Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/148

 endeavor can have no other effort than to convert into its image the object acted upon. And indeed, the tendency of every force is to convert the substance acted upon into the form of the substance in which the force originates. Consequently the substances of the spiritual world, being in the constant endeavor to produce the image of the Creator, accomplish their effort according to the degree of the acting substance and the form in which the acting substance operates. Thus the Creator's vital action, through the successive discrete degrees in creation, in the mind of man produces love and wisdom in the human degree; in animals, their instincts; in plants, their life, and in matter, its varied properties.

The activity of the highest substance that first receives energy from the Creator, most fully reproduces His image and likeness. And however low that activity passes, it must in some degree reflect the image and likeness of its source. The partial perception of this led Professor Haeckel to declare that "The two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensation and will (though naturally of the lowest grade); they exercise an inclination for condensation,