Spirit is "thinly clothed" with a variety of life-forms — from sheets of lichen tissue to garments of leaves and fairy flowers. Sparks of the divine flicker everywhere, the vestigia Dei are traceable within the natural world; portions of Spirit are in all living things. Since all beings are both "modifications" of God as well as "terrestrial" in their common earth identity, it is impossible to adjudicate which forms of life are "higher" or "lower" than their fellow creatures, or what, if any, fundamental ontological differences finally separate one life-form from another.
— Mark I. Wallace, Fragments of the Spirit