Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/270

 substances, the more active and more capable do they become. The atmosphere will eat away the hardest wood, and even the metals are consumed by it. The atoms of gases are known to be in greater activity than atoms of rock. Electricity will decompose water as well as rend asunder the hardest oak, and melt down bars of brass. In short, the more interior the atmosphere the more powerfully active it is. The lower planes of substances being formed from and through the higher, and held out and in form by them, the higher continually exercise a force upon and within the lower. The nearer the lower substances come to the freedom of the higher, which operate upon and within the lower, the more adapted they are to take up the activity of the higher. When all restraining influences are removed from the lower, the lower substance takes upon itself immediately an activity corresponding with the activity of the higher as perfectly as its lower form will allow. To illustrate; the atoms of gas condensed in a grain of powder, being loosened, assume instantly the vibration of the gas in its natural state, hence comes the expansion. The force of expansion comes from the activity of the gas-atoms. The activity of the gas-atoms is from a force constantly imparted to them from the activity of an atmosphere more interior and