So we leave the vast expanse of lives, covered by the unmeaning phrase "atomic substance," and pass on secondly to a consideration of those prisoners of the planet which can be more easily contacted, whose general plight can be more specifically understood, and who stand in a closer relation to man. Men are not yet equipped to comprehend the nature of those units of electrical energy which embody what we call the soul of all things and which has been termed the "anima mundi" - the life and soul of the One in whom all embodied existences live and move and have their being. [525]

To do this, it will be necessary to understand somewhat the part that the fourth kingdom in nature plays in relation to the whole, and the purpose for which that aggregate of forms which we call the human family exists. We must study this from the standpoint of the relation of the fourth kingdom to the whole, and not from the standpoint of man's own individual progressive development and the part he plays as a human unit within the ring-pass-not of the human family. We will use the word humanity, and speak of its mission and function in the big scheme and the working out of the plan. We will infer a humanity which is composed of all the sons of men. It includes on the one hand the hierarchy of adepts who have deliberately incarnated on the physical plane in order to work within the limits of the human kingdom, and on the other we find the undeveloped types which are more animal than human. Between these two extremes we find the many and varied types, the developed and the undeveloped, the intelligent and the unintelligent - all who are covered by the word man.