Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/256

 compounded, may exhibit, in the last analysis they will be found due to the ability of such matter to receive activity from substance of a still higher degree, and to emit that activity transformed by its own organization.

Life flows from the Lord through the inmost into the intermediates or interior things, and through intermediates or interiors into the exterior according to the order in which discrete degrees succeed; and there life stops in the ultimate or exterior: hence it is that all interior things are present together in their ultimates. The successive order in which things come forth gives rise to simultaneous order, in which the inmost remains the center, the intermediates or interiors encompass the center, and exteriors or ultimates are the circumference. This is true not only in general, but in each particular thing. Since all interior things are simultaneously present in their ultimates, it appears that life is in the ultimate, or in nature and its material forms. From such appearances materialistic philosophy is constructed. Scientists have prosecuted research on the plane of continuous degrees of the ultimates, and they have thereby failed to penetrate to interior things of discrete degree. Conse-