Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/141

 from ether, constitutes the third discrete degree of material substance.

Observing the order of material substances, there is first noticed rock, the most immobile matter, serving as a basis upon which the higher substances may rest and in which they may terminate; for the active necessitates a passive. Next is water; then air; then ether; then aura. Upon this ordered form of successive degrees, more generally grouped as solids, fluids, and gases, or from within into it, the sun acts, vivifying it with sun-potencies and sun-endeavor. The sun gives heat and light to soften nature's implastic substances that they may be sensitive to the life-forces from the Creator. The life-forces from the Creator pick up the particles of matter, and weave them into mineral, plant, and animal bodies; for though matter is endowed with capillarity, osmosis, magnetism, atomicity, gravity, and kindred forces, which dissolve matter, free atoms, aid in the circulation of sap and blood, and render matter sensitive to incident forces, these forces are, as has been observed, inadequate to account for that systematic distribution of matter in forming the tree, the leaf,