Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/282

 system from which is self-consciousness and sensation. The brain and nervous system of animals is the receptacle of their life-force, which is manifested in the higher animals as an instinct approaching the simpler forms of reason. Man has a body, blood, and nervous system analogous to that of animals; but he has added the rational degree of the mind by which is intelligence and worship through the acknowledgment of the Creator. A difference in degree is quite universally acknowledged as existing respectively between matter, plants, animals, and man. A like difference exists between their counterparts of spiritual substance. Matter in general has back of it the unorganized substance of the spiritual world as its soul. Metals, crystals, and the like have counterparts of spiritual substance organized in analogous degrees. Plants have a counterpart organized of spiritual substances, ascending as high in the spiritual degrees as the plant does in those of nature. Animals have a counterpart ascending still higher in the degrees of the spiritual world, corresponding to the ascent in nature. And the human counterpart, called the soul, ascends still higher in the spiritual world, and so near to the Creator that it may receive human love and wisdom from His Divine Human.