303. Now one might raise the objection that this law does not seem perfect. If the substances, by virtue of this law, each have their own specific faculty of reaction or release of energy, then why could not these faculties of reaction be such that disharmony, wars, misfortunes, bodily injuries, sickness, poverty and degradation could never arise?
      For the more advanced cosmic investigator the answer is quite simple. If the law for the reaction of matter was arranged in this way, it would not be a law at all and the development of consciousness would thus be an impossibility. In order to create anything whatsoever there must be matter and this matter must be of such a kind that it makes possible the creation of that thing. It is not unimportant which substance is used when intending a particular objective. One cannot make warm clothes out of iron sheeting, nor does one use rubbish for decorating a table, nor eat sand to satisfy one's hunger. Why things are not done in this way is entirely owing to the order brought about by the law of the reaction of substances.
      It is because this law determines that every substance releases its own specific energy and has its own particular and definite characteristics that a knowledge of those characteristics becomes possible. By testing the contact between this substance's characteristic and another one's characteristic, a reaction will be set up between these two substances which will give rise to a new set of characteristics or a new release of energy whose relationship to other substances can once more be tested, and so on again and again. In this way what we call "knowledge" arises. All knowledge is thus, in reality and in its last analysis, simply information about the reaction of substances, no matter whether it is a priest's sermon in church or a lover's secret longing.
      But if the law for the reaction of substances did not determine the specific and absolute changelessness of every substance's or of every combination of substances' faculty of reaction, but allowed alteration so that hydrochloric acid, for example, sometimes functioned as drinking water and drinking water sometimes functioned as hydrochloric acid, or if all other substances in existence changed characters, then it would indeed be impossible to deal with these substances. It would be impossible to make fixed laws for creation. A combination of substances which in one case might save a life, in another case – in exactly the same situation and from exactly the same prescription – could be absolutely lethal. How would it be possible to make completely reliable prescriptions or instructions for this or that? Indeed, nothing whatsoever could be given a formula. Everything would be conditioned by the unreliability of these substances, that is their totally random changeability.
      But thanks to the law governing the reaction of substances, there is nothing in the world more reliable than this unalterable reaction of matter itself.
      It might be suggested here that the reaction of a substance can very well be altered. But how could this be done? No alteration of any kind of substance could possibly be brought about without the addition of a new energy or an alien substance. In this case its original form would cease to exist; it would have become quite a different substance and therefore would immediately have to react differently, thus confirming anew the fact that the law governing the reaction of substances is irrevocable.
      It is because this law is so irrevocable that the earthly plane of existence is full of suffering, sorrow and unhappiness, poverty and misery, mental chaos and hopelessness, but this in no way whatsoever identifies the law governing substances as imperfect; it actually emphasises to the highest degree the fact of its perfection. The imperfection which is the cause of all that unhappiness and misery is not to be sought in the law governing the reaction of substances but on the contrary is to be found in the "Something" which uses substances for the creation of its existence.