Speaking now of our own planet, the Earth, we find matter emerging from the molten state in which it manifested for ages.  Gradually cooling and stratifying, the Earth contained none of those forms that we call living forms.  The temperature of the Earth in that period is estimated at about 15,000 times hotter than boiling water, which would, of course, render impossible the existence of any of the present known forms of life.  But the Yogi Teachings inform us that even in the molten mass there were elementary forms that were to become the ancestral forms of the later living forms.  These elementary forms were composed of a vaporous, peculiar form of matter, of minute size,—­little more than the atoms, in fact, and yet, just a little more advanced.  From these elementary forms, there gradually evolved, as the Earth cooled and solidified, other forms, and so on until at last the first “living form” manifested.

As the globe cooled at the poles, there was gradually created a tropical climate, in which the temperature was sufficiently cool to support certain rudimentary forms of life.  In the rocks in the far northern latitudes, there are found abundant traces of fossils, which goes to prove the correctness of the Yogi Teachings of the origin of life at the north pole, from which the living forms gradually spread south toward the equator, as the Earth’s surface cooled.

The elementary evolving life forms were of a very simple structure, and were but a degree above the crystals.  They were composed of identically the same substance as the crystals, the only difference being that they displayed a greater degree of mind.  For that matter, even the highest physical form known to us today is composed of simple chemical materials.  And these chemical materials are obtained, either directly or indirectly, from the air, water, or earth.  The principal materials composing the physical bodies of plants, animals, and man, are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, with a still smaller proportion of sulphur and phosphorus, and traces of a few other elements.  The material part of all living things is alike—­the difference lies in the degree of Mind controlling the matter in which it is embodied.

Of these physical materials, carbon is the most important to the living forms.  It seems to possess properties capable of drawing to it the other elements, and forcing them into service.  From carbon proceeds what is called “protoplasm,” the material of which the cells of animal and vegetable life is composed.  From protoplasm the almost infinite varieties of living forms have been built up by the process of Evolution, working gradually and by easy stages.  Every living form is made up, or composed, of a multitude of single cells, and their combinations.  And every form originates in a single cell which rapidly multiplies and reproduces itself until the form of the amoeba; the plant; the animal; the man, is completed.  All living forms are but a single cell multiplied.  And every cell is composed of protoplasm.  Therefore we must look for the beginning of life in the grade of matter called protoplasm.  In this both modern Science and the Yogi Teachings agree fully.