(Continuation)

[2] (3) There are two general forms, the spiritual and the natural; the spiritual is such as belongs to animals, and the natural is such as belongs to plants. This is why all things of nature, except the sun, moon, and the atmospheres, constitute three kingdoms, the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral, and the mineral kingdom is simply a storehouse, in which are contained and from which are taken the things of which the forms of the other kingdoms, the animal and the vegetable, are composed. [3] The forms of the animal kingdom, which are called in a single word, animals, are all in accord with the flow of spiritual substances and forces; and from the conatus that is in these forms this flow tends to the human form, and to each and all things of it from head to heel; thus it tends in general to produce the organs of sense and the organs of motion, also the organs of nutrition and the organs of prolification. For this reason the entire heaven is in such a form, and all angels and spirits are such a form, and men on the earth are in such a form, and all beasts, birds, and fishes, for all these have like organs. [4] This animal form derives its conatus to such things from the First from whom all things are, who is God, because He is Man. This conatus and consequent determination of all spiritual forces can be given and exist from no other source, for it is given in things greatest and in things least, in first things and in last things, in the spiritual world and therefrom in the natural world; but with a difference of perfection according to degrees. [5] But the other form, which is the natural form, and which is the form of all plants, has its origin in the conatus and consequent flow of natural forces, which are atmospheres, and are called ethers; and in these this conatus is present from that determination of spiritual forces which is in the animal form, and from the continual operation of spiritual forces into natural forces, which are ethers, and through these into the materials of the earth, of which plants are composed. That its origin is such is clear from what has been said above that a certain semblance of the animal form is evident in them. [6] That all things of nature strive after that form, and that the ethers have impressed upon them and so implanted in them from the spiritual an effort to produce that form, is evident from many things; as from all vegetation on the surface of the whole earth, also from the vegetation of minerals into such forms in mines, where openings exist, also from the vegetation of cretaceous substances into corals in the depths of the sea, and even from the forms of snowflakes that emulate plant forms.