f--it is progressive, proceeding from the simple to the complex.
Each incarnate, divine "fragment"[53] at first develops the simpler
qualities and acquires the higher ones only by degrees; these
qualities can appear only by means of a vehicle of matter, just as the
colour-producing properties of a ray of light only become manifest
with the aid of a prism. Form plays the part of the revealer of the
qualities latent in the divine germ (the soul); the more complex this
form becomes, the more atomic divisions it has in a state of activity;
the greater the number of senses it has awake, the greater the number
of qualities it expresses.

In this process, we see at work, three main factors; _Spirit_,[54]
awakening within itself _vibrations_,[55] which assume _divers
appearances_.[56] These three factors are one; force-matter and form
cannot exist without the all-powerful, divine Will (Spirit), for this
is the supreme Being, who, by his Will, creates force matter, by his
Intelligence gives it a form, and animates it with his Love.

Force-matter is the blind giant, who, in the Sankhya philosophy,
carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see--a giant, for it is
activity itself; and blind, because this activity is directed only by
the intelligent Will of the Spirit. The latter is lame, because when
it has not at its disposal an instrument of form-matter, it cannot
act, it cannot appear, it is no longer manifested, having disappeared
with the great periodical dissolution of things which the poetical
East calls the inbreathing of Brahma.

Form--all form--creates a germ which reproduces it. The germ is an
aggregate containing, in a very high state of vitalisation, all the
atomic types that will enter into the tissues of the form it has to
build up. These types serve as centres of attraction for the atoms
which are to collect round them when, under the influence of the
"vital fire,"[57] creative activity has been roused in the germ. Each
atomic type now attracts from the immediate surroundings the atoms
that resemble it, the process of segmentation which constitutes
germination begins, and the particular tissues represented by the
different atomic types are formed; in this way the fibrous, osseous,
muscular, nervous, epithelial, and other tissues are reproduced.

The creative activity that builds up tissues, if left to itself, could
create nothing but formless masses; it must have the help of the
intelligence to organise the