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 tlie plant, neverthe- 

 less does not imply that they are the same as those 

 v^hich 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. 

 Gill 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 w^orld 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 



