igher and higher
physical forms which are used as channels of expression by the souls
within. Let us first study soul-evolution from the outer viewpoint,
before we proceed to examine it from the inner. By so doing we will
have a fuller idea of the process than if we ignored the outer and
proceed at once to the inner. Despise not the outer form, for it has
always been, and is now, the Temple of the Soul, which the latter is
remodelling and rebuilding in order to accommodate its constantly
increasing needs and demands.

Let us begin with the _Protozoa_, or one-celled forms--the lowest form
of animal life. The lowest form of this lowest class is that remarkable
creature that we have mentioned in previous lessons--the _Moneron_.
This creature lives in water, the natural element in which organic life
is believed to have had its beginning. It is a very tiny, shapeless,
colorless, slimy, sticky mass--something like a tiny drop of
glue--alike all over and in its mass, and without organs or parts of
any kind. Some have claimed that below the field of the microscope
there may be something like elementary organs in the Moneron, but so
far as the human eye may discover there is no evidence of anything of
the kind. It has no organs or parts with which to perform particular
functions, as is the case with the higher forms of life. These
functions, as you know, may be classed into three groups, _i.e._,
nutrition, reproduction, and relation--that is, the function of
feeding, the function of reproducing its kind, and the function of
receiving and responding to the impressions of the outside world. All
of these three classes of functions the Moneron performs--but _with any
part of its body, or with all of it_.

Every part, or the whole, of the Moneron absorbs food and oxygen--it is
all mouth and lungs. Every part, or the whole, digests the food--it is
all stomach. Every part, or the whole, performs the reproductive
function--it is all reproductive organism. Every part of it senses the
impressions from outside, and responds to it--it is all organs of
sense, and organs of motion. It envelops its prey as a drop of glue
surrounds a particle of sand, and then absorbs the substance of the
prey into its own substance. It moves by prolonging any part of itself
outward in a sort of tail-like appendage, which it uses as a "foot," or
"finger" with which to propel itself; draw itself to, or push itself
away from an object. This prolongation is call