VIII. Man's First Ancestors

When one of these ovoids of matter had reached a certain size, it split into two, forming two new masses each resembling the one which gave it birth, and reproducing the same activities which were at work in the parent form. Every one of these new forms possessed a soul similar to that of the mother-being. The reason of this was that not only a definite number of human souls incarnated on the physical plane, but there was what we might call a Soul-Tree (or Group Soul), which was able, as it were, to give off innumerable individual souls, sprung from its common root. Just as a plant springs up again and again from numberless seeds, so did the soul-life reincarnate in the countless offshoots which were created as the result of these continual cleavings. (Of course, there existed from the beginning a very limited number of soul species, but within these species, evolution proceeded in the manner described, every soul species putting forth innumerable scions.)