Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/271

 from which the gas was originally derived, as from the activity of ether and aura.

The force in any plane of nature is derived from influx from a higher plane of substance. An atom of gas has of itself no more power to lift itself up from the grain of powder and to assume more intense vibrations than has a rock to do the same. Yet the rock will not explode, while the powder will, because the constituency of the powder is such as more readily to receive influx. All nature is every moment dependent for its energy upon an influx of activity from the spiritual world, which, being nearer the Creator, is actuated from Him.

The subtilty with which force is transformed has led to the frequent inference that there is such a thing as force apart from substance; and the misapprehension of the nature of force operative in matter has caused a consequent misunderstanding in regard to force in the mind and in the body of man; like the belief that the forces of heat, light, and of material motion in general, become in the mind modes of consciousness. Into this error Spencer and his school have fallen, as is evident from his final conclusion in