Proceeding towards the lowest animal we find that the Jains regard all the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) as being animated by souls. Thus particles of earth, etc., are the bodies of souls, called earth-lives, etc. These we may call elementary lives; they live and die and are born again in another elementary body. These elementary lives are either gross or subtle; in the latter case they are invisible. The last class of one-organ lives are plants. Of some plants each is the body of one soul only; but of other plants, each is an aggregation of embodied souls, which have all the functions of life such as respiration and nutrition in common. Plants in which only one soul is embodied are always gross; they exist in the habitable part of the world only. But those plants of which each is a colony of plant lives may also be subtle and invisible, and in that case they are distributed all over the world. The whole universe is full of minute beings called _nigodas_; they are groups of infinite number of souls forming very small clusters, having respiration and nutrition in common and experiencing extreme pains. The whole space of the world is closely packed with them like a box filled with powder. The nigodas furnish the supply of souls in place of those that have reached Moksa. But an infinitesimally small fraction of one single nigoda has sufficed to replace the vacancy caused in the world by the Nirvana of all the souls that have been liberated from beginningless past down to the present. Thus it is evident the sa@msâra will never be empty of living beings. Those of the _nigodas_ who long for development come out and continue their course of progress through successive stages [Footnote ref 1]. Karma Theory. It is on account of their merits or demerits that the jîvas are born as gods, men, animals, or denizens of hell. We have already noticed in Chapter III that the cause of the embodiment of soul is the presence in it of karma matter. The natural perfections of the pure soul are sullied by the different kinds of karma matter. Those which obscure right knowledge of details (_jñâna_) are called _jñânâvara@nîya_, those which obscure right perception (_dars'ana_) as in sleep are called _dars'anâvaranîya_, those which ___________________________________________________________________ [Footnote 1: See Jacobi's article on Jainism, _E. R.E._, and _Lokaprakâs'a_, VI. pp. 31 ff.] 191