65. The useful functions of everything created tend upward, step by step, from the lowest to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source. As already stated [52], these "lowest things" are all the elements of the mineral kingdom--various forms of matter, some stony substances, some saline, some oily, some mineral, some metallic, with the constant addition of a humus composed of plant and animal matter reduced to minute particles. Here lie hidden the goal and the beginning of all the functions that arise from life. The goal of all useful functions is the effort to produce [more] functions; the beginning of all functions is an active force that comes out of that effort. These are characteristics of the mineral kingdom.

The intermediate things are all the elements of the plant kingdom--grasses and herbs of all kinds, plants and shrubs of all kinds, and trees of all kinds. Their functions are in support of everything in the animal kingdom, whether flawed or flawless. They provide food, pleasure, and life. They nourish [animal] bodies with their substance, they delight them with their taste and fragrance and beauty, and they enliven their desires. This effort is inherent in them from their life.

The primary things are all the members of the animal kingdom. The lowest of these are called worms and insects, the intermediate ones birds and animals, and the highest humans; for there are lowest, intermediate, and highest things in each kingdom. The lowest are for the service of the intermediate and the intermediate for the service of the highest. So the useful functions of all created things tend upwards in a sequence from the lowest to the human, which is primary in the divine design.

169. Throughout the created universe, both in its grandest constituents and in its most infinitesimal, we find these three ingredients, namely, end, cause and effect. These three are found in the grandest and most infinitesimal constituents of the universe for the reason that the same three exist in God the Creator, who is the Lord from eternity. However, because He is infinite, and because the infinite elements in an infinite being are, in a distinct combination, one (as demonstrated above in nos. 17-22), therefore in Him these three also, and the three in His infinite elements, are, in a distinct combination, one.

It is in consequence of this that the universe - which was created from His being, and which regarded in terms of its functions is an image of Him - acquired these three ingredients in each and all of its constituents.