THE DIVINE SOIL 



organic. And the plant in its cell structure, in its 

 circulation, in its intelligence, or in its ingenious 

 devices to get on in the world is dreaming of the 

 animal, and the animal is dreaming of the spiritual, 

 and the spirituality of man touches the spirituality 

 of the cosmos, and thus the circle is complete. 



VII 



So far as science can find out, sentience is a pro- 

 perty of matter which is evolved under certain 

 conditions, and though science itself has not yet 

 been able to reproduce these conditions, it still 

 believes in the possibility. If life was not poten- 

 tial in the inorganic world, how is it possible to 

 account for it ? It is not a graft, it is more like a 

 begetting. Nature does not work by prefixes and 

 suffixes, but by unfolding and ever unfolding, or 

 developing out of latent innate powers and possi- 

 bilities; — an inward necessity always working, 

 but never an external maker. It is no help to fancy 

 that life may have been brought to the earth by 

 a falling meteorite from some other sphere. How 

 did life originate upon that other sphere ? It must 

 have started here as surely as fire started here. We 

 feign that Prometheus stole the first fire from 

 heaven, but it sleeps here all about us, and can be 

 evoked any time and anywhere. It sleeps in all 

 forms of force. A falling avalanche of rocks turns 

 to flame; the meteor in the air becomes a torch; 

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