by male and female in sexually separated individuals.
Certainly when the reproductive function is more clearly distinguished in higher forms of
as this heat is from the spiritual sun there, it aspires to nothing but generation, and a continuation of creation thereby; and because it essentially aspires to the generation of man, it induces upon whatever it generates a certain resemblance to man.
"That no one may be astonished at this statement; that the subjects of the vegetable kingdom are masculine only, and that the earth alone, or the soul, is like a common mother, or is like the feminine, let it be illustrated by something similar among bees. According to the observation of Swammerdam, reported in his Books of Nature, bees have only one common mother, from which the offspring of the entire hive is produced. As there is but one common mother for these little insects, why not the same for all plants?
"That the earth is a common mother may also be illustrated spiritually; and is so illustrated by the fact that in the Word 'the earth' signifies the Church, and the Church is a common mother, and is so called in the Word. . .
"But the earth or the soil can enter into the inmost of a seed, even to its prolific principle, calling this forth and giving it circulation, because every least particle of dust or powder exhales from its essence a kind of subtle, penetrating effluvium, which is an effect of the active force of the heat from the spiritual world."
