Let us suppose a homogeneous outpouring, which may be considered as one vast soul, at one end of the scale; at the other, when humanity is reached, we find that one vast soul broken up into millions of the comparatively little souls of individual men.

At any stage between these two extremes we find an intermediate condition, the immense world-soul already subdivided, but not to the utmost limit of possible subdivision.
Each man is a soul, but not each animal or each plant.

Man, as a soul, can manifest through only one body at a time in the physical world, whereas one animal soul manifests simultaneously through a number of animal bodies, one plant soul through a number of separate plants.

A lion, for example, is not a permanently separate entity in the same way as a man is.

When the man dies--that is, when he as a soul lays aside his physical body--he remains himself exactly as he was before, an entity separate from all other entities.