184 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
condition.
During the period of manifestation with which we are
concerned, these various grades of beings are working to
acquire more experience than they possessed at the
beginning of this period of existence. Those who, in
previous manifestations, have attained to the highest degree
of development work on those who have not yet evolved any
consciousness. They induce in them a stage of self-
consciousness from which they can take up further work
themselves. Those who had started their evolution in a
former Day of Manifestation, but had not progressed far at
the close, now take up their task again, just as we take up
our daily work in the morning where we left off the previous
night.
All the different Beings, however, do not take up their
evolution at the early stages of a new manifestation. Some
must wait until those who precede them have made the
conditions which are necessary for their further
development. There are no instantaneous processes in
nature. All is an exceedingly slow unfolding, a development
which, though so exceedingly slow, is yet absolutely certain
to attain ultimate perfection. Just as there are progressive
stages in the human life—childhood, youth, manhood or
womanhood, and old age—so in the macrocosm there are
different stages corresponding to these various periods of the
micro-cosmic life.
A child cannot take up the duties of fatherhood or
motherhood. Its undeveloped mental and physical condition
render it incapable of doing such work. The same is true of
the less evolved beings in the beginning of manifestation.
They must wait until the higher evolved have made the
proper conditions for them. The lower the grade of the