"When Dharma,--righteousness, law--decays, when Adharma--unrighteousness, lawlessness--is exalted, then I Myself come forth: for the protection of the good, for the destruction of the evil, for the establishing firmly of Dharma, I am born from age to age." That is what He tells us of the coming forth of the Avatâra. That is, the needs of His world call upon Him to manifest Himself in His divine power; and we know from other of His sayings that in addition to those which deal with the human needs, there are certain kosmic necessities which in the earlier ages of the world's story called forth special manifestations. When in the great wheel of evolution another turn round has to be given, when some new form, new type of life is coming forth, then also the Supreme reveals Himself, embodying the type which thus He initiates in His kosmos, and in this way turning that everlasting wheel which He comes forth as I´shvara to turn. Such then, speaking quite generally, the meaning of the word, and the object of the coming. From that we may fitly turn to the more special question, "What is an Avatâra?" And it is here that I must ask your close attention, nay, your patient consideration, where points that to some extent may be unfamiliar are laid before you; for as I said, it is the occult view of the truth which I am going to partially unveil, and those who have not thus studied truth need to think carefully ere they reject, need to consider long ere they refuse. We shall see as we try to answer the question how far the great authorities help us to understand, and how far the lack of knowledge in reading those authorities has led to misconception. You may remember that the late learned T. Subba Rao in the lectures that he gave on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ put to you a certain view of the Avatâra, that it was a descent of I´shvara--or, as he said, using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name for I´shvara--a descent of I´shvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. With all respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannot but think that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not at that time desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with case after case, having so wide a field to cover in the small number of lectures that he gave, and he therefore chose out one form, as we may say, of self-revelation, leaving untouched the others, which now in dealing with the subject by itself we have full time to study. Let me then begin as it were at the beginning, and then give you certain authorities which may make the view easier to accept; let me state without any kind of attempt to veil or evade, what is really an Avatâra. Fundamentally He is the result of evolution. In far past Kalpas, in worlds other than this, nay, in universes earlier than our own, those who were to be Avatâras climbed slowly, step by step, the vast ladder of evolution, climbing from mineral to plant, from plant to animal, from