For Bachelard, the earth is not a passive backdrop but an "initiating" force that provokes the human will. Unlike the "formal imagination," which only skim the surface of objects for their aesthetic novelty, the material imagination digs into the substance itself. Oregon Institute for Creative Research The Dialectic of Resistance
One of the most beautiful sections involves the “reverie of the miner.” Bachelard analyzes how the descent into mines (the underworld) is a metaphor for a will that penetrates. To extract metal from ore is to engage in a : purifying the impure, hardening the soft. He quotes alchemists and poets like Virgil and Rilke to show that the sword or the plowshare is born first as a dream of resistance .
Philosophical significance
The Weight of Will