the preponderance over the oxygenic or supporter of combustion, and attained unto substantiality.
705. In light, in the water forsooth when illuminated, the two earth-principles were already divided internally, but not completely separated; salt only originated, namely an acid and alkali.
706. The ore is, however, a salt wholly reduced, and indeed the reduced alkali has become metal, the reduced acid with the basis of hydrogen, Inflammable, namely, coal or sulphur.