Esoteric Buddhism

have no individuality, and the life of each in turn is a separate transaction which finds no compensation for suffering involved, no justice, no fruit of its efforts, in the life of its successor. It is possible to argue on the assumption of a new independent creation of a human soul, every time a new human form is produced by physiological growth, that in the after spiritual state of such soul justice may be awarded ; but then this conception is itself at variance with the fundamental idea of evolution, which traces, or believes that it traces, the origin of each soul to the working of highly developed matter in each case. Nor is it less at variance with the analogies of Nature, as these come under our observation ; but without going into that, it is enough for the moment to perceive that the theory of spiritual evolution, as set forth in the teaching of esoteric science, is, at any rate, in harmony with these analogies, while at the same time it satisfactorily meets the requirements of justice and of the instinctive demand for continuity of individual life.

This theory recognizes the evolution of the soul as a process that is quite continuous in itself, though carried out partly through the intermediation of a great series of dissociated forms. Putting aside, for the moment, the profound metaphysics of the theory which trace