oul, and spirit.

The body is the physical or animal degree of man. From the bodily point of
view man is a sharer of the animal kingdom. The bodies alike of men and
animals are composed of elements held together by the law of attraction.

Like the animal, man possesses the faculties of the senses, is subject to
heat, cold, hunger, thirst, etc.; unlike the animal, man has a rational
soul, the human intelligence.

This intelligence of man is the intermediary between his body and his
spirit.

When man allows the spirit, through his soul, to enlighten his
understanding, then does he contain all Creation; because man, being the
culmination of all that went before and thus superior to all previous
evolutions, contains all the lower world within himself. Illumined by the
spirit through the instrumentality of the soul, man's radiant intelligence
makes him the crowning-point of Creation.

But on the other hand, when man does not open his mind and heart to the
blessing of the spirit, but turns his soul towards the material side,
towards the bodily part of his nature, then is he fallen from his high
place and he becomes inferior to the inhabitants of the lower animal
kingdom. In this case the man is in a sorry plight! For if the spiritual
qualities of the soul, open to the breath of the Divine Spirit, are never
used, they become atrophied, enfeebled, and at last incapable; whilst the
soul's material qualities alone being exercised, they become terribly
powerful--and the unhappy, misguided man, becomes more savage, more unjust,
more vile, more cruel, more malevolent than the lower animals themselves.
All his aspirations and desires being strengthened by the lower side of
the soul's nature, he becomes more and more brutal, until his whole being
is in no way superior to that of the beasts that perish. Men such as this,
plan to work evil, to hurt and to destroy; they are entirely without the
spirit of Divine compassion, for the celestial quality of the soul has
been dominated by that of the material. If, on the contrary, the spiritual
nature of the soul has been so strengthened that it holds the material
side in subjection, then does the man approach the Divine; his humanity
becomes so glorified that the virtues of the Celestial Assembly are
manifested in him; he radiates the Mercy of God, he stimulates the
spiritual progress of mankind, for he becomes a lamp to show light on
their path.

You perceive how the soul is the interme