Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1695

1695. And the difference between "living" substances and "dead" ones can be only that "dead" substances are not made up of "living beings", while "living" substances constitute a whole that is made up of nothing but "living beings". While "mineral matter" is nothing but a whole or a "substance" that consists of "lifeless" power units, "vegetable" matter is a "substance" that consists partly of "living" power units and partly of "lifeless" power units. "Animal" matter, however, constitutes a "substance" that consists solely of "living" power units, that is to say, "living beings". All the Earth's human beings and other animal beings, that is to say its millions of animals, thus together constitute a particular mass or whole, which appears in the Earth's structure as a kind of "matter". All the Earth's vegetation forms in the same way a mass or whole that can also be described as a kind of "matter", just as all the Earth's mineral matter has long since been known as a specific kind of "matter". But it is of course only from a particular, specific mental point of view or from a particular perspective that these kinds of matter can be sensed or experienced as "matter". The terrestrial human beings and animals that constitute the specific units of the former kind of "matter" do not of course regard mankind and the total mass of animals as a specific kind of "matter" or "substance". They see only the "units" or specific particles of the "substance", and call them "living beings". Equally, they do not regard the entire plant world as a "substance" either. Here they also see the individual units that make up this "substance", and call them "plants". Mineral substances are quite another matter. Here they do not see the individual "units" that this "substance" is made up of, but only their total mass. And they are originally accustomed to perceiving only this mass as "substance". Only researchers or scientists have been able to perceive the units in this latter substance. And it is from this recognition or knowledge that we know the terms: atoms, electrons and so on, which are the power units that make up the substance in question.