There are many methods or variations of method in the reproduction of created life, whether on the vegetable or animal plane; but in the animal kingdom the process is carried on
soil is the common mother, and is thus, as it were, feminine; for it receives the seeds of all fruits, opens them, carries them as it were in a womb, and then nourishes them and brings them forth, that is, ushers them into the light of day, and afterward clothes and sustains them.
"When a seed is first opened by the earth, it begins with a root, which is a kind of heart; from this it emits and transmits sap, like blood, and so forms, as it were, a body provided with limbs; its body is the trunk itself, while the branches and their branchlets are its limbs. The leaves which it puts forth immediately after its birth serve as lungs; for as the heart without the lungs produces no motion or sensation, and it is by means of these that man is made alive, so the root without leaves does not cause a tree or shrub to vegetate. The blossoms which precede the fruit are means for purifying the sap, the tree's blood, for separating its grosser from its purer elements, for forming a new little trunk for the influx of these purer elements contained in the bosom of this sap, through which trunk the purified sap may flow in and thus initiate and gradually form the fruit (which may be compared to the testis) in which the seed is perfected.
"The vegetative soul which inmostly governs in every particle of sap, or which is its prolific essence, is from no other source than the heat of the spiritual world; and
