Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/355

 vails. It is likewise taught in the Word; "All the souls that came out of Jacob's loins were thirty-six."

As we descend the animal scale and come to the lower forms, sex becomes more indistinct, sometimes the male and female organs of generation occurring in two individuals, and again in one, as in the aphis. As the animal kingdom approaches the vegetable, it would naturally be expected that it would take on some of the characteristics of plants. The pistillate and staminate flowers are sometimes found separate and sometimes conjoined; so in the lower animal forms, the male and female organs may appear in different individuals or conjoined in one. Whether only the functions of the male are represented in the plant and the female functions by the earth as taught by Swedenborg, or whether the male sex is represented by the staminate function, and the female by the pistillate, is not necessary to discuss here; for under either view the principle must hold true that the plant-soul is derived through the male sex and the body from the representative of the female.

At conception the initial soul clothes itself with an initial body, and proceeds to develop it. Evolu-