286. One can understand from the above description that the present forms and bodies of living beings for experiencing life are, in reality, purely temporary and the present life-form has to make way for a subsequent form still further perfected. But, in that present bodies are only temporary and evolution manifests itself in cosmic lines, we come to the conclusion that evolution is taking place in unlimited variations. Consequently, those living beings which at present are found in the plant kingdom will never at any time become animals in the same kind or shapes and bodies as those in which animals living nowadays present themselves, for when the necessary time has passed for the development of plants into animals, then the present-day animal bodies will not exist any more, but will have degenerated long ago and disappeared in order to make way for more perfected bodies. Equally, the animals alive today will never become human beings of the type terrestrial mankind is at present because that form will have disappeared by that time and will have been replaced by new and more beautiful bodily forms.
      Thus one bodily structure after another comes to an end in order to make way continually for new and improved bodily structures; however, the common factor for all living beings on the same step is not bodily structure but moral standard.