The Philosophy of Creation/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DESIGN IN STRUCTURE.
The Soul Is Substantial And An Organized
Form.
Having the general ideas of the previous chapters well in mind as a basis of further discussion, we may proceed to consider particularly the organization of man. This will give a more definite idea of the constitution of the universe, and prepare for further investigation, confirmations, and conclusions.
That in man which first receives affection and thought from the Creator and has the faculty of self-consciousness, must necessarily be an organized form. This form is called the soul. That the soul is substantial is evident from the same reasons that prove the spiritual world to be substantial; namely, that causes originate in it superior to the nature of matter, and as causes can not exist apart from substance, the soul must be substantial.
The assertion that the soul is a substantial, organized form is not an hypothesis, but the inevitable conclusion from the deepest scrutiny of the nature of matter and of nature's works. But were it an hypothesis, it would be adequately proved at every step as well as when the argument is seen in its continuity, and the universal creation is observed in its order and working unity. Neither matter nor an organization of matter can love and think, nor can formless substance be self-conscious; but spiritual substance organized into the human form, being in Correspondence with the Divine Form, which is a Divine Human, can constitute a loving, thinking, selfconscious being.
Spiritual Forms Are Illustrated By Natural
Forms.
The human body in its structure and operation is a complete illustration of the philosophy of creation and of its perpetual sustenance. This is because man is a little universe after the pattern of the greater, and is the image and likeness of the Creator. This has always been acknowledged in regarding man a microcosm, yet in modern times with little or no understanding of the vast and infinite things involved in calling man a little universe. It is because man is a microcosm, a complete world in miniature, that the human form, when it is understood, presents the instrumentality whereby we may investigate and understand the larger world of the macrocosm, both spiritual and natural.
As the human body derives its powers and faculties from the soul, and is formed by it, we can find in the body a likeness of the soul. The body upon the outside, the epidermis, is dead and passive. As we pass inward, there is the sensitive tissue of the dermis, the muscles, the veins and arteries; still more interiorly is the nervous system, and then the nervous fluids that infill it. This organism of ascending degrees is thus formed that it may receive, contain, and preserve life. The epidermis is dead and senseless that it may contain and protect the more delicate structures within, and provide a basis upon which they may rest, as required by the law of power in ultimates. The nervous fluids and blood would evaporate or flow away without a grosser covering. There could be no reflex action without a fixed and passive basis that terminates action. The nerves would continually suffer were they brought immediately in contact with the earth and the atmosphere; so they are protected and cushioned by an insensate covering. Within the nerves are the nervous fluids, which originate in the brain, whereby through their purity they are in touch with the substances of which affection and thought are predicated. The body ascends interiorly by its structure from the insensate, passive epidermis, through the tissues, blood, and nerves, to the sensitive fluids of the brain, and these are so near the vital substance of affection and thought that they receive from it corresponding activity. By virtue of the structure of degrees in the body, the affections are the life of the body, their activity being first brought down by the law of Correspondence to the material plane of the nerve fluid, and thence yielding their many potencies, and vitalizing every organ and the whole of the material body.
The Natural Body And Nature Are Composed
Of Like Discrete Degrees In Similar
Successive Order.
The natural world is so constituted that it can provide the material necessary for the formation of the body; materials for the skin, the bones, the flesh and blood, the nerves, and the nervous fluids. Since the earth, including its atmospheres, contributes from each of its degrees to the making of the body, it is evident that the body and the earth are composed of the same substance.
Upon observing the analogy of the earth's formation to that of the body, the earth and the body appear to be constructed on the same principle and in the same general form. The earth ascends from the passive rock by air, ether, and aura to the sun, that it may come in contact with the sun by proximate substances so sensitive as to receive the sun's heat, light, and power, and bring them down to the earth. The human body ascends from the dead skin by bones, muscles, nerves, and nervous fluids to the mind's heat of affection and light of thought that the life and power of the soul may be brought down to the lowest things of the body, and vivify it in all its functions. The body and nature are therefore made of the same substances, and they are in the same general form.
Nature And The Body Receive Activity In
A Similar Manner.
Consider how nature receives her activities from the sun imparting its potencies to the atmospheres that lie next to it; how they become vitalized with sun-powers, and in turn pass them on and down through aura, ether, and air to act finally upon the more solid water and earth, and there will be had a complete illustration of how the body, in all its planes and functions, derives its potencies from the affections of the mind; for the affections act in a like manner upon the highest fluid of the body that lies next below the substance of the affections, and that receives their activities and varied potencies, and passes them down through the successive degrees of the body to its lowest.
Functional Powers Of The Body Originate In
The Affections Of The Mind.
