After the disintegration of the body, the kamic[92] elements continue for some time, us a "shade"[93] or a "phantom,"[94] in the finer and invisible atmosphere;[95] then they, in turn, become disintegrated by the various forces of this environment,[96] and are lost in the strata of matter from which they have been taken. Like the physical elements (_life-atoms_), they whirl about in their environment and there submit to the same law of attraction and repulsion as that which controls universal selection; they are drawn towards the kamic elements of men and animals, and it is here that we ought to place the list of those misdeeds, by reason of which these elements pass into bodies of animals or men of inferior development. "A drunken priest becomes a worm," says Manu, "a stealer of corn, a rat; the murderer of a Brahman, a dog, a tiger, or a serpent"--and this means that those elements which, in man, serve as a basis for the passions, at death, pass over into the bodies of animals that possess the same passions or experience the same needs. The transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals is still generally accepted amongst the less intelligent Hindus; it has contributed, perhaps more than anything else, to that wonderful respect for life one meets with all over India. The thought that some ancestor or other might happen to be in the body of an animal prevents its destruction; even the sacrifice of his life offered by a man to one of his brothers in the animal world is regarded as a sublime virtue, and legend tells us of the Buddha, the Lord of Compassion, giving himself up as food for a famishing tigress, that she and her cubs might not perish of hunger. REINCARNATION. The process of disintegration[97] which, after disincarnation, destroys the physical, astral, and mental bodies of the man leaves the Soul--or, to be more exact, the causal body, for the soul is not the causal body any more than it is any of the other human vehicles--intact. Indeed, the causal body is at present the only vehicle that resists the cyclic dissolution of the human compound; this it will be subjected to only when the divine spark which constitutes the Soul--an eternal spark in its essence, since it is a fragment of God, and immortal as an "ego," once it has attained to individualisation, the goal of evolution--has formed for itself a new and superior body with the substance of the finer planes above the mental; but ages will pass before the masses of mankind reach this point. After thus throwing off, one after the other, all its sheaths, the Ego finds that it has ended a "life-cycle," and is preparing to put on new bodies, to return to reincarnation on earth. On Reincarnation properly so called, the Hindu scriptures are so precise and complete, so generally accepted, than it is unnecessary to quote from them in detail. A few extracts will suffice.