generative reproduction, and a species is formed, which takes the place of the primitive non-sexual type which did not reproduce itself in the original scheme. The primitive type disappears, and it disappears by a process of degradation, which it undergoes by reason of its failure to avail itself of the option which it originally had of living a good life that would entitle the immortal soul to return to its peculiar star without further conflict with the debasing tendencies to which it was exposed in the first body that it inhabited. In this curious theory we see how a process of declension or degradation is induced by what may almost be called a choice, since the primitive human being, by not resisting the debasing tendencies of his lower nature, is made by those tendencies to assume a less divine form than that in which he originally existed. To the primitive man the gods assigned the encephalic or head-soul, which was connected with and suspended from the divine soul of the Kosmos. They assigned it to each man as his presiding genius. If he neglected it, and directed all his development toward the energetic or appetitive mortal soul, he would become debased. He did so. Hence it became necessary for the gods to reconstruct the whole organism, and in this reconstruction the primitive non-sexual type becomes the bi-sexual, and a species is formed. It is not necessary to enter into the metaphysical argument which relates to the question of responsibility for this change from the original plan. Plato tells us that the gods foresaw it as a necessary consequence of the original scheme; and, moreover, that they foresaw that they must make preparation for the still more degenerate varieties of birds and quadrupeds, into which the corrupt and stupid part of mankind would sink, all of which were according to the great eternal scheme of the four kinds of ideal animals embraced in the idea of the Kosmos itself. But with the moral justice of the whole theory we have no concern here. We are here concerned, first, with the nature of the process by which, in the Platonic theory, the bi-sexual human race became formed out of the primitive non-sexual type; and, next, with the process by which individuals of this race became degraded into the lower animals.[17]