BUT ASIDE from all philosophic necessities or hypotheses, if Reincarnation be true, we shall find evidence of it in nature, for natura non saltet. At the outset of this portion of our inquiry, we see that the repetition of her processes is universal. In the mineral kingdom, the sand, formed from the crumbling rocks of the mountain's side, re-forms into stony stratifications at the bottom of the sea, to be again upheaved, and reprint the geologic page in future ages. Tree or plant, animal or human, each is reproduced "after its kind," in an apparently endless succession. Embryol- ogists trace the history of the incalculable periods during which the physical form of man evolved up through the lower kingdoms by means of the repetition of each successive stage, in gestation. Cell, fish, reptile, bird, animal, man - each step upward is repeated, though the necessity for this would seem to have ceased with the completion of the more perfect design. Man casts aside his 'prentice efforts once he succeeds, but nature ever follows the familiar pathways.

Yet the countless elemental hosts and hierarchies of "nature spirits" engaged in carrying out the practical aspect of evolution, do not pause at the simple reproduction of the old form. Having reached the end of beaten paths, each still struggles onward, though its progress is as little perceptible as the impress of a single wave upon the beach, which, nevertheless, is slowly wearing away. This gradual perfection of type also shows that idea precedes form, and that nature is not working blindly, under the impulse of unintelligent force. Ages were occupied in so modifying the gills of water-breathing mammalia that they could live in the purer, rarer atmosphere of the earth; yet is it not evident that the idea of the perfected bird was present and potent during the whole process? Is it not also evident that the idea of perfected man, with all his wonderful organization, was present when the first protoplasmic cell responded to the force of the inner, energizing thought?

It will be universally admitted that it is the idea, and not the form, which is preserved; the point of dispute is as to the method by which the idea is carried onward. The materialist avers that it is due to physical procreation alone; that, for instance, if the dove should become unfertile, the idea of it would perish off the earth with the cessation of its physical existence. The Theoso - phist denies this, and declares that if every dove on earth were to die nature is amply able to reproduce the form out of the preexisting idea from whence it evolved the species. The materialist affirms that force and matter have, by the merest chance, brought about the evolution of form and intelligence; that both these are but properties of matter, and are dissipated with the dissolution of the chemical and vital forces which caused their manifestation. The Theosophist declares that spirit, or consciousness, underlies and is the basis of all form, and passes from form to form as these decay or become unfitted for its further occupation.

As Plato declares, "The soul weaves ever her garments anew." To interrogate nature as to her methods of taking these subjective steps in pursuit of her objects constitutes the motive of this chapter.

Our first inquiry must be as to the identity of consciousness when passing from vehicle to vehicle. That is, does the same conscious entity ensoul successive bodies? From the human standpoint, the answer to this question is all important. To the kingdoms below man we look for the proof of the affirmative of the question, as under the law of evolution there must be a preparation for, or a beginning of, the processes necessary.

But what is that mysterious process we so glibly describe as "evolution"? In studying the Individualization of the Soul, in a previous chapter, we have seen how the widening of (finite) consciousness constitutes a veritable Cycle of Necessity, and forces centers of consciousness into successively higher states and more complex forms. But this presents but one aspect of a process which, like all finite ones, is atleast dual. There is a tendency in the human mind to demand finalities, both as to beginnings and endings, and it is one of the most difficult of mental feats to accept facts and phenomena in nature which never had a beginning and which can never have an end. Could we go backward to an absolute issuing forth for the first time of Manifested Life, then this explanation of the Soul's Cycle of Necessity, and its consequent evolution, might seem sufficient. But, though the mind faints and the brain reels in the effort, we can not reach a point in time at which there does not have to be predicated just as infinite a variation in finite states of consciousness as now.

Therefore, at the beginning of any Cycle of Necessity, or period of evolution, there are high Creative Logoi, whose office it would seem to be to guide the progressive steps of an evolution thus made necessary by the widening of finite consciousness freed during successive pralayas. For it can not be assumed that experience in a lower state would give the wisdom necessary for progress in a higher one for entities far below the stage of reason. Therefore, at each completion of a world period, the matter ensouled by entities which have completed all possible experience in that state is entered by these high Creative Logoi, for whom it becomes a vesture standing in a relation to Them that the matter of our bodies stands to our centers of consciousness, or souls. In this manner we can conceive of that impress being given which becomes a law and guide for such atom - souls during all stages below self - consciousness. After each successive pralaya of a world, or "Round" as it is technically called in Theosophy, a higher, or at least a differing, Logos could take control of entities thus fitted for further progress; such incarnation or overshadowing representing the addition of a new "Principle," or state of consciousness.