THE LAWS OF DESCENT 99 



object of creation, then it follows as a natural sequence that 

 all creation must be carried out on the same lines and in accord- 

 ance with the same set of laws and regulations, and being the 

 work of infinite Power, Love and Wisdom, it follows that 

 infinite wisdom must conduct the whole of creation on the 

 wisest possible plan ; therefore the scheme of creation must be 

 perfect in all its parts, and one and all must dovetail and fit 

 together in perfect order and sequence, or wisdom would have 

 failed in wisdom. So it follows that animal life must be 

 evolved on the same lines as plant life has been evolved, and 

 the mind and soul of mankind on the same lines also. The 

 plant world can evolve fresh and more perfect plants, but only 

 on fixed lines of descent. The oak when once evolved as a 

 separate species of plant can only recreate an oak, not an ash, 

 and the ash cannot recreate as an oak. The same law must 

 apply to futurity and to all classes of evolution. Each line of 

 evolution is to beget itself, evolving in itself only one form 

 of reproduction after the earth had cooled to the temperature 

 that was to make its type a fixture, henceforth to be slowly 

 evolved to perfection in accordance with set laws and prin- 

 ciples in set lines and types, or else to stand still and deterio- 

 rate until replaced by a more perfect evolution than itself, when 

 it should become obsolete so soon as it was of no further use 

 in the scheme of creation, when it is to lose its power of recrea- 

 tion, and thereafter to be absorbed, not recreated by its more 

 successful competitors in the march of evolution, but in some 

 few cases may be resuscitated by crossing or rebreeding with 

 a more advanced though similar type. 



I will now endeavour to show how this is brought about in 

 evolution. The first act of creation before the existence of 

 life was the construction by the organised recreation of Matter 

 becoming divided into segments of itself, like partitioning one 

 room into a number of cells which enlarge and expand as they 

 assimilate surrounding Matter or organisms, or fresh portions 

 of the infinite ether; so vegetable life arises from material 

 existence by the collision of its particles just as the particles 

 were evolved when affinity caused a collision of the particles 

 of gases. In the same way further formation of cells are pro- 

 duced to form further creations. In this manner animal life 

 is evolved from vegetable life. The reader who wishes to go 

 further into these details must read up some of the many works 



