The Elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained the same since the commencement of the evolution of our Chain. Everything in the Universe progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going up and down in the smaller Cycles. Nature is never stationary during Manvantara, as it is ever _becoming_,(406) not simply _being_; and mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to the then reigning Elements; and therefore _those_ Elements were then fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will only be in the next, or Fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether—the gross body of Âkâsha, if it can be called even that—will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as Air is familiar to us now, cease to be, as at present, hypothetical and an “agent” for so many things. And only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and development of which Âkâsha subserves, be susceptible of a complete expansion. As already indicated, a _partial_ familiarity with the characteristic of matter—Permeability—which should be developed concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the proper period in this Round. But with the next Element added to our resources, in the next Round, Permeability will become so manifest a characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this Round will seem to man’s perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more. Let us now return to the Life‐Cycle. Without entering at length upon the description given of the Higher LIVES, we must direct our attention, at present, simply to the earthly Beings and the Earth itself. The latter, we are told, is built up for the _First_ Round by the “Devourers,” which disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other Lives in the Elements; pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, the _ærobes_ do, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in an organism, they transform animal matter, and generate substances that vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the so‐called Azoic Age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle, or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and unconscious. _Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active Life; it is drawn into the vortex of_ MOTION _[the Alchemical Solvent of Life]; Spirit and Matter are __ the two States of the_ ONE, _which is neither Spirit nor Matter, both being the Absolute Life, latent.... Spirit is the first differentiation of [and in]_ SPACE; _and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, That is IT—the Causeless_ CAUSE _of Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the_ ONE LIFE, _or the Intra‐Cosmic Breath_.(407)