Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/292

 their discrete degrees perpetually dwell in simultaneous order, and are ever ready to take up their full movement when the particles of the kernel are softened, loosened, and properly conditioned. To prove it, it is only necessary to plant the seed; when they will show themselves by unfolding their full powers in a new tree.

Since the forces in matter have not the intelligence displayed in plant formation, and forces can not exist apart from substance, it is beyond question that there are substances coordinate with the forces of plant life. These substances could not give the plant definite shape if they did not form a correlative organism within the seed, which is in touch with the realm of plant life-force. The material part of the seed is a little ladder ascending up to the spiritual counterpart. There are the bur, the shell, the kernel, the oily fluid, and the purest essence of the seed, which, under favorable circumstances, can take up fully the activity of plant life. The spiritual part is a like structure reaching upward in the spiritual world, not by extending through space, but by interior organization. The seed, then, is composed of two parts, the lower or material, and the higher or spiritual. The lower is a series of degrees ascending in nature, and in Correspondence with its degrees. The higher part is a like