As to the existence of spirit in the mineral: it is
indubitable that minerals are endowed with a spirit and life according to the
requirements of that stage. This unknown secret, too, hath become known unto
the materialists who now maintain that all beings are endowed with life, even
as He saith in the Qur’án, ‘All things are living’.
In the vegetable world, too, there is the power of growth,
and that power of growth is the spirit. In the animal world there is the sense
of feeling, but in the human world there is an all-embracing power. In all the
preceding stages the power of reason is absent, but the soul existeth and
revealeth itself. The sense of feeling understandeth not the soul, whereas the
reasoning power of the mind proveth the existence thereof. (‘Abdu’l-Baha, ‘Tablet
to August Forel)
