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the law supreme by which spirit asserts itself and triumphs and grows. It is the magnificent epoch of history,
this exterior strife which fills the world. The interior strife is not less moving. With each rebirth, the spirit must
fashion a new envelope which will serve its dwelling and express the conceptions of its genius. Often the
instrument resists, and the thought falls back on itself, powerless to lift the burden which smothers it. But
accumulated efforts of thought and desire through centuries will develop the soul’s high faculties.
There is in each of us a silent aspiration, an intimate mysterious energy which carries us toward the
summits and pushes us toward the beautiful and the good. It is the law of progress, of eternal evolution, which
guides humanity across the ages and spurs each one of us on. For humanity in all ages is composed of the same
souls. They come from century to century, to follow in new bodies their work of self-perfection, until they are
ripened for better worlds. The history of one soul does not greatly differ from that of all humanity; the ladder
only differs, the ladder of relative proportions. Spirit moulds matter; it communicates its life and beauty. So
evolution is par excellence the aesthetic law. The forms we have acquired are the point of departure for more
beautiful forms. Yesterday prepares tomorrow. The past gives birth to the future. The human work reflects the
word divine which will blossom in more beautiful and perfect form.
* * *
The law of progress does not apply only to man; in every domain of nature, evolution has been
recognized by the thinkers of all time. From the green cell, the vague embryo floating upon the waters, through
innumerable changes, the chain of the species has unfolded its lengths down to us. (The mono-cellular beings
are found today by millions in each human organism. It is not through one cell alone that the chain of species
has come, but rather by multitudes of these cells grouped to form more perfect beings, and round upon round
converging toward unity.)
Upon this chain every link represents a form of existence which leads to a superior form, to an
organism better adapted to the growing needs and manifestations of life. But on the ladder of evolution
thought, conscience, and liberty appear only after many degrees; in the plant intelligence sleeps; in the animal
it dreams; in man alone it wakens recognizes itself, and becomes conscious. From this hour progress fatal in
some ways in the inferior forms of nature can only be realized but with the accord of human will with eternal
laws.
It is by this accord and this union of the human and divine will that are build the works which prepare
for the reign of God - that is to say, the reign of justice, wisdom, and goodness which every reasoning and
conscientious being feels intuitively must come.
So the study of the laws of evolution, instead of weakening the spirituality of man, gives it instead new
sanction; it shows us how our bodies can obtain an inferior form by the law of moral faculties of a different
origin, and this origin we find in the invisible universe, the sublime world of the spirit. The theory of evolution
ought to be completed by that of percussion; that is to say, by the action of invisible powers who direct this
slow and prodigious ascensional march of life on our globe. The occult world intervenes at certain epochs in
the physical development of humanity, as it intervenes in the moral and intellectual domain by psychic
revelations.
When a race, having attained its apogee, is followed by a new race, it is rational to believe that a
family of superior souls is incarnated among the vanishing race to help it mount to a higher estate and to
fashion a new type. It is the eternal hymen of heaven and earth, the intimate penetration of matter and spirit,
the increasing overflow of the psychic life into forms in the course of evolution.
The appearance of man on the ladder of beings explains itself as follows; man is the synthesis of all
living forms which have preceded him - the last link in the long chain of inferior lines, which unroll through
time. But this is only the exterior aspect of the problem of origins; the interior aspect is more ample and
imposing. Every birth is explained by the descent into flesh of a soul from space, and the first appearance of
man on our planet must be attributed to the intervention of invisible powers which generated life. The psychic
essence came to communicate the breath of new life to animal forms. It created for the manifestation of
intelligence an organ unknown till then - speech. Powerful element of all social life, the word appeared, and at
the same time, by its etheric envelope, the incarnated soul retained the possibility of entering into contact with
the center from which it came.
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