3648. There is an influx from the Lord through heaven into the subjects also of the vegetable kingdom; as into trees of every kind, and into their fructifications; and into plants of various kinds, and their multiplications. Unless a spiritual principle from the Lord within continually acted into their primitive forms, which are in the seeds, they would never vegetate and grow in so wonderful a manner and succession; but the forms therein are such that they do not receive anything of life. It is from this influx that they have within them an image of the eternal and infinite, as is evident from the fact that they are in the continual endeavor to propagate their kind and their species, and thus to live as it were forever, and also to fill the universe; this endeavor being in every seed. But man attributes all these marvelous things to mere nature, nor believes in any influx from the spiritual world, because at heart he denies it; although he might know that nothing can subsist except through that from which it has come forth; that is, that subsistence is a perpetual coming forth; or what is the same, production is continual creation. That hence universal nature is a theater representative of the Lord's kingdom may be seen above (n. 3483). But on this subject also, and on the correspondence of the vegetable kingdom with the Grand Man, of the Lord's Divine mercy something shall be said elsewhere.