(14) Of the corporeal thus brought into being by Nature the elemental materials of things are its very produce, but how do animal and vegetable forms stand to it?

Are we to think of them as containers of Nature present within them?

Light goes away and the air contains no trace of it, for light and air remain each itself, never coalescing: is this the relation of Nature to the formed object?

It is rather that existing between fire and the object it has warmed: the fire withdrawn, there remains a certain warmth, distinct from that in the fire, a property, so to speak, of the object warmed. For the shape which Nature imparts to what it has moulded must be recognized as a form quite distinct from Nature itself, though it remains a question to be examined whether besides this form there is also an intermediary, a link connecting it with Nature, the general principle.

The difference between Nature and the Wisdom described as dwelling in the All has been sufficiently dealt with.

(74) Now when these are imaged or formed, there it [the astringent quality] lies as a corporeal, springing, boiling mobility, for it moveth or boileth through and in the bitter quality in itself, as in its own imaged, formed or framed body; but without the heat, which is the spirit of nature [or nature-spirit], it has as yet no life to growing, vegetation, springing or spreading abroad.

(28) This is thus in the original of the quality in itself; but in the midst, in the rising up of this fierce spirit, this [same] spirit is caught and mitigated in the sweet water, where its fierce source or fountain is changed into a trembling, bitter, and greenish colour, like a greenish duskiness, and it retaineth in itself the condition and property of all three qualities, viz. of the fiery, the astringent and the sweet; and so from these three existeth the fourth quality, viz. the bitter.

(108) I. First, there is the power, from which a body comes to be, whether wood, stone or herbs. II. After that, there is a sap in that thing, which is the heart of the thing. III. Thirdly, there is in it a springing, flowing power, smell or taste, which is the spirit of the thing, whereby it grows and increaseth. Now if any of these three fail, the thing cannot subsist.

(63) Two things chiefly are to be eyed in all the qualities: If you look upon a body you first see the stock or pith, or the kernel of all the qualities, which is framed or composed out of all the qualities; for to the body belong the astringent or harsh, sour, sweet, bitter and hot qualities; these qualities being dried together, make the body or stock. The Great Mystery of the Spirit.

(100) Thou must see that all this is really so. For example, take a root which is of a hot quality, put it in warm water, or take it into thy mouth, and make it warm and supple or moist; then thou wilt soon perceive its life, and active or operative quality: But so long as it is without or absent from the heat, it is captivated in death, and is cold, as any other root or piece of wood is.

(50) Accordingly I find, that the birth or geniture of nature stands to this day, and generateth itself, just so as it did when it first took its beginning; and whatsoever riseth up in this world, whether men, beasts, trees, herbs, grass, mineral ores, or be it what it will, all riseth up in such a quality, manner and form as it first did; also every life, be it good or bad, taketh its original thus [as it did from the beginning].

(14) There is, thus, a Nature comprehending in the Intellectual all that exists, and this Principle must be the source of all. But how, seeing that the veritable source must be a unity, simplex utterly?

The mode by which from the unity arises the multiple, how all this universe comes to be, why the Intellectual-Principle is all and whence it springs, these matters demand another approach.

But on the question as to whether the repulsive and the products of putridity have also their Idea- whether there is an Idea of filth and mud- it is to be observed that all that the Intellectual-Principle derived from The First is of the noblest; in those Ideas the base is not included: these repulsive things point not to the Intellectual-Principle but to the Soul which, drawing upon the Intellectual-Principle, takes from Matter certain other things, and among them these.

But all this will be more clearly brought out, when we turn to the problem of the production of multiplicity from unity. Compounds, we shall see- as owing existence to hazard and not to the Intellectual-Principle, having been fused into objects of sense by their own impulse- are not to be included under Ideas.

The products of putrefaction are to be traced to the Soul's inability to bring some other thing to being- something in the order of nature, which, else, it would- but producing where it may. In the matter of the arts and crafts, all that are to be traced to the needs of human nature are laid up in the Absolute Man.

And before the particular Soul there is another Soul, a universal, and, before that, an Absolute-Soul, which is the Life existing in the Intellectual-Principle before Soul came to be and therefore rightly called the Absolute-Soul.

For the father is sweet and his will is good. He knows the things that are yours, so that you may rest yourselves in them. For by the fruits one knows the things that are yours, that they are the children of the father, and one knows his aroma, that you originate from the grace of his countenance. For this reason, the father loves his aroma; and it manifests itself in every place; and when it is mixed with matter, he gives his aroma to the light; and into his rest he causes it to ascend in every form and in every sound. For it is not ears that smell the aroma, but it is the spirit that possesses the sense of smell and draws it for itself to itself and sinks into the aroma of the father. Thus the spirit cares for it and takes it to the place from which it has come, the first aroma, which has grown cold. It is in a psychical form, resembling cold water that has sunk into soil that is not hard, of which those who see it think, “It is earth.” Afterward, it evaporates if a breath of wind draws it, and it becomes warm. The cold aromas, then, are from division. For this reason, faith came and destroyed division and brought the warm fullness of love, so that the cold may not return, but the unity of perfect thought may prevail.

(98) For the spirit draweth from the head or bud into the blossoms, and the head or bud is formed according to the kind of all the qualities; the astringent quality attracteth or collecteth the body of the bud or head, and the sweet quality softeneth it and spreadeth it abroad, and the bitter quality parteth or distinguisheth the matter into members, and the heat is the living spirit therein.