The highest substance of the brain is the first material clothing to the spiritual substance of affection and thought in the soul; and receiving the impact of its activity, the substances of the brain assume a corresponding motion. Not only does the highest substance in the brain receive an impact, but it is imbued with the endeavor characteristic of affection in as high a form as material substance can receive it. Having received the endeavor, it proceeds as of itself to effect that endeavor on its own plane. This endeavor must necessarily be an effort to gather materials in a corresponding form or to constitute an organism, like the body, for affection to dwell in, and through which affection may operate and accomplish its endeavor. Then when the organism for affection, which the body is, is formed, composed of the senses, the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, and the other organs, the same endeavor abides in these organs, and gifts them with the power to perform their functional uses.
From the propelling power in affection, or from its collected and concentrated activity, the heart beats. Affection, or love, flows into the will, where, by the human organism, its endeavor is turned into the power of heart-throbs by Correspondence, just as the endeavor of affection is turned into the light of the understanding, and thence into the act of the hand. It is because of this, that when the desires are ardent and intensified, the heart's action quickens: that when they are deep and soft, the heart-beats are milder, and that the states of affection in general have a corresponding effect upon the heart's action. That there is such a relation between the heart and affection is tacitly perceived in calling an affectionate person warm-hearted, or a selfish person cold-hearted. The stomach digests food from powers derived from affection and thought. Memory is the mind's stomach where knowledge is stored for the use of the desires. The affections digest knowledge by selecting and appropriating things from observation and memory, favoring one class and rejecting another. Affection operating in the mind has the power of digesting mental things, and of appropriating them to use. The body, by virtue of its form, converts the mental digestive powers to physical ones. So it is that a happy and active mental state is conducive to digestion. There is nothing done in the stomach in a physical way that is not done in the mind in a mental way. The function of the lungs is like that of the stomach. They select homogeneous materials from the air and excrete the heterogeneous, as the stomach does with its food. The lungs derive the power of separating the homogeneous from the heterogeneous, and of appropriating the useful, from affection's power of perceiving and appropriating the agreeable and of rejecting the disagreeable. The mental power, soul power, or spiritual power is turned by the bodily organism into a corresponding physical one by the activity of a higher degree being communicated to a next lower discrete degree as endeavor, which endeavor continues action according to the receiving form. The same is true of the kidneys, liver, and every organ of the body. Because affection proceeds from and is vitalized by the Divine Human, there is in affection, which is the life of the man and of the body, every potency; so that only the organism is needed to bring out any specific power. That affection is able to operate the body in all its functions, considering the high quality of affection's substance and the superior mechanism of the body, is no more marvellous or difficult to conceive than that the car we daily ride in should, through the mechanism of the vehicle, receive from a copper wire the substance that furnishes the power to rotate its wheels, the light to light it, and the heat to warm it. Power, light, and heat are all unfolded out of the substance of ether through the diverse organs of the car, namely, the motor, the incandescent burner, and the radiator. Each mechanism of the car receives power from the current of electricity, as endeavor, and each expends the endeavor according to its form. It is the same with the higher and more potent life-current of affection from the Creator, which is received into the soul and similarly manifested in diverse character through the more highly constituted organs of the body.
The Soul Is Animated From The Creator.
Having traced the origin of the powers and faculties of the body to the affections of the mind, it now remains to account for the origin of the affections and faculties of the mind or soul.
To have a common starting place in thought, let the soul mean all that organism within the body that is made of substance superior to the natural world. In the material body there is a mind-organism of brain and nerves, and in the brain and nerves there is the most pure material fluid of the body, which is the first material clothing to spiritual substance, and the first active essential in the body. The spiritual organization of man is similar, there being a spiritual body in which there are a like brain and nerves made of spiritual substance. This brain with its nerves constitutes the organ of the mind in the soul. So we can think of the soul as composed of the spiritual body, corresponding to the material body; of the mind, corresponding to the brain and its ramifications; and of the substance of its inmost activity, corresponding to the sensitive fluids in the nerves, which as an organism may be called the Inmost. The Inmost will be considered more in detail later. (Diagram II, page 155.)
That the soul is such a form, is evident from the perception that the body is a system of effects that never could have had existence except from a corresponding system of causes. Further and particular reasons in confirmation of the soul being such an organism will be given in a subsequent chapter.
Holding the idea of the soul, then, as an organism composed of substances of the spiritual world arranged in successive planes as the material body is formed from the material world, we are prepared to consider how the soul derives its life.
It has already been shown that God, the Creator, is a Divine Person, The Man, in whom are all human elements in their infinitude. To account therefore for the life of the soul, it remains only to say that as the body ascends from the dead skin to the sensitive fluids of the nerves, which respond to the activity of affection and thought, so the spiritual body ascends from its grosser substance that lies next to nature to its organism of most pure and sensitive substances, called the Inmost, that are sensitive and responsive to the vital action and power in the Creator. In other words, as the body by means of its interior and high organization ascends to and receives its life from the soul, so the soul by means of its interior and high organization ascends to and receives life and power from God, the Creator and Sustainer.
