INVOLUTION 419 



each successive stage of progress, it enters into 

 correspondence. And this Environment inevitably 

 expands as the Social tree expands and extends 

 its correspondences. At the savage stage Man 

 compasses one set of relations, at the rude social 

 stage another, at the civilized stage a third, 

 and each has its own reactions. The social, 

 the moral, and the religious forces beat upon 

 all social beings in the order in which the 

 capacities for them unfold, and according to the 

 measure in which the capacities themselves are 

 fitted to contain them. And from what ulti- 

 mate source do they come? There is only one 

 source of everything in the world. They come 

 from the same source as the Carbonic Acid Gas, 

 the Oxygen, the Nitrogen, and the Vapour of 

 Water, which from the outer world enter into the 

 growing plant. These also visit the plant in the 

 order in which the capacities for them unfold, and 

 according to the measure in which these capacities 

 can contain them. 



The fact that the higher principles come from 

 the same Environment as those of the plant, never- 

 theless does not imply that they are the same as 

 those which enter into the plant. In the plant 

 they are physical, in Man spiritual. If anything 

 is to be implied it is not that the spiritual energies 



