If we can suppose that matter shall be divested from all connection with media which can impress upon it a condition, we speak of it as being amorphous matter, or matter without form. If we unite it then with one medium, as electricity, we find it tending to produce the gaseous condition, the nebular condition. Form is not yet attained. If we unite with it still another medium which is a little different from electricity, forms of the mineral kingdom are produced. We have here the first degree of form, but as yet there is not life or individuality. Now the next advance is to induce in that form a condition which shall make it receptive of life, for that which is to be individualized is life. So, then, in passing through the elaborating influences of the mineral kingdom, it arrives at a certain point, a sort of culminating point, where it joins upon the vegetable kingdom; and the line between these kingdoms is passed by such imperceptible gradations—so slow in the unfolding of forms—that it is impossible for the naturalist to tell accurately where the one begins and where the other ends; but the vegetable kingdom is manifestly begun when there is found the incorporation of a new principle into a new form—a principle looking to organization—giving matter an organic structure. When the principle known as the life-force is introduced, then it is understood that mineral has passed and the vegetable is commenced. As soon as this is unfolded, we have a second advance of form—life in its first degree; or, in other words, individualization commences. Form has passed to its second degree, and goes on elaborating degree after degree, producing diverse organic forms, until it is prepared to receive another and a more interior principle—consciousness—until by imperceptible degrees we arrive at the animal kingdom. We have then the animal form, the third or finishing degree of form, and the second degree of life, and the first degree of consciousness. Man in his animal nature is the completion; of the highest form. Life has yet one more degree to pass through; consciousness has yet two more degrees to pass through before it is complete. The next advance is to a higher principle of consciousness—to a more enduring principle of life, without changing the material form, and that is to the spiritual degree of unfolding.