Evolution of Form. 151 



the life within it, yielding itself to every impulse 

 from within. It seems then, that when we see 

 things rightly, we should hail death as birth rather 

 than as death. For looked at from the side of life, 

 every death is a being born into the higher possi- 

 bilities of a new shape that will adapt itself to the 

 growing life. 



When man begins his long pilgrimage, a form 

 is ready for his ensouling, prepared to receive and 

 to respond to the impulses which come to it from 

 the physical, astral and to a small extent from 

 the mental planes. His physical atoms are consi- 

 derably evolved, the sensory sheath is working 

 actively, and there is a very imperfect lower mental 

 sheath ; these have been built up through the evo- 

 lution of the animal realm. Do not fall into the 

 mistake of the western way of thinking, and say 

 that man descends from the animal ; that is not 

 true. It is only a fragment of truth half seen and 

 thereby distorted. What is true is this : that the 

 matter of his lower vehicles has been prepared by 

 evolving through the stages of the elemental, 

 mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in order 

 that it may be builded into the form of man ; that 

 in previous kalpas forms had been evolved that might 

 fairly be described as half-ape, half-human, that 

 were never occupied by the triple Self, and that 



