Evolution of Life. 109 



of response, then the next stage in evolution is that 

 the response takes on the sensations of pleasure and 

 pain, appearing as that within the life which res- 

 ponds severally to harmonious or discordant impact 

 from without. As the life develops this power 

 of sensation, progress becomes more rapid. The 

 animal kingdom is gradually builded and the power 

 of sensation is the great characteristic which is de- 

 veloped through that kingdom, until the animal 

 forms having been rendered plastic through many 

 ages by the impulse of life, and the life having 

 formed and strengthened the power of responding 

 by pleasure and pain to harmonious and discordant 

 vibrations the next stage is ready to be taken, the 

 building of the vehicle for man. 



That outer body in which man is to dwell re- 

 sembles closely in its nature, in some of its funda- 

 mental characteristics, the animal bodies which the 

 life had vivified before man was called into exist- 

 ence. " Out of the dust of the ground," says the 

 Hebrew scripture, God formed the body of man, a 

 symbolic way of saying that out of the material that 

 had made the lowest forms of life, was also to be 

 made the outer coating of that vessel, into which a 

 new flood of Divine life was to be outpoured, form- 

 ing the human Self, or Spirit. We learn, when 

 we study occultism, that this third outpouring 



