its experiences in the physical. At this stage it ensouls vegetable forms,
and begins to show itself much more clearly as what we commonly call
life--plant-life of all kinds; and at a yet later stage of its development
it leaves the vegetable kingdom and ensouls the animal kingdom. The
attainment of this level is the sign that it has withdrawn itself still
further, and is now working from the lower mental world. In order to work
in physical matter from that 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 animalculæ, 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