Note 47 — THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I. 1867. No. 4.
Reading edition
The conclusions which may be deduced from this construction of dynamical phenomena are partly anticipated in what goes before. The following may serve for further explanation:
The chemical process, for example, in its highest perfection is a process of combustion. Now I have already shown on another occasion, that the condition of light in the body undergoing combustion is nothing else but the maximum of its positive electrical condition. For it is always the positively electrical condition that is also the combustible. Might not, then, this coexistence of the phenomenon of light with the chemical process in its highest perfection give us information about the ground of every phenomenon of light in Nature?
What happens, then, in the chemical process? Two whole products gravitate towards each other. The indifference of the individual is therefore absolutely cancelled. This absolute cancelling of indifference puts the whole body into the condition of light, just as the partial in the electric process puts it into a partial condition of light. Therefore, also the light—what seems to stream to us from the sun—is nothing else but the phenomenon of indifference cancelled at every step. For as gravity never ceases to act, its condition—antithesis—must be regarded as springing up again at every step. We should thus have in light a continual, visible appearing of gravitation, and it would be explained why, in the system of worlds, it is exactly those bodies which are the principal seat of gravity that are also the principal source of light. We should then, also, have an explanation of the connection in which the action of light stands to that of gravitation.
The manifold effects of light on the deviations of the magnetic needle, on atmospheric electricity, and on organic nature, would be explained by the very fact that light is the phenomenon of indifference continually cancelled—therefore, the phenomenon of the dynamical process continually rekindled. It is, therefore, one antithesis that prevails in all dynamical phenomena—in those of magnetism, electricity and light; for example, the antithesis, which is the condition of the electrical phenomena must already enter into the first construction of matter. For all bodies are certainly electrical.