Since they are not yet individualized, they may be thought of almost as etheric and astral animals; yet many of them are intellectually quite equal to average humanity.

They have their nations and types just as we have, and they are often grouped into four great classes, and called the spirits of earth, water, fire and air.

Only the members of the last of these four divisions normally confine their manifestation to the astral world, but their numbers are so prodigious that they are everywhere present in it.
Another great kingdom has its representatives here--the kingdom of the angels (called in India the devas).

This is a body of beings who stand far higher in evolution than man, and only the lowest fringe of their hosts touches the astral world--a fringe whose constituent members are perhaps at about the level of development of what we should call a distinctly good man.
We are neither the only nor even the principal inhabitants of our solar system; there are other lines of evolution running parallel with our own which do not pass through humanity at all, though they must all pass through a level corresponding to that of humanity.

On one of these other lines of evolution are the nature-spirits above described, and at a higher level of that line comes this great kingdom of the angels.