eral scheme,
humanity is divided into great races, called root-races, which rule and
occupy the world successively. The great Aryan or Indo-Caucasian race,
which at the present moment includes the most advanced of Earth's
inhabitants, is one of these. That which came before it in the order of
evolution was the Mongolian race, usually called in Theosophical books
Atlantean because the continent from which it ruled the world lay where now
roll the waters of the Atlantic ocean. Before that came the Negroid race,
some of whose descendants still exist, though by this time much mingled
with offshoots of later races. From each of these great root-races there
are many offshoots which we call sub-races--such, for example, as the Roman
races or the Teutonic; and each of the sub-races in turn divides itself
into branch-races, such as the French and the Italians, the English and the
Germans.

These arrangements are made in order that for each ego there may be a wide
choice of varying conditions and surroundings. Each race is especially
adapted to develop within its people one or other of the qualities which
are needed in the course of evolution. In every nation there exist an
almost infinite number of diverse conditions, riches and poverty, a wide
field of opportunities or a total lack of them, facilities for development
or conditions under which development is difficult or well-nigh impossible.
Amidst all these infinite possibilities the pressure of the law of
evolution tends to guide the man to precisely those which best suit his
needs at the stage at which he happens to be.

But the action of this law is limited by that other law of which we spoke,
the law of cause and effect. The man's actions in the past may not have
been such as to deserve (if we may put it so) the best possible
opportunities; he may have set in motion in his past certain forces the
inevitable result of which will be to produce limitations; and these
limitations may operate to prevent his receiving that best possible of
opportunities, and so as the result of his own actions in the past he may
have to put up with the second best. So we may say that the action of the
law of evolution, which if left to itself would do the very best possible
for every man, is restrained by the man's own previous actions.

An important feature in that limitation--one which may act most powerfully
for good or for evil--is the influence of the group of egos with which the
man has