m the
standpoint of occult science. It should be much more the concern of the
occultist to recognize that the materialistic way of thinking is a
necessary concomitant phenomenon of the great advance of natural science
in our day. This advance is due to the vast improvements in the
instruments used in sense-observation. And it is in the very nature of man
to bring some of his faculties to a certain degree of perfection at the
expense of others. Exact sense-observation, which has been evolved to such
an important extent by natural science, was bound to leave in the
background the cultivation of those human faculties which lead into the
hidden worlds. But the time has come when this cultivation is once more
necessary; and recognition of the invisible will not be won by combating
opinions which are the logical outcome of a denial of its existence, but
rather by setting the invisible in the right light. Then it will be
recognized by those for whom the "time has come."

It was necessary to say this much, in order that it may not be imagined
that occult science is ignorant of the standpoint of natural science when
mention is made of an "etheric body," which, in many circles must
necessarily be considered as purely imaginary.

Thus the etheric body is the second principle of the human being. For the
clairvoyant, it possesses a higher degree of reality than the physical
body. A description of how it is seen by the clairvoyant can be given only
in later parts of this book, when the sense in which such descriptions are
to be taken will become manifest. For the present it will be enough to say
that the etheric body penetrates the physical body in all its parts, and
is to be regarded as a kind of architect of the latter. All the physical
organs are maintained in their form and shape by the currents and
movements of the etheric body. The physical heart is based upon an etheric
heart, the physical brain, upon an etheric brain, and the physical, with
this difference, that in the etheric body the parts flow into one another
in active motion, whereas in the physical body they are separated from
each other.

Man has this etheric body in common with all plants, just as he has the
physical body in common with minerals. Everything living has its etheric
body.

The study of occult science proceeds upwards from the etheric body to
another principle of the human being. To aid in the formation of an idea
of this principle, it draws attention