Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/81

 mence with an opposing falsity. No number of degrees of cold can make one of heat, nor can any development of darkness make one ray of light. Further, we get no nearer the primary cause by commencing with the assumption that the worship of God originated in idolatry, for idolatry is more difficult to conceive and further separated from the first cause than is the worship of God, which it seeks to explain.

A revelation that disclosed the relation between things natural and spiritual would naturally suggest symbolism and Correspondence. The natural world being the outbirth of the spiritual, and each thing and force in it being derived from corresponding spiritual ones, the natural object was used as the symbol of the spiritual that it suggested. The fact that the human mind is a little universe in Correspondence with the greater universe, which relation in most ancient times was understood in particular, made natural forms suggestive not only of things in the spiritual world, but in the mind of man. This knowledge enabled man, in a most real way, to observe "sermons in stones, books in running brooks, and God in everything." Representatives of mental and spiritual things, which all civilized people have delighted to make, became objects of worship when the knowledge of representation or Corre-