good or evil propensities,
the balance of which is to be affected by the struggles of one more
mortal phase of existence. Thus we go on through one life after another,
each time a new person yet the same human soul, ignorant of our own past
lives, yet never free from their influence upon our character, exactly
as in mature life we have absolutely forgotten what happened to us in
our infancy, yet are never free from its influence. In Devachan, which
corresponds, says our author, to what in other religions is the final
and eternal heaven, we receive, from time to time, the reward of our
deeds done in the body, yet still pass on with all our upward or
downward tendencies until, many millions of years in the future, during
our next passage through life on this planet, we shall come to the
crisis in our existence which shall determine whether we are to become
gods or demons.

Let me now turn back the page of history. A little more than one million
years ago this earth was covered, as now, with vegetable forms, and was
the dwelling of animals, as numerous, perhaps, and as various as now;
but there was no humanity. The time was come when man, who had passed
already three times round the planetary chain, and was nearly half way
through his fourth round, should again make his appearance on the scene.
Nature works only in her own way, and that way is uniform. The first man
must be born of parents already living. As there are no human parents,
he must be born of lower animals, and of those lower animals most nearly
resembling the coming human animal. Darwin has told us what the animal
was, yet the new being was a man and not an ape, because, in addition to
its animal soul, it was possessed also of a human soul. We all know that
man is an animal. Those modern students of science, who affirm that that
is the whole truth of human nature, take a lower view of their own being
than the Indian philosophers. Man is an animal plus a human and a
spiritual soul.

Behold, now, the earth peopled by man. Through seven races must he pass,
each with its various branches. Yet these races are not contemporaneous;
for Nature is in no hurry. One race comes forward at a time, reaches
the height of its possibility, then passes away during great physical
transformations, and leaves but a wreck behind to live, and witness,
in some new part of earth, the coming of another race. These races
and branch races and sub-branch races are to be animated by the s