Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/157

 and thought are predicated. The body ascends interiorly by its structure from the insensate, passive epidermis, through the tissues, blood, and nerves, to the sensitive fluids of the brain, and these are so near the vital substance of affection and thought that they receive from it corresponding activity. By virtue of the structure of degrees in the body, the affections are the life of the body, their activity being first brought down by the law of Correspondence to the material plane of the nerve fluid, and thence yielding their many potencies, and vitalizing every organ and the whole of the material body.

The natural world is so constituted that it can provide the material necessary for the formation of the body; materials for the skin, the bones, the flesh and blood, the nerves, and the nervous fluids. Since the earth, including its atmospheres, contributes from each of its degrees to the making of the body, it is evident that the body and the earth are composed of the same substance.

Upon observing the analogy of the earth's formation to that of the body, the earth and the body appear to be constructed on the same princi-