Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/285

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

so highly constructed as to receive activity directly from the Creator, but it lives through an influx from Him into the degrees of the spiritual world, with which the spiritual counterpart coincides and corresponds. So also of animals. They can not receive life immediately from the Creator, but they derive it from the Creator through the spiritual degrees of their souls, or spiritual counterparts, which are coincident with the spiritual world. As the plant is the lowest living form in the natural world, the plant soul is the lowest living form in the spiritual world. The animal soul differs from the plant soul, as the animal differs from the plant, in having organs of sensation, volition, and instinct. The human soul differs from the animal soul in having added the rational degree, as the human brain differs from the animal in having an organism for the rational faculty. Technically the animal differs from man in having only the Natural Mind c, d, and e; while man has in addition the Spiritual Mind C, D, and E, and the Inmost, B. (Diagram II, p. 155.) Every scholar knows that the Word speaks of animals as having souls, and that it uses the same words to designate the human soul, though it does not attribute everlasting life to the souls of animals. The Inmost is that highest organism of the human soul