n8 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



spiritual vitality of its pre-creators both finite and infinite 

 that it may be possessed of or is capable of reproducing. 



As the soul is immortal it can never die, hence once a soul is 

 evolved, nothing but the destruction of the higher attributes 

 of God by acts of indolence and wasted opportunities can con- 

 demn it to extinction ; and once its vitality is lost, all powers 

 of rebirth or re-creation are lost for ever, and the by-product 

 can only be absorbed by other bodies possessed of vitality. 



Hence death is the inactive state of Matter which 

 for a time is devoid of life through want of chemical action, 

 heat and motion, the results of the forces of radio-activity 

 which we call soul, but the soul, so long as it has not lost its 

 vitality by crime, is free to seek a new abode as it travels 

 along the road to heaven and immortality. But before pro- 

 ceeding further I must ask the reader to remember that all 

 virtue and vice, fitness and unfitness for use or abuse, are all 

 matters which are subject to the laws of descent, and that 

 man's power for good or evil, like all other qualities, is only 

 to be decided in fitness for survival by the law that like evolves 

 like ; and it is only by the fittest mind evolving the fittest souls 

 that the soul of any family will be able to triumph over body 

 as mind has triumphed over the material world and the animal 

 kingdom, and has and is fast subjugating nature. To some 

 extent during the transient periods of individual existence 

 environment and genius may exert a temporary influence, but 

 in the long run the laws of descent prove to us that this re- 

 transition of the spirit is the reconstruction of the infinite soul 

 in a fresh finite body which advances only on restricted lines 

 of immortality ; hence rebirth can only follow logically by the 

 reincarnation of the souls or soul that preceded it in the souls 

 that are to follow it in the same family, but not in a soul with 

 which it has no relationship. It therefore appears to me that 

 the most logical deduction is that the life of animals, man and 

 plants, is one continuous extension of an undying soul, that 

 is to say, that the individual soul is but a new limb put forth 

 in the family tree of immortality, growing fresh leaves as it 

 passes through the stages from birth to death, shedding its 

 leaves and sowing fresh seed in its offspring and assimilating 

 its nourishment as it grows and evolves. I maintain also that 

 the soul is the spirit of the mind of the family passing from 

 father to son or to grandson, coupled with the existence of the 



