In describing pupa life after the formation of the pupa case, the author continues:

"In all insects which undergo complete metamorphosis this is the period of quiescence and entire abstinence. Many species remain in this state during the greater part of their existence, in others it is the shortest period of their lives."

That is to say that all the wonderful changes which transform a crawling, slimy caterpillar into a glorious vision of beauty and freedom take place in silence and darkness, "from within without," in the absence of all that food supply which is so necessary to the "scientific" conception of the generation and continuation of "vital" force. With how little waste of matter nature accomplishes this conformation of external form to internal idea, is shown by the fact that a pupa, weighing some 71 grains immediately after its transformation in August, in the following April weighed over 67 grains, "having thus lost but 3.7 grains in the long period of nearly eight months of complete abstinence."

In the higher planes of the animal kingdom, metamorphosis of the entire organization practically ceases; the remnants of it which persist being limited to organs rather than bodies, as in the transformation of the water-breathing tadpole into the air-breathing frog, through the metamorphosis of the respiratory apparatus, together with that of locomotion. The long abstinence from food among insects in the pupa state is also found in a modified form in some of the higher vertebratae, as in the various hibernating animals, and in the fasts of reptiles, in all of which the consciousness practically retires to subjective realms.

Yet in this kingdom the most important advance made is in the substitution of the egg for the seed as a point d'appui for the reincarnating entity. * The clinging to the material form in the latter has been boldly abandoned, and a minute speck of protoplasm substituted. This shows that the entity has evolved to a point of greater differentiation - has acquired greater confidence, as it were. It also affords room for greater variation; as the soul, whether animal or human, is not rigidly bound by a form already partly constructed in advance. Greater freedom is thus afforded it in modifying its own tenement; and the evolution not only of more perfect forms, but of a greater diversity of organs in the same form, is provided for. The balance of evolution has distinctly swung to the spiritual or Conscious-Aspect of nature; the middle point has been reached in the animal and passed in the human kingdom.

To sum up, it is plainly evident that consciousness ensouled in the mineral kingdom has the mineral stamp impressed upon it, and is limited by this until it struggles out as a zoophyte or lichen, under the pressure of the general evolutionary impulse. In this kingdom, re-embodiment as a universal process can only occur at the birth of a new world, and every such birth is a re-embodiment of a previously existing planet which has died. There is no creation, in its ordinary sense, possible in nature. Matter, Force, and Consciousness are equally indestructible, and uncreate.

* That is, the highest point d'appui The fact that the lowly forms of both animal and vegetable life approach each other so closely that even the microscope oftentimes distinguishes with difficulty the kingdom to which a given specimen belongs, only shows that entities from either kingdom use the same protoplasm, with almost identical results, in form-building in these lowly beginnings. It is, also, a magnificent illustration and confirmation of the fact that there is an inner spiritual essence, and not an outer material force, causing the primal appearance and subsequent evolution of form; for under the latter hypotheses there is no possible explanation why two cells apparently molecularly identical should diverge, the one into the vegetable, the other into the animal kingdom.

In the vegetable kingdom, specific re-embodiment of plants takes place under the ebb and flow of the natural, cyclic laws known as the "seasons." In the animal, the metamorphosis of insects absolutely proves the reincarnation of the same conscious entity in an entirely different organism, under an inner, subjective force, unaided by external conditions. And between the creeping caterpillar and the beautiful butterfly there is certainly a vaster difference in form and function than is necessitated under any conditions by the conscious entity, or soul, merely passing from body to body through the medium of intervening subjective states.

Efflux and influx, subjectivity and objectivity, follow each other in unending succession, and are universal in nature. Life succeeds death, to again give place to its opposite when the subjective arc of the cycle is reached. The periods occupied by their alternations are infinitely varied, as well as the degree to which the one state is replaced by the other. It is easy to trace the beginning of these subjective and objective alternations in the vegetable kingdom into and through the animal, and to observe them becoming all the time more pronounced and, apparently, more disconnected from each other. But we have seen that this disconnection was only apparent and not real; that the same entity was merely passing through the subjective arc of its life- spiral during the period we variously term root-life, metamorphosis, hibernation, sleep, and death. It has been shown that the monadic base, the Ray from the Conscious-Aspect of the Causeless Cause, being of necessity uncolored and attributeless, has attributes and limitations impressed upon it by the various material experiences it passes through, and the widening of its conscious area, as a result of this.

We have noticed that as this consciousness is widened each addition, to the human state at least, increases limitation and intensifies individualization, so that the range of possible choice in reincarnation becomes all the time more restricted. Thus, an entity that could choose from the whole mineral kingdom, in the vegetable might be limited to a genus, in the animal to a species, and in the human to a family.

Now, if the individualization of a tulip, even, has proceeded so far that nature has expressly provided for subjective cycles of the same individual, by the evolution of a bulb, how much more reasonable it is that the intense individualization in man should also be conserved by subjective periods in his life history. That the conditions limiting his consciousness in each state are different is no argument against these existing. The consciousness of a butterfly differs vastly from that of a caterpillar; nor does the butterfly ever know of the caterpillar state, so far, at least, as we can judge. The two are quite separated in time. It logically follows, then, that the individualization, carried to so marked an extent as it is in man, should be provided with subjective periods in which to assimilate and make its own the experiences of the last physical life. It is also reasonable that this experience, being so widely varied, should be best assimilated under conditions of entire subjectivity. If, as Plato declares, "the soul reasons best when least harassed by the bodily senses," so much the better will it garner the wisdom taught by the fleeting panorama of its past life when entirely free from physical perturbation.

Then, if everything in nature is pointing towards and preparing for distinct periods of subjective experience in the cycle of human existence, we can hardly be wrong when assuming that reincarnation is fully and completely proven by this preparation for and gradual leading up to it on her part; for again the truism meets us that natura non saltet and it would be a great deal more than a leap for her to suspend processes once inaugurated. It would be like a great river, whose waters have been collected from the four quarters of a continent, suddenly ceasing to flow and disappearing into nothingness when within sound of its aim and end, the sea.