Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/102

 the second degree of life, and the first degree of consciousness. Man in his animal nature is the completion; of the highest form. Life has yet one more degree to pass through; consciousness has yet two more degrees to pass through before it is complete. The next advance is to a higher principle of consciousness—to a more enduring principle of life, without changing the material form, and that is to the spiritual degree of unfolding.

Looking to the highest types of the animal and the lowest types of men, we will observe that they approach very near to each other. Naturalists have been divided in opinion as to whether or not man was an animal projected on a little higher plane, and whether or not the difference is not merely one of degree. I say that when man is developed, we find him developing or individualizing a higher principle. Individuality was first started in the vegetable; the principle of vitality in the animal. The second degree of individuality was where the animal became individualized on a higher plane of life, on a plane of consciousness belonging to what we call the nerve-medium. Man individualizes upon the second degree of consciousness and the third degree of life, completing an individuality. He becomes to us the highest type of form and life in the finite; and a large class of philosophers and theologians conceive man as formed in the divine image, and suppose the expression that God made man in his own image, to refer to an external as well as internal likeness.

Man as an individual occupies the highest plane; he has attained to the third degree of life as a Spiritual