working at a higher level. It has welded the atoms into a distinct organism, however lowly, and so to distinguish this mode of power from the mere atomic energies, we may call it the Integrating Power, or the Power that Builds Up.

Now evolution is a continuous process of building up, and what makes the world of today a different world from that of the ichthyosaurus and the pterodactyl is the successive building up of more and more complex organisms, culminating at last in the production of Man as an organism both physically and mentally capable of expressing the Life of the Supreme Intelligence by means of the Individual Consciousness. Why, then, should not the Power, which is able to carry on the race as a perpetually improving expression of itself, do the same thing in the individual? That is the question with which we have to deal; in other words, why need the individual die? Why should he not go on in a perpetual expansion?

Mortality

This question may seem absurd in the light of past experience. Those who believe only in blind forces answer that death is the law of Nature, and those who believe in the Divine Wisdom answer that it is the appointment of God. But strange as it may seem, both these answers are wrong. That death should be the ultimate law of Nature contradicts the principle of continuity as exemplified in the Lifeward tendency of evolution; and that it is the will of God is