397. The workings of innocence by means of touch have similar effects among animals and birds to those among human beings, as is well known. The reason these workings are similar is that everything emanating from the Lord instantly pervades the universe (see 388-390 above); and because it advances by stages and a continuous series of intermediate states, it passes not only to animals, but even beyond to vegetables and minerals (see 389). It even passes into the very ground, which is the mother of all vegetables and minerals. In springtime the ground is in a condition ready to receive seeds, as it were in its womb; and having received them, it so to speak conceives, tends, carries, hatches, suckles, nourishes, clothes, brings up and guards the offspring born of the seeds, so to speak loving them and so on. Since the reproductive sphere reaches even to that level, it must obviously reach animals of all kinds, even down to insects. Just as the ground is the common mother of plants, it is also the common mother of bees in a hive, as has been shown by research.