The Creator Is Present In The Soul Not
Bodily, But By Influx.
The Creator is not present in the soul with His own Divine Substance, but He has so formed man that He can be present by communicated activity and life. This is illustrated in nature's methods. The natural world is a form ascending by successive degrees or planes to receive the sun's vitality. The body is a natural corresponding form of ascending degrees responsive to the vitalized planes in nature, and is thereby in communion with nature's powers. The sun actuates nature, and nature actuates the body. The sun is not present in nature with its own matter, but through the responsive aura, ether, and air it imparts its vitality to the ultimate earth, in which the body lives, and with which it is in Correspondence. The soul is a form organized to be in touch with the degrees of the spiritual world vivified by the Creator as the body is in touch with the planes in nature vivified by the sun. We have a universal pattern from which to think, one form illustrating another, and all confirming each; namely, that the body ascends by interior and successively higher planes or degrees in its organization to receive activity and power from the mind or soul; the soul likewise ascends to receive life and potency from the Creator; the natural world ascends to receive activity from the sun which receives activity from the spiritual world, and the spiritual world ascends to receive vitality from the Creator. The soul is a parallelism of the body, the spiritual world is a parallelism of the natural world, and the Divine Human of the Creator is a parallelism of the human organization; whereby the lower forms are in Correspondence with the Divine Human, and are sustained by the Creator.
It may be remarked here, although introducing a fact subsequently to be elaborated, that nature, ascending by discrete degrees from the earth to the aura, and thus being vivified, through its discrete degrees acts upon the corresponding degrees of the body; and that the spiritual world, through its discrete degrees ascending likewise to the Creator to be vivified by Him, acts upon the corresponding ones of the soul. This is comprehended in intelligently calling man a microcosm; for in a definite and scientific sense man is a little universe in Correspondence with the greater.
The Universal Creation Is Sustained By
Influx From The Creator Into And
Through Discrete Degrees.
Now as we have traced creation upward to the fountain of life, let us conceive of it by looking from above downward. Think of God, the Creator and Sustainer, within and above all, as the sun of the spiritual world, and whose very form is the Divine Human in which is every faculty, power, or capability. Next about Him lies the first created substance most sensitive and responsive to His own vital action, and so pure and plastic as to be imbued with the Divine nature in Him just as the aura is charged with the nature of the sun. Next below this, as ether is below aura, and as the air is below ether, is other spiritual substance a discrete degree lower, adapted to receive the activity of the first created substance. Thus the spiritual creation descends until the natural world is reached, which occurs in the purest substance of the sun. The sun being the first natural clothing of the substances of the spiritual world, takes upon itself activity from the universal activity of the spiritual world, whereby it is sustained. The sun in turn actuates the atmospheres, and these the more solid matter of the earth. Thus creation descends from the Creator by successive degrees, and is sustained by Him. This mode of communicating activity or power is called influx, which passes down according to the law of Correspondence.
The Unity Of Plan Is Universal.
The unity of plan that science demonstrates to exist in particulars has no limitation. There is also a universal unity of plan that extends much further than naturalists have conceived, and includes all things natural and spiritual. Naturalists restore the whole animal from a few bones and parts; so when the universal unity of plan that runs through the body and the natural world is perceived, their spiritual counterparts are easily comprehended. Having been given the factor of the known natural body, a knowledge of the soul becomes definite: and from the given member of the understood material world, the spiritual world can be known; and from all, God the Creator, can be comprehended. The doctrine made known by revelation that God created man in His own image and likeness, and that man is a microcosm and the universe a macrocosm, is but the unity of plan carried to its inevitable conclusion. Consequently the results here reached are in accord with the conclusions of generally accepted science.
A Diagram Of The Natural And The Spiritual
Universe Illustrating Their General
Similarity Of Form.
Diagram I, though crude and inadequate in many respects, is introduced to present a rudimentary image of the universe as to its degrees in successive order.
f, e, d, c, represent respectively the earth, air, ether, and aura, or the succession of natural effects and the material substances in which they reside. F, E, D, and C represent their supernatural causes and the substances in which they reside. For want of better names F, E, D, and C may be called respectively the Spiritual Earth, 
The spiritual creation is to be thought of just as the natural creation, composed of earth and atmospheres, is, only it is to be conceived of as composed of substances so pure and high as to belong to a more interior world than nature. Life-forces originate in A, the Creator, are communicated to B, the Divine Proceeding, and thence passing successively to C, D, E, F, animate the spiritual creation. From the spiritual world life-forces pass to a, the sun, and thence through b, successively to c, d, e, and f, thereby animating the natural universe. Later, when preparation is made, we shall speak also of another influx.