subdivision.

Each man is a soul, but not each animal or each plant. Man, as a soul, can
manifest through only one body at a time in the physical world, whereas one
animal soul manifests simultaneously through a number of animal bodies, one
plant soul through a number of separate plants. A lion, for example, is not
a permanently separate entity in the same way as a man is. When the man
dies--that is, when he as a soul lays aside his physical body--he remains
himself exactly as he was before, an entity separate from all other
entities. When the lion dies, that which has been the separate soul of him
is poured back into the mass from which it came--a mass which is at the
same time providing the souls for many other lions. To such a mass we give
the name of "group-soul".

To such a group-soul is attached a considerable number of lion bodies--let
us say a hundred. Each of those bodies while it lives has its hundredth
part of the group-soul attached to it, and for the time being this is
apparently quite separate, so that the lion is as much an individual during
his physical life as the man; but he is not a permanent individual. When he
dies the soul of him flows back into the group-soul to which it belongs,
and that identical lion-soul cannot be separated again from the group.

A useful analogy may help comprehension. Imagine the group-soul to be
represented by the water in a bucket, and the hundred lion bodies by a
hundred tumblers. As each tumbler is dipped into the bucket it takes out
from it a tumblerful of water (the separate soul). That water for the time
being takes the shape of the vehicle which it fills, and is temporarily
separate from the water which remains in the bucket, and from the water in
the other tumblers.