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Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin · 1782

But without leaving the physical class, let us note that the slower the growth of Beings, the coarser the germ that produces them. This is why the germs of all particular Beings in Nature are corporeal and visible, given that their productions are formed only through a sequence of time. But the general creation, being the fruit of a Principle and a germ that are not corporeal, but rather invisible—like the inner motives that direct us in all our acts—this general creation must have been born without time.
One will not, therefore, deny that the Principles that produced the Earth and the material Universe are superior to the terrestrial principles that have engendered animals and plants. Furthermore, animals and vegetables must have originally possessed a force and a life superior to those they enjoy today, since Nature alters, like all corruptible things; consequently, current animals and vegetables could be viewed as secondary fruits relative to the ancient ones, and to those that the principle-earth engendered through the immense heat of its central fire, just as these latter are secondary in relation to the invisible and superior sources that constituted the universal Nature.
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