a question of the balance between these
two, the spirit and the flesh, or ertia and inertia.

Why then does the balance preponderate to the life-side for a certain
length of time, and then go over to the opposite side?

Now this brings us to the distinction which the old writers drew,
between the "Vital Soul" of any living thing and the Spirit. Their
conception of the "Vital Soul" was very much the same as I have set
forth in the chapter on "The Soul of the Subject." It is the
individual's particular share of the Cosmic Soul or Anima Mundi, whether
it be an individual tree, or an individual person; and the ordinary
maximum length of time, during which the Vital Soul will be able to
overcome the inertia of its physical vehicle, depends upon the
particular class to which the individual belongs. What the ordinary
maximum is in regard to any species is a matter of experience, and it is
in this way that we have fixed the usual limit of human life at
three-score years and ten.

Now it is here that we shall begin to profit by some knowledge about the
invisible part of ourselves. The actual molecules of our body, as I have
just said, are only so much dead matter. This inert material is pulled
about in various directions by strings which we call muscles, according
to the movements we wish our bodies to make, and these muscles are set
in motion by the vibrations of the nerves.[4] But what is it that
occasions these vibrations of the nerves? Here we begin to pass beyond
the limits of official Science, though not beyond the limits of
recognizable Law. We have to recognize the existence of an etheric body
acting as an intermediary between intention, desire, or (in the case of
human beings) thought of the soul and the physical vibrations of the
nerves. This is why, in an earlier chapter, I have drawn attention to
our power of sending out etheric vibrations beyond the limits of the
physical body, as in the case of De Rocha's experiments. Such
experiments show that there is in us something not composed of dense
matter, which is able to convey vibrations to dense matter; and it is
this something which we speak of as the etheric body.

But if we wish to trace the links by which our thought operates upon the
physical body, we find ourselves compelled to postulate yet another
intermediary, what I have spoken of as the "Vital Soul"--a vehicle which
does not _consciously think_, but in which what we may call
race-consciousness becomes c