any
rays, develops in itself centres--souls--which gradually grow and
awaken their infinite potentialities[41] in the course of these
successive incarnations.

Still, though the eye of the god-man alone can penetrate this
wonderful mechanism and study it in all its astonishing details, the
savant whose mind is unprejudiced can judge of the concealed mechanism
by examining its outer manifestations, and it is on this ground we now
place ourselves with the object of setting forth another series of
proofs of reincarnation.

THE EVOLUTIONARY SERIES.

If we look attentively at the totality of beings we perceive a
progressive series of forms expressing a parallel series of qualities
and states of consciousness. The portion of this scale we are able to
compass extends from the amorphous state[42]--which represents the
minimum of consciousness--up to those organic complexities which have
allowed of a terrestrial expression being given to the soul of the
Saviours of the world. In this glorious hierarchy each step forms so
delicate a transition between the one preceding and the one following
that on the borders of the different kingdoms it becomes impossible to
trace a line of demarcation between different beings; thus one does
not know whether such or such a family should be classed among
minerals, or vegetables or animals. It is this that science has called
the evolutionary series.[43]

THE CYCLIC PROCESS OF EVOLUTION.

Another fact strikes the observer: the cyclic march of evolution.
After action comes reaction; after activity, rest; after winter,
summer; after day, night; after inspiration--the breath of life during
which universal Movement works in a molecular aggregate and there
condenses in the form of vitality--expiration--the breath of death,
which causes the individualised life to flow back into the ocean of
cosmic energy; after the systole, which drives the blood into every
part of the body, comes the diastole, which breathes back the vital
liquid into the central reservoir; after the waking state comes sleep;
life here and life hereafter; the leaves sprout and fall away
periodically, with the rising and descending of the sap; annual plants
die at the end of the season, persisting in germinal state within a
bulb, a rhizome, or a root before coming again to the light; in
"metamorphoses," we find that the germ (_the egg_) becomes a larva (_a
worm_), and then dies as a chrysalis, to be reborn as a butterfly.