Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/214

 and appropriating what is received according to the function and form of the receiving organism. The natural sun is simply an external agency whereby matter is raised to the degree of pliability and sensitiveness that makes it responsive to spiritual life-forces; thus the soul is enabled to form and to use the body. The sun renders matter in general plastic to spiritual forces whereby mineral, animal, and plant forms are made. There is no conversion of the substance of one discrete degree into that of another accompanying influx. The substances remain of the same discrete degree, but energy is transferred, which is made possible by the successive degrees being so slightly differentiated that adjacent ones are reciprocally communicative.

The particular adaptability for the transference of activity from one degree to another is due to the manner in which creation took place. The Creator, through His creative powers, emitted from His Divine Organism of uncreated substance that which forms the purest atmosphere that girds Him. This, by the act of creation, has life or activity in a degree less than has His own substance, for it is the first created substance. By gathering together and arranging the particles of this, by compressing them, and by withdrawing activity one degree more, a next lower