(53) All qualities take their beginning-original [finite or transitory origin] in their middle or centre: Therefore observe where the fire is generated; for there riseth up the flash of the life of all the qualities, and it is caught in the water, so that it remaineth shining; and it is dried in the astringency, so that it remaineth corporeal, and becometh shining, bright and clear. Observe here:

(70) From whence the senses and thoughts exist, so that one quality seeth the others, which are also in it, and tempered with itself, and proveth them with its sharpness, so that there cometh to be but one will; which in the body riseth up in the first fountainsource or wellspring in the astringent or harsh quality.

(3) Of all these genera, those [species] which are animal have [many] roots, which stretch from the above below, whereas those which are stationary —these from [one] living root send forth a wood of branching greenery up from below into the upper parts. Moreover, some of them are nourished with a two-fold form of food, while others with a single form. Twain are the forms of food—for soul and body, of which [all] animals consist. Their soul is nourished by the ever-restless motion of the World ; their bodies have their growth from foods [drawn] from the water and the earth of the inferior world. Spirit, with which they all are filled, being interblended with the rest, doth make them live; sense being added, and also reason in the case of man—which hath been given to man alone as a fifth part out of the æther. Of all the living things [God] doth adorn, extend, exalt, the sense of man alone unto the understanding of the Reason of Divinity. But since I am impressed to speak concerning Sense, I will a little further on set forth for you the sermon on this [point]; for that it is most holy, and [most] mighty, not less than in the Reason of Divinity itself. VII

(28) The bitter quality is the heart in every life; for as it attracteth together the water in the air, and also dissipateth the same, so that it [the water] becometh separable; so also in other creatures, and in the vegetables of the earth. For leaves and grass have their green colour from the bitter quality.

(6) We take it, then, that the Intellectual-Principle is the authentic existences and contains them all- not as in a place but as possessing itself and being one thing with this its content. All are one there and yet are distinct: similarly the mind holds many branches and items of knowledge simultaneously, yet none of them merged into any other, each acting its own part at call quite independently, every conception coming out from the inner total and working singly. It is after this way, though in a closer unity, that the Intellectual-Principle is all Being in one total- and yet not in one, since each of these beings is a distinct power which, however, the total Intellectual-Principle includes as the species in a genus, as the parts in a whole. This relation may be illustrated by the powers in seed; all lies undistinguished in the unit, the formative ideas gathered as in one kernel; yet in that unit there is eye-principle, and there is hand-principle, each of which is revealed as a separate power by its distinct material product. Thus each of the powers in the seed is a Reason-Principle one and complete yet including all the parts over which it presides: there will be something bodily, the liquid, for example, carrying mere Matter; but the principle itself is Idea and nothing else, idea identical with the generative idea belonging to the lower soul, image of a higher. This power is sometimes designated as Nature in the seed-life; its origin is in the divine; and, outgoing from its priors as light from fire, it converts and shapes the matter of things, not by push and pull and the lever work of which we hear so much, but by bestowal of the Ideas.

(38) Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency- for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations- this entire range of production is to be referred, not to each such single cause, but to the nature of the thing produced .

All that forwards life or some other useful purpose is to be ascribed to the transmission characteristic of the All; it is something flowing from the major of an integral to its minor. Where we think we see the transmission of some force unfavourable to the production of living beings, the flaw must be found in the inability of the subject to take in what would serve it: for what happens does not happen upon a void; there is always specific form and quality; anything that could be affected must have an underlying nature definite and characterized. The inevitable blendings, further, have their constructive effect, every element adding something contributory to the life. Then again some influence may come into play at the time when the forces of a beneficent nature are not acting: the co-ordination of the entire system of things does not always allow to each several entity everything that it needs: and further we ourselves add a great deal to what is transmitted to us.

None the less all entwines into a unity: and there is something wonderful in the agreement holding among these various things of varied source, even of sources frankly opposite; the secret lies in a variety within a unity. When by the standard of the better kind among things of process anything falls short- the reluctance of its material substratum having prevented its perfect shaping under idea- it may be thought of as being deficient in that noble element whose absence brings to shame: the thing is a blend, something due to the high beings, an alloy from the underlying nature, something added by the self.

Because all is ever being knit, all brought to culmination in unity, therefore all events are indicated; but this does not make virtue a matter of compulsion; its spontaneity is equally inwoven into the ordered system by the general law that the things of this sphere are pendant from the higher, that the content of our universe lies in the hands of the diviner beings in whom our world is participant.

(65) Each quality goeth forth from itself into the others, and toucheth or stirreth the others, that is, it affecteth the others, whereby the other qualities get the will of this quality; that is, they prove the sharpness and spirit of this, as to what is in it, and always mix with it continually.

(54) Now when the light shineth through the astringent, contracted body of nature, and mitigateth it, then the mild, beneficent welldoing generateth itself in the body, and then the hard power grows very mild, and melteth, as ice in the heat of the sun, and is extenuated or rarefied, as water is in the air; and yet the stock of nature, as to the heavenly comprehensibility, remaineth the same.

(15) Which is caused by the strong attracting together of the qualities, in which attracted Salitter the life is suddenly generated. For when the heat kindleth the astringent quality, then the life riseth up, for the bitter quality stirreth itself, which is the original of life.

(107) But when the bitter quality riseth up therein, then it divideth and formeth itself, as if it were alive or lively, or as if the life did rise up there, in a greenish flourishing manner and form, like a green flash of lightning, to speak after the manner of men, so that it dazzleth a man's eyes, and blindeth him.