Vegetable life, it must be remembered, is after all and at its best, the lowest form of life. When we say of a man that "He does not really live, he only vegetates," we use a proverbial form of expression that conveys no very high opinion of the man. There are three orders of natural life, the vegetable, the animal and man. They are each excellent in their order and degree. But man alone has rationality and speech. Beasts have instinct only. Vegetation, no conscious existence at all. But vegetation, when the three are symbolically compared, typifies only the first and lower germinations of spiritual endeavor and life, upon which the higher principles when they come into development will, as it were, feed.
Our spiritual life, such as it is, in this third stage of regeneration, is not a conscious spiritual life. We make endeavors, we live in a more orderly manner, we break fewer commandments, but we have no conscious life of the Lord in mind or heart. The highest type of spiritual man realizes the Divine presence in the soul; he feels that he lives from it; he basks it in its sunlight. Just what this means we will see further on in our consideration of the parable of creation. But he who is only beginning this better life feels his efforts as his own. He may indeed with his lips acknowledge the Lord in them, but he has no inward realization of what
