the diabolical spirits there take delight, as animals do in rank stenches. From this it can be seen that like things in the natural world did not derive their origin from the Lord, and were not created from the beginning, neither did they spring from nature through her sun, but are from hell. That they are not from nature through her sun is plain, for the spiritual inflows into the natural, and not the reverse. And that they are not from the Lord is plain, because hell is not from Him, therefore nothing in hell corresponding to the evils of its inhabitants is from Him. 340. (3) There is unceasing influx out of the spiritual world into the natural world. He who does not know that there is a spiritual world, or that it is distinct from the natural world, as what is prior is distinct from what is subsequent, or as cause from the thing caused, can have no knowledge of this influx. This is the reason why those who have written on the origin of plants and animals could not do otherwise than ascribe that origin to nature; or if to God, then in the sense that God had implanted in nature from the beginning a power to produce such things, - not knowing that no power has been implanted in nature, since nature, in herself, is dead, and contributes no more to the production of these things than a tool does, for instance, to the work of a mechanic, the tool acting only as it is continually moved. It is the spiritual, deriving its origin from the sun where the Lord is, and proceeding to the outmosts of nature, that produces the forms of plants and animals, exhibiting the marvels that exist in both, and filling the forms with matters from the earth, that they may become fixed and enduring. But because it is now known that there is a spiritual world, and that the spiritual is from the spiritual sun, in which the Lord is and which is from the Lord, and that the spiritual is what impels nature to act, as what is living impels what is dead, also that like things exist in the spiritual world as in the natural world, it can now be seen that plants and animals have had their existence only from the Lord though that world, and through that world they have perpetual existence. Thus there is unceasing influx from the spiritual world into the natural. That this is so will be abundantly corroborated in the next chapter. Noxious things are produced on earth through influx from hell, by the same law of permission whereby evils themselves from hell flow into men. This law will be set forth in the Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Providence.