eam out, during all the years
of bodily life, thus forming a continual bridge between man and his
environment. Controlling these are the "Fiery Lives," the Devourers,
which constrain these to their work of building up the cells of the
body, so that they work harmoniously and in order, subordinated to the
higher manifestation of life in the complex organism called Man. These
Fiery Lives on our plane correspond, in this controlling and
organising function, with the One Life of the Universe,[7] and when
they no longer exercise this function in the human body, the lower
lives run rampant, and begin to break down the hitherto definitely
organised body. During bodily life they are marshalled as an army;
marching in regular order under the command of a general, performing
various evolutions, keeping step, moving as a single body. At "Death"
they become a disorganised and tumultuous mob, rushing hither and
thither, jostling each other, tumbling over each other, with no common
object, no generally recognised authority. The body is never more
alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in
its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.

Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily
united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To
the Materialist, the only difference between a living and a
dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in
the other latent. When it is extinct or entirely latent, the
molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them
asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must
be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as
Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an
intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests
movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would
not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which
compose it are living and struggle to separate."[8]

Those who have read _The Seven Principles of Man_,[9] know that the
etheric double is the vehicle of Prana, the life-principle, or
vitality. Through the etheric double Prana exercises the controlling
and co-ordinating force spoken of above, and "Death" takes triumphant
possession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawn
and the delicate cord which unites it with the body is snapped. The
process of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and definit