202 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



development and plant life must also govern mental evolution, 

 for just as animal and vegetable life follow the same laws of 

 evolution and reconstruction by birth, life, death and disease, 

 and of re-creation and reconstruction by birth, death and re- 

 birth, it is only logical to assume that the immortal life of the 

 soul and mind is likewise evolved and governed in a similar 

 manner. 



Now. in the life of plants we get a clearer means of illus- 

 trating the process of rebirth and re-creation than it is 

 possible to arrive at in a study of the life of animals, just as 

 we are able to see and define with more accuracy the limits 

 of the processes of reconstruction in mineral and material ex- 

 istence in plants and animal life than in mental life, because 

 transformations resulting from chemical action and manual 

 labour can be followed more minutely and with greater accu- 

 racy than the results of the re-creation of life and the evolution 

 of mind and soul and psychical changes. For in the recon- 

 struction of matter we can follow each change as it takes place 

 step by step under the process of chemical action or under the 

 hands of the builder, but in the re-creations of animal life, 

 mind or soul there are three or four processes which are con- 

 current, united, and seldom intermittent in their action and 

 forces, both of heredity, of environment, and of variation, 

 which are all influenced by the invisible electrons and forces 

 of radio-activity which transmit motion to matter, and being 

 both invisible and disconnected from Matter, all tend to make 

 the problem more difficult to follow in detail. 



I will therefore endeavour to trace the course of life from 

 seed to plant and back to seed again, and thus show that life 

 is never absent nor separate, but only becomes invisible when 

 dormant, and visible when surrounded by a bodily shape, just 

 in the same way that my hypothesis points out that creation 

 is but the visible portion of the Invisible Infinite Creator ; or, 

 taking another form of illustration of the invisible and the 

 visible forces of nature, say Ether and Clouds, Light and 

 Matter, or again as in Electricity. This force is dormant and 

 invisible till its current is broken, but when we break the 

 current by a short distance that is insufficient to destroy the 

 concurrent forces of negative and positive pellation and tracta- 

 tion, it then becomes visible in the luminous form of light, so 

 one can say in the one case it slumbers or is dormant, in the 



