536. Are the great phenomena of nature, those which we consider as perturbations of the elements, due to fortuitous causes, or have they all a providential aim?

"There is a reason for everything; nothing takes place without the permission of God."

– Have these phenomena always some reference to mankind?

"They have sometimes a direct reference to man; but they have often no other object than the re-establishment of the equilibrium and harmony of the physical forces of nature."

– We fully admit that the will of God must be the primal cause of these phenomena, as of everything else; but, as we know that spirits exercise an action upon matter, and that they are the agents of the divine will, we ask whether some among them do not exert an influence upon the elements, to rouse, calm or direct them?

"It is evident that they must do so; it could not be otherwise. God does not exercise a direct action upon matter; He has His devoted agents at every step of the ladder of worlds."

537, The mythology of the ancients is entirely based on spiritist ideas with this difference, that they regarded spirits as divinities. They represented those gods or spirits with special attributes; thus, some of them had charge of the winds, others of the lightning; others, again, presided over vegetation, etc. Is this belief entirely devoid of foundation?

"It is so far from being devoid of foundation, that it is far below the truth."

– May there, in the same way, be spirits inhabiting the interior of the earth and presiding over the development of geological phenomena?

"Those spirits do not positively inhabit the earth, but they preside over and direct its developments according to their various attributions. You will some day have the explanation of all these phenomena, and you will then understand them better."

538. Do the spirits who preside over the phenomena of nature form a special category in the spirit-world; are they beings apart, or spirits who have been incarnated like us?

"They are spirits who will be incarnated, or who have been so."

– Do those spirits belong to the higher or lower degrees of the spirit-hierarchy?

"That is according as their post is more or less material or intelligent; some command, others execute; those who discharge material functions are always of an inferior order, among spirits as among men."

539. In the production of certain phenomena, of storms, for example, is it a single spirit that acts, or a mass of spirits?

"A mass of spirits; or, rather, innumerable masses of spirits."

540. Do the spirits who exert an action over the phenomena of nature act with knowledge and intention, in virtue of their free-will, or from an instinctive end unreasoning impulse?

"Some act in the one way, others in the other. To employ a comparison:– Figure to yourself the myriads of animalcule that build up islands and archipelagoes in the midst of the sea; do you believe that there can be, in this process, no providential intention, and that this transformation of the surface of the globe is not necessary to the general harmony? Yet all this is accomplished by animals of the lowest degree, in providing for their bodily wants, and without any consciousness of their being instruments of God. In the same way, spirits of the most rudimentary degrees are useful to the general whole; while preparing to live, and prior to their having the full consciousness of their action and free-will, they are made to concur in the development of the various departments of nature, in the production of the phenomena of which they are the unwitting agents. They begin by executing the orders of their superiors; subsequently, when their intelligence is more developed, they command in their turn, and direct the processes of the material world; still later, again, they are able to direct the things of the moral world. It is thus that everything in nature is linked together, from the primitive atom to the archangel, who himself began at the atom; an admirable law of harmony, which your mind is, as yet, too narrow to seize in its generality."