round-i.e., which are evolved on the earth in succession during its occupation by the great wave of humanity passing round the planetary chain-is itself subject to subdivision. Were this not the

case, the active existences of each human unit would be indeed few and far between. Within the

limits of each race there are seven subdivisional races, and again within the limits of each subdivision, there are seven branch races. Through all these races, roughly speaking, each individual human unit must pass during his stay on earth each time he arrives there on a round of progress through the planetary system. On reflection, this necessity should not appal the mind so much as a hypothesis which would provide for fewer incarnations. For, however many lives each individual unit may pass through while on earth during a round, be their numbers few or many, he cannot pass on until the time comes for the round-wave to sweep forward. Even by the calculation already foreshadowed, it will be seen that the time spent by each individual unit in physical life, can only be a small fraction of the whole time he has to get through between his arrival on earth and his departure for the next planet. The larger part of the time as we reckon duration of time-is obviously, therefore, spent in those subjective conditions of existence which belong to the "World of Effects," or spiritual earth attached to the physical earth on which our objective existence is passed.

The nature of existence on the spiritual earth must be considered pari passu with the nature of

TANG BOOK IS THE

ONAL PROPERTY OF

that passed on the physical earth and dealt with in the above enumeration of race incarnations. We must never forget that between each physical existence the individual unit passes through a period of existence in the corresponding spiritual world. And it is because the conditions of that existence are defined by the use that has been made of the opportunities in the next preceding physical existence that the spiritual earth is often spoken of in occult writing as the world of effects. itself is its corresponding world of causes.

The earth

That which passes naturally into the world of effects after an incarnation in the world of causes is the individual unit or spiritual monad; but the personality just dissolved passes there with it, to an extent dependent on the qualifications of such personality—on the use, that is to say, which the person in question has made of his opportunities in life. The period to be spent in the world of effects enormously longer in each case than the life which has paved the way for existence there— corresponds to the "hereafter" or heaven of ordinary theology. The narrow purview of ordinary religious conceptions deals merely with one spiritual life and its consequences in the life to come. Theology conceives that the entity concerned had its beginning in this physical life, and that the ensuing spiritual life will never stop. And this pair of existences, which is shown by the elements of occult science that we are now unfolding, to constitute a part only of the entity's experience during its connection with a branch race, which is one of seven belonging to a subdivisional race, itself one of seven belonging to a main race, itself one of seven belonging to

the occupation of earth by one of the seven round waves of humanity which have each to occupy it in turn before its functions in Nature are concludedthis microscopic molecule of the whole structure is what common theology treats as more than the whole, for it is supposed to cover eternity.

The reader must here be warned against one conclusion to which the above explanations-perfectly accurate as far as they go, but not yet covering the whole ground-might lead him. He will not get at the exact number of lives an individual entity has to lead on the earth in the course of its occupation by one round, if he merely raises seven to its third power. If one existence only were passed in each branch race the total number would obviously be 343, but each life descends at least twice into objectivity in the same branch-each monad, in other words, incarnates twice in each branch race. Again, there is a curious cyclic law which operates to augment the total number of incarnations beyond 686. Each subdivisional race has a certain extra vitality at its climax, which leads it to throw off an additional offshoot race at that point in its progress, and again another offshoot race is developed at the end of the subdivisional race by its dying momentum, SO to speak. Through these races the whole tide of human life passes, and the result is that the actual normal number of incarnations for each monad is not far short of 800. Within relatively narrow limits it is a variable number, but the bearings of that fact may be considered later on.

The methodical law which carries each and every

individual human entity through the vast evolutionary process thus sketched out, is in no way incompatible with that liability to fall away into abnormal destinies or ultimate annihilation which menaces the personal entities of people who cultivate very ignoble affinities. The distribution of the seven principles at death shows that clearly enough, but viewed in the light of these further explanations about evolution, the situation may be better realized. The permanent entity is that which lives through the whole series of lives, not only through the races belonging to the present round-wave on earth, but also through those of other round-waves and other worlds. Broadly speaking, it may, in due time, though at some inconceivably distant future as measured in years, recover a recollection of all those lives, which will seem as days in the past to us. But the astral dross, cast off at each passage into the world of effects, has a more or less independent existence of its own, quite separate from that of the spiritual entity from which it has just been disunited.

The natural history of this astral remnant is a problem of much interest and importance, but a methodical continuation of the whole subject, will require us in the first instance to endeavour to realize the destiny of the higher and more durable spiritual Ego, and before going into that inquiry there is a good deal more to be said about the development of the objective races.

Esoteric science, though interesting itself mainly with matters generally regarded as appertaining to religion, would not be the complete comprehensive and trustworthy system that it is, if it failed to

bring all the facts of earth life into harmony with its doctrines. It would have been little able to search out and ascertain the manner in which the human race has evolved through æons of time and series of planets, if it had not been in a position to ascertain also, as the smaller inquiry is included in the greater, the manner in which the wave of humanity with which we are now concerned has been developed on this earth. The faculties, in short, which enable adepts to read the mysteries of other worlds, and of other states of existence, are in no way unequal to the task of travelling back along the life-current of this globe. It follows that while the brief record of a few thousand years is all that our so-called universal history can deal with, the earth history, which forms a department of esoteric knowledge, goes back to the incidents of the fourth race which preceded ours, and to those of the third race which preceded that. It goes back still further indeed, but the second and first races did not develope anything that could be called civilization, and of them therefore, there is less to be said than of their successors. The third and fourth did-strange as it may seem to some modern readers to contemplate the notion of civilization on the earth several millions of years ago.

Where are its traces? they will ask. How could the civilization with which Europe has now endowed mankind pass away so completely that any future inhabitants of the earth could ever be ignorant that it once existed? How then can we conceive the idea that any similar civilization can have vanished, leaving no records for us?

The answer lies in the regular routine of plane