INVOLUTION, 327 



the ear passing from the tremulous sense of vibration 

 to distinguish with ever-increasing delicacy the 

 sounds of far-off things so in the higher world the, 

 moral and spiritual senses rise and quicken till they 

 compass qualities unknown before and impossible to 

 the limited faculties of the earlier life. So Man, not 

 by any innate tendency to progress in himself, nor by 

 the energies inherent in the protoplasmic cell from 

 which he first set out, but by a continuous feeding and 

 reinforcing of the process from without, attains the 

 higher altitudes, and from the sense- world at the 

 mountain foot ascends with ennobled and ennobling 

 faculties until he greets the Sun. 



What is the Environment of the Social tree ? It is 

 all the things, and all the persons, and all the in- 

 fluences, and all the forces with which, at each suc- 

 cessive stage of progress, it enters into correspond- 

 ence. And this Environment inevitably expands as 

 the Social tree expands and extends its correspond- 

 ences. 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 re- 

 actions. 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 ultimate 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 

 Vapor 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 



