mental world it must operate through the
intervening astral matter; and that astral matter is now no longer part of
the garment of the group-soul as a whole, but is the individual astral body
of the animal concerned, as will be later explained.

In each of these kingdoms it not only passes a period of time which is to
our ideas almost incredibly long, but it also goes through a definite
course of evolution, beginning from the lower manifestations of that
kingdom and ending with the highest. In the vegetable kingdom, for example,
the life-force might commence its career by occupying grasses or mosses and
end it by ensouling magnificent forest trees. In the animal kingdom it
might commence with mosquitoes or with animalculae, and might end with the
finest specimens of the mammalia.

The whole process is one of steady evolution from lower forms to higher,
from the simpler to the more complex. But what is evolving is not primarily
the form, but the life within it. The forms also evolve and grow better as
time passes; but this is in order that they may be appropriate vehicles for
more and more advanced waves of life. When the life has reached the highest
level possible in the animal kingdom, it may then pass on into the human
kingdom, under conditions which will presently be explained.

The outpouring leaves one kingdom and passes to another, so that if we had
to deal with only one wave of this outpouring we could have in existence
only one kingdom at a time. But the Deity sends out a constant succession
of these waves, so that at any given time we find a number of them
simultaneously in operation. We ourselves represent one such wave; but we
find evolving alongside us another wave which ensouls the animal kingdom--a
wave which came out from the Deity one stage later than we did. We find
also the vegetable kingdom, which represents a third wave, and the mineral
kingdom, which represents a fourth; and occultists know of the existence
all round us of three elemental kingdoms, which represent the fifth, sixth
and seventh waves. All these, however, are successive ripples of the same
great outpouring from the Second Aspect of the Deity.

We have here, then, a scheme of evolution in which the divine Life involves
itself more and more deeply in matter, in order that through that matter it
may receive vibrations which could not otherwise affect it--impacts from
without, which by degrees arouse within it rates of undulation
corres