Natural Table of the Correspondences Existing Between God, Man, and the Universe

They have brought forth these systems only by relying on the secondary facts that are found under their eyes, such as the actual reproduction of particular Beings, which operates only in spaces of time proportional to their class, and such as the sediments and different layers of mineral substances, which accumulate only over the length of centuries.

These comparisons have deceived them; they have not distinguished secondary facts from primary facts, the lower and passive productions from the primordial productions moved by a living activity.

It is a constant law that the closer Beings are to the primitive Principle, the more powerful their generating force is; and this power shows itself not only in the qualities of the production but also in the celerity with which it is generated; because the primitive Principle being independent of time, Beings cannot rise toward it without enjoying, according to their measure and their number, its rights and its virtues. And if one wishes to find the proof of this in man himself, it suffices to compare the slowness of his sensible and corporeal movements with the promptness of his intellectual Being, which knows neither time nor space, and which transports itself on the spot in thought to the most distant places.