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    creating principle of life , which in its successive developmen t * ever ascends higher and higher , manifests itself in an endless production of forms and colours . At first , the plants in their rich foliage and countless ramifications , seem to exist only for themselves , but they soon burst fortli into blossoms , and become ministering altars , on which the enkindling flame of love

    presents its offering to the butterflies and the bees , who , like guardian angels , flutter sportively around them . Life has now , indeed , progressed from the past into the present ; it has raised itself out of the dark pit of the earth into the bright light ; it has awakened from the fttillnesa of repose into the activity of growth ; yet is vegetation but a

    constantly revolving wheel ; the plants become green in the

    light during the day , but during the night they take deeper and deeper root ; they spread their branches here and there , but their feet are enchained , they are confined to one place ; they have , it is true , an individual form , fashioning themselves after an indwelling design , but they are unconscious both of this individuality and of this form . The leaves , twigs , and roots may be severed from them , and the separated parts still in

    (^ reserved life ; even the entire plant may be inverted , the tranches becoming roots , and the roots in their turn again becoming branches . The life of the plants is merely a sleeping , dreaming kind of life ; they rest upon the earth without the power of locomotion , presenting an external form , and splendor , and fragrance , but possessing , amid their diversified forms , no

    internal identity ; 1 . 0 indivisible unity . Depending on the friendly light , and yielding back whatever they receive from it , they retain , after their bloom is passed , nothing of their own beyond their lifeless pith , and the wooden frame in which that pith is coniined .

    But in nature there is no real decay ; the principle of life , striving after the realization of more exalted conceptions , bursts asunder the old forms ; but it is only in order to assume new ones , those of a higher creation ; for the summit of the last stage of Being is always the foundation of the next ;—thus ever links itself together the unending chain of Divine Life .

    The attraction of the earth , and the resistance of the ground , were in part overcome in the production of the plants and flowers ; now the dark root is left for the earth , while the stem and the foliage are Li ; iven to the water , and to the air ;—and the life , like an emancipated blossom , journeys over the earth , with all the accessary endowments of breath , and limbs , and

    voluntary motion . This is animal life , which may be compared to light returned into itself , and born again in a new shape ; — a sun upon the earth . For us the one penetrates all tilings , and yet retains its unity , so the animul soul pervades and

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    it Nahirt and her Forms

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1836, page 182, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2655/page/54/