298. As every substance or any kind of matter is a composition of various other substances or energies, then these energies will determine the character of that substance's particular reaction. One of the energies of which a substance is composed may be present in such a high degree that it completely dominates the other energies in that substance, and so, to a considerable extent, it is that particular energy which will characterize the substance's reaction. The energies can also be of equal strength and the reaction will again immediately be characterized by that. The energy, or reactive potential of every substance will thus always depend on the mutual relationship between the substances or energies of which it is composed. Therefore every substance will forever react in exactly its own specific way. Should it not react in its own specific way, it will always be apparent that within its composition there are already present some types of energy foreign to it whose presence has brought about a change in the normal reaction.
      Because every substance composed from the same prescription will react in the same way for all eternity, there now comes to light as a fact an equally eternal law. This law is recognized, for instance, by the knowledge that salt, sugar, vinegar, dynamite – indeed every existing substance in the Universe – each has its own specific characteristic, different from all others. As we shall see later, the whole life of the consciousness or mental process is also part of the actual substances and matter of the Universe and furthermore the looks, talents, sensory faculties and character of every living being, as well as its purely physical state and manifestation, are all due to this law. Thereby the same law becomes fundamental for the creation of all peoples' characteristics, their nationality and their frontiers, their culture and intellectual standard, their peace-loving or warlike tendencies, their dictatorships or their democracies.
      Whether one is religious or not, whether one is a free-thinker or a missionary, whether a saint or a sinner, one is forced to recognize that all those special faculties of reaction which belong to all substances in the Universe signify the irrefutable fact that the whole of existence – life itself – is based upon an all-embracing plan.
      In that every substance has its own specific ability to react, then it is this ability which is indisputably the mission of that substance. With its particular form, character and mode of operation it releases a special purpose in the interplay of energies or forces which constitute the whole of the Universe. Each one of its details, in microcosmos just as in macrocosmos, constitutes an absolutely irrefutable product of the exact precision with which all substances obey the above law, which consequently is in itself the foundation of all existence, the very basic law of life. In this way one can understand better the saying in the Bible that the hairs of our head are numbered and that not a sparrow falls to the ground without it being the will of God.