Such, briefly described, are I believe the outlines of the reincarnation story. To put it in a few words, the whole process by which the race-self evolves and finally gives birth to myriads of free, independent and deathless individuals curiously resembles and may well be illustrated by a certain biological phenomenon common both in the vegetable and the animal worlds. Some growing stem or portion of tissue, perhaps of a plant, perhaps of a sponge or higher organism, is at first of a simple homogeneous character, fairly uniform and undifferentiated: but after a time it exhibits knobs and inequalities, which presently define themselves in a sort of _botryoidal_ or clustered bud-like growth (as, for instance, in the spadix of an arum or the ovary of a mammal); finally these knobs or buds become entirely distinct and fully formed, and are thrown off ‘free,’ as seeds (in the case of plants and animals), or gemmules (in the case of sponges), or spores (in ferns and mosses), or as fresh and complete individuals in many aquatic creatures—in any case to enter on the beginnings of a free and independent life of their own. This kind of process, anyhow, is found in every department of biology, and it may well be that it extends upward even into the highest domains. The growing stem—proliferating cells without number, which are born and die in a kind of even uniformity within the limits of the stem—corresponds to the race-self in its early stages; the formation of knobs and buds in various degrees of clustered development corresponds to the partial growth of human souls out of the race-soul; and the liberation of the buds and germs corresponds to the liberation of the human souls into the freedom of a universal life. CHAPTER XIII THE DIVINE SOUL