328 INVOLUTION. 



according to the measure in which these capacities can 

 contain them. 



The fact that the higher principles come from the 

 same Environment as those of the plant, neverthe- 

 less does not imply that they are the same as those 

 which enter into the plant. In the plant they are 

 physical, in Man spiritual. If anything is to be im- 

 plied it is not that the spiritual energies are physical, 

 but that the physical energies are spiritual. To call 

 the things in the physical world " material " takes us 

 no nearer the natural, no further away from the 

 spiritual. The roots of a tree may rise from what 

 we call a physical world ; the leaves may be bathed 

 by physical atoms ; even the energy of the tree may 

 be solar energy, but the tree is itself. The tree is a 

 Thought, a unity, a rational purposeful whole ; the 

 " matter " is but the medium of their expression. 

 Call it all — matter, energy, tree — a physical produc- 

 tion, and have we yet touched its ultimate reality? 

 Are we even quite sure that what we call a phys- 

 ical world is, after all, a physical world ? The pre- 

 ponderating view of science at present is that it 

 is not. The very term "material world," we are 

 told, is a misnomer; that the world is a spiritual 

 world, merely employing " matter " for its manifesta- 

 tions. 



But surely there is still a fallacy. Are not these so- 

 called social forces, the effect of Society and not its 

 cause ? Has not Society to generate them before they 

 regenerate Society ? True, but to generate is not to 

 create. Society is machinery, a medium for the 

 transmission of energy, but no more a medium for its 

 creation than a steam engine is for the creation of its 



