In effect, from this union of spirit and matter we get the genesis of the psyche or soul: “and man _became_ a living soul.” The process of becoming is one that was neither immediate nor complete. Most of us are still in the process of becoming. But a certain number of advanced monads became living souls, realizing their spiritual consciousness while in the flesh. These were the “sons of the gods” referred to in the text. All else were the sons of men. “And the sons of God looked upon the daughters of men and saw that they were fair.” The self-conscious souls took to wife the daughters of a less-evolved race, a process that would seem to be necessary to the further uplifting and spiritual vitalizing of the inferior grades of human life. During the present manvantara or period of cosmic activity we have traditional occult knowledge of four great races of humanity before our own, each of which attained to a successively higher state of civilization, the Atlantean transcending the Lemurian, as in process of time the Aryan will transcend the Atlantean. And as each period of cosmic activity has afforded means of successively higher human development, it is a question as to what has become of those very high forms of spiritualized humanity who were the final product of the material and spiritual evolution of past manvantaras. Earth-born in their origin, and linked to this Earth’s humanity by a thousand compatriot ties, by bonds of blood and heritage, by lives of tireless service, they wait the time when humanity shall have evolved to that stage when personal intercourse is compatible with their own spiritual status and the needs of our further evolution. To them, as pioneers, guardians or masters of the race, we are indebted for the universal tradition which here and there is gathered up by Occultists the world over, and which is realized in its integrity only by those who have fought their way to that place in the scale of spiritual evolution where detachment is possible. To them is attributable the founding of the great world religions, and at the outset these “Sons of God” were the spiritual instructors of the world. Each race produces its own crop of masters, evolved initiates sworn to the service of man for ever. As there is a natural selection, so there is a spiritual selection, and from the moment a human form is invested with a soul (psyche) that soul continues to progress. There is an evolution that has come along the natural line to the production of human lives of great faculty and attainment; and there is an evolution that has followed the spiritual line. Not all evolved humans are invested with the breath of _lives_. Thus a man may be an intellectual giant and yet not be ensouled, for the _psyche_ is one thing and the _pneuma_ is another. The _psyche_, or _nephesh_ is common to man and the lower animals and is capable of immense development when investing the human form, but unless this _nephesh_ is illuminated by the _ruach_ or