the soul-form taken from interior spiritual atmospheres downward into nature He provided the way, as we have already pointed out, to come eventually directly and immediately into the lowest plane of being, the natural universe, just as man, His image and likeness, is in it.
We have said that He was always potentially on this natural plane; for if He were not, He could not have descended into it; but He could not descend actually into it until He had provided in nature a form receptive, and directly and immediately receptive, of the very Divine itself.
This was a necessary mode of manifestation also because of man's fall from his original state of orderly life. We can understand that the pre—Adamite man was merely an animal man, but yet a distinct creation from the higher forms of animals below him, because he had the spiritual plane of life capable of receiving and manifesting the life of God as an image and likeness of God. He had not only the animal mind, but the spiritual mind, or plane of being, with the inmost within that. Because of this he grew upward until he became heavenly, or truly spiritual, in the Garden of Eden state. Yet
