“The first degree is that of the crystallized mineral, typifying death. The rocks and stones are of both sexes. Their sympathies and antipathies constitute their laws of natural selection determined by the vegetation produced from their soil. The second degree pertains to the subjective spaces of the mineral world—the tiny races within the higher round of that zone. Each life-atom is busy at its own appointed task, happy beyond conception in its lowly spiritual state. The third degree is the vegetable kingdom. The leaves are so placed that a line wound around the stem of a plant, and touching the petiole of each leaf would be a spiral. Where the leaves are in two rows, it is one-third the circumference, and so on in successive trines.” “No one could be more loyal than I to the great family of endogens,” said Yermah. “They all go by threes, and are correlated to the Trinity. We make the lily the type of purity; the palm, the type of perfect life, which is service. The grains give the staff of life; the grasses cover the earth, and feed our animals. The onion not only contains the immortal elixir, but in its circles represents the growth of the universe, and the orbits of the planetary system.” “The exogens,” said Kerœcia, “are closer to our own lives. The rose gains in beauty as it loses its power of reproduction, and the flower which carpets our hillsides with patches of gold drops the calyx when it arrives at perfection. It lives with the sun—opening and closing with his coming and going, and is so delicate that we make it the symbol of the soul. “In the fourth degree are the flower nymphs, disporting themselves like butterflies in the luminous ether of their round. Some bear resemblance to beautiful girls, but are bright green, with large heads and small bodies. In the full scale they show all the colors of the rainbow. The fifth degree is the animal kingdom; the sixth is semi-human; the seventh is man. Love is the only condition of creation—that love which is perfect equilibrium between thyself and the universe.” Neither spoke for several moments; then Yermah said, with a sigh of contentment: “This is a veritable Temple of Love.” “In very truth it is,” she returned; “and this is the season of renewal. It is the breeding-time of flowers and of the feathered tribes. Look here!” She drew back a branch of eglantine, heavy with bloom, and nestled cozily in the fork of the parent stem was a tiny grayish-white mass of hair, fashioned into a nest by a gold-throated humming-bird. The mate industriously sipped honey from blossom to blossom, while the watcher on the nest put up its long, tube-like bill, waiting to be fed. The birds twittered conjugal confidences unmindful of prying eyes. Disturbed at last by the voices, both balanced in air, leaving exposed to view two little spotted eggs, not larger than fine shot. They darted about in evident distress, keeping up a constant humming with their gauzy wings.