No building was ever yet constructed whose model or design was not previously present in the consciousness of its architect; and no biological process ever took place which was not previously present in the mind of a Higher Intelligence.

Evolution continuously displaces the threshold of consciousness in nature and in man. And biology, also, shows that for the whole of organic nature, including man, there are two increasingly unequal divisions - that part which sense organs disclose, and that portion which is transcendental to or beyond sensuous perception. To an oyster most of the world is transcendental; that man's consciousness is very much widened in area does not by any means imply that he is in contact with the whole of nature. Step by step, the higher consciousness has evolved organs capable of relating itself to larger and larger areas of contact with external things.

The design in each instance has preceded the construction of the thing designed. If the brain, for example, were developed by blind force alone, how could it have been adapted for future needs? Yet all the functions of the human mind, all its god - like faculties, were foreseen and provided for in anticipation by the first swelling which, at one extremity of an otherwise indistinguishable line of nerve subtance, prophesied and promised the magnificent display of will, intellect, reason, emotion, and intuition subsequently enabled to manifest through the brain of a Spencer or a Shakespeare. And the unbroken sequence of design and thought lies before our eyes all our lives, yet we are asked to believe that fortuitous chance caused force to take this direction - that all this is but the sum of the molecular and chemical action of blindly working law!

This movable and moving threshold of consciousness, then, appears in all nature. It can only be the result of two causes. Either an inner and a higher consciousness is shaping and transforming matter, with a definite and intelligent end in view, or it is the result of blind chance working under the despotic need of unintelligent force. And if we are compelled to admit an inner and a higher consciousness in any single effort of nature, the fortress is taken; for, step by step, we shall be forced to admit a higher consciousness in all; and the question as to whether man has a higher consciousness, or soul, is answered by the biological argument in the affirmative. And again we are driven to the conclusion that, since this higher consciousness is not dependent in any way upon the matter which it shapes to further its ends - as a potter might - for its continued existence, then it does not, and indeed can not, die upon the death or transformation of the latter. On the contrary, analogy points to the fact that, as a man wears out and renews his body, cell by cell, many times in the labors of a life, so his soul must wear out and renew many bodies in the course of its infinite pilgrimage.

Here, once again, then, the fact of and reason for reincarnation meets us squarely as the logical result of biological necessities.

Again, the evolution of sense organs and the widening of consciousness upon this plane are parallel. Nor is it probable that man will evolve any absolutely new sense organs which will relate him to new phenomena or facts of nature. But this is not necessary, since those he has are capable of almost infinite expansion along lines they now subtend. And that no new physiological organs are in process of evolution points plainly to the inference that future development must be in psychic or mental directions. This will certainly be the case unless we refuse to predicate any further advance as possible to the human Ego - a conclusion to which the egotism of self-satisfaction is very prone.

If one wears blue glasses all nature assumes a blue hue. Materialism has looked at the universe so long through material lenses that it has become spiritually color-blind. It also confounds the condition of thinking with the cause of thought; it mistakes the physical brain, which is the battery by means of which the operator beyond transmits thought messages, for the creator of that which it merely transmits. It is exactly the same as if a countryman were to insist that the instrument which ticks off his message is the source of the intelligence displayed.

Self-consciousness, then, together with its varied functions, such as reflective thought, constructive imagination, volition, even to the extent of deliberately abandoning the body by suicide - all show that the body is occupied and controlled by a soul almost infinitely superior to it in function and powers; and, as a necessary corollary, that the soul has acquired this undoubted superiority by an almost numberless series of reincarnations.

A careful examination must convince any one that thought comes into the consciousness ready made; that is, that we do not consciously create it, but receive it as though transmitted to us from some source outside or beyond us. From a perception of this, poets have always claimed to be inspired by a "muse." This reception of completed thought shows plainly that the physical brain is only an organ to relate thought to molecular conditions, and not to create it, in any sense of the word. The whole of nature's so-called creative processes are simply unconscious thought - that is, unconscious to us. Could we attune our consciousness to that of the creative intelligences in nature, we would know what is going on in the mind of an ant, as also in the mind of a flower or a stone. And that the soul is so attuned, in a degree at least, is proven by the fact that in deep hypnotic states it knows nature's thoughts or processes going on within its own physical organism, and can and does recognize and prescribe for diseased conditions therein.

This is just in accordance with what must be predicated of a soul, which, being independent of the body for all except one class of purely material functions, and which, passing from body to body by means of reincarnation, must accumulate an amount of conscious experiences, with knowledge and wisdom arising therefrom, which cannot of necessity find full and complete expression in any one body, as a small engine is insufficient to afford full expression for the energy of a series of boilers. To turn on the full force would in both instances be to destroy the vehicle.