Our Prophet's simple yet sublime setting forth is far more pointed and specific than the presentment made by Plato of a doctrine somewhat similar. The Greek philosopher, as quoted by Emerson, says: "Let us declare the cause which led the Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; and he who is good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. Whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth" ("Plato," Emerson's "Representative Men"). There is a fitness, a propriety, in man's becoming like his Maker--God's child, fashioned in his image and endowed with divine attributes, developing to the fulness of the parental stature, as taught by Joseph; but how the same can be predicated of "all things," as Plato implies, is not so clear. That the lower animals, and in fact all forms of life, are to be perpetuated and glorified, is more than an inference from the teachings of the Prophet (D. and C. 29:24, 25; 77:2-4). But undoubtedly all will retain their identity in their respective orders and spheres. No creature of God's excepting man can become like God in the fullest and highest sense. 17. D. and C. 93:36. 18. Rom. 1:16. 19. D. and C. 76:50-70; 93:33; Abr. 3:26. ARTICLE TWELVE. The Great Vicissitudes. Fall and Redemption.--The Fall of Man and the Redemption from the Fall, are the great vicissitudes of human experience. One is sequel to the other, and both are steps in the march of eternal progress. The Gospel, therefore, embraces the fall as well as the redemption. Both were essential, and both were preordained. The one prepared the way before the other. Had there been no fall, there could have been no redemption; for the simple reason that there would have been nothing to redeem. The Creation.--Preliminary to the fall, came the creation. Earth, created as an abode and a place of probation for mortal man, was not made out of nothing, as human theology asserts, but out of previously existing materials, as divine revelation affirms. Millions of earths had been created in like manner before this planet rolled into existence. [1]