While the electric field arising round an electrified piece of matter
does not allow any recognition of the absolute characteristics of the
two opposing electrical forces, we do find them revealed by the
distribution of electricity in the human body. Something similar holds
good for magnetism. Only, to find the phenomena from which to read the
absolute characteristics of the two sides of the magnetic polarity, we
must not turn to the body of man but to that of the earth, one of whose
characteristics it is to be as much the bearer of a magnetic field as
of gravitational and levitational fields. There is significance in the
fact that even to-day, when the tendency prevails to look for causes of
natural phenomena not in the macrocosmic expanse, but in the
microscopic confines of space, the two poles of magnetism are named
after the magnetic poles of the earth. It indicates the degree to which
man's feeling instinctively relates magnetism to the earth as a whole.

In our newly developed terminology we may say that magnetism, as a
polarity of the second order, represents a field of force both of whose
poles are situated within finite space, and that in the macro-telluric
mother-field this situation is such that the axis of this field
coincides more or less with the axis of the earth's physical body. Thus
the magnetic polarization of the earth as a letter in nature's script
bids us rank it alongside other phenomena which in their way are an
expression of the earth's being polarized in the north-south direction.

The Austrian geographer, E. Suess, in his great work The Countenance of
the Earth, first drew attention to the fact that an observer
approaching the earth from outer space would be struck by the onesided
distribution and formation of the earth's continents. He would notice
that most of the dry land is in the northern hemisphere, leaving the
southern hemisphere covered mainly with water. In terms of the basic