Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/241

 natural world derives its forces and form from the spiritual world.

The forces of Divine Love or of human desire are not brought down and out in material forms by the change of one substance into another, but through the transmission of activity or endeavor from one degree to another, to effect which the spiritual and the natural creations are suitably organized. Since the organism of the soul and the body is an image of the greater organism of the spiritual and natural worlds, and since they receive and transmit forces alike, the origin of all of nature's forces is fully illustrated by the origin of force in the body.

As creation took place there was a continual decrease in the activity and the expansion of substances until there resulted the ultimate, dead, and passive matter of the earth; and since the ultimate now reaches up to the Creator by successive discrete degrees, the activity of the Creator is carried down until it terminates in grossest matter, that internal things may subsist and be contained. This activity gives each successive plane its own endeavor to realize its use. In the mind that endeavor produces affection, thought, and all mental functions; in the soul it forms the spiritual body and its organs, each with its endeavor to accomplish its use; in plants it pro-