Abdul Baha restores man to his state a little lower than the angels.... On this occasion we newcomers were presented with a Bahai stone marked with Baha Ullah's name. Such objects contain a spiritual influence ... actually retain and set free something of the holy man's personality.... At my request, Abdul Baha graciously took back the stone I had received and returned it with a blessing for my baby girl, who thus, as it were, accompanied us on our pilgrimage and received its benefit.--_Horace Holley at Thonon. His "The Modern Social Religion," p. 216._ VII. Bahaism teaches another way of salvation. Man's origin and destiny were formerly points of doubt in Bahai teaching, but the muddy mixture has settled enough to give us a clearer view, at least as regards Western Bahaism, though pantheistic notions still prevail. Abdul Baha teaches that matter is eternal, self-existent, and fills all space.[223] "God always had a creation; the universe has neither beginning nor end."[224] "Creation out of nothing is unthinkable. Separate entities come into being through the operation of God--are the perceptible manifestations of Him." "There are four degrees of spirit concerned with evolutionary growth: The mineral spirit, the vegetable, the animal, and the human. The mineral spirit contains the latent principle of life."[225] Yet man's origin is not from the animals.[226] "Species is fixed; man was developed gradually as a distinct species."[227] The spirit of man emanates from God as an action from an actor, a writing from a writer--a manifestation of the Divine but not a division from it. Sin arises from the physical qualities, from the physical nature which we derive from Adam. Evil is really non-existent; it is simply lack of good qualities. There is no Satan.[228] The "Genii" (jins) of the Koran are evil passions in man; demons are the spirits of bad men. As to the doctrine of personal immortality, there has been much confusion of thought. Some have understood the doctrine of "rijat" or "Return" as teaching transmigration of souls. Others have understood their allegorizing about heaven as a rejection of the future life. Others, as Phelps,[229] affirm the absorption of the soul in the Infinite. My language teacher in Persia, a fervent Behai, said: "We believe in a future state so unthinkably ecstatic that if its joys were now revealed to men, they would commit suicide to hasten their entrance into it." Baha Ullah wrote a "Tablet of the Spiritual World," of which it is said:[230] "All who read it are filled with an anxious desire to leave this world and enter the next condition, so wonderful are the glories of the spiritual kingdom. In Persia one man who read the tablet killed himself. He could not wait for the happiness it promised him. Another, a youth of Ispahan, could not stand it and lost his reason."