Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/211

 infilled by instruction and experience. The seat of consciousness is in the Sensual plane of the infant, and with development it ascends to the Scientific, and then to the Rational. If spiritual development then takes place, it ascends as the planes of the Spiritual Mind are successively opened; but if the planes of the Natural Mind are perverted, the seat of consciousness descends as the planes are respectively defiled. Since higher things or inmosts descend to ultimates, and subsist there in simultaneous order as one, all delights descend to the sensual plane, and are there in their fulness; but as the higher planes of the mind are opened, the seat of consciousness ascends, ennobling sensations until from merely corporeal they become the delights of Divine external order, then the delights of love to the neighbor, and lastly the delights of supreme love to the Lord.

The influx of vitality descends from the mind into the spiritual body, and operates its organs. The purest substance in the natural body, which is the first material vesture of the mind, receives activity from the mind. This nervous fluid acts upon the nerves; the nerves act upon the muscles, and the muscular system acts upon the bones.