elementary qualities, this means that the earth is predominantly 'dry'
in its northern half, and 'moist' in its southern.

In this fact we have a symbol which tells us that the earth represents
a polarity of the second order, with its 'salt'-pole in the north and
its 'sulphur'-pole in the south. Hence the magnetism called 'North'
must be of saline and therefore spherical nature, corresponding to the
negative pole in the realm of electricity, while 'South' magnetism must
be of sulphurous - i.e. radial-nature, corresponding to positive
electricity. Moreover, this must hold good equally for the fields of
magnetic force generated by naturally magnetic or artificially
magnetized pieces of iron. For the circumstance that makes a piece of
matter into a magnet is simply that part of the general magnetic field
of the earth has been drawn into it. Of especial interest in this
respect is the well-known dependence of the direction of an
electrically produced magnetic field on the position of the poles of
the electric field.

*

The insight we have now gained into the nature of electricity has led
us to the realization that with every act of setting electromagnetic
energies in motion we interfere with the entire levity-gravity balance
of our planet by turning part of the earth's coherent substance into
cosmic 'dust'. Remembering our picture of radioactivity, in which we
recognized a sign of the earth's old age, we may say that whenever we
generate electricity we speed up the earth's process of cosmic ageing.
Obviously this is tremendously enhanced by the creation of artificial
radioactivity along the lines recently discovered, whereby it has now
become possible to transmute chemical elements into one another, or