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
corresponding to their own, so that it learns to respond to them. Later on
it learns of itself to generate these rates of undulation, and so becomes a
being possessed of spiritual powers.

We may presume that when this outpouring of life originally came forth from
the Deity, at some level altogether beyond our power of cognition, it may
perhaps have been homogeneous; but when it first comes within practical
cognizance, when it is itself in the intuitional world, but is ensouling
bodies made of the matter of the higher mental world, it is already not one
huge world-soul but many souls. Let us suppose a homogeneous outpouring,
which may be considered as one vast soul, at one end of the scale; at the
other, when humanity is reached, we find that one vast soul broken up into
millions of the comparatively little souls of individual men. At any stage
between these two extremes we find an intermediate condition, the immense
world-soul already subdivided, but not to the utmost limit of possible