at
of the reasoning mind exercising the power of conscious thought.

Now it is the direction of this thought that influences the three lower
factors. The sequence, going upwards, is as follows:--movement is
communicated to the physical body by the etheric body; and movement is
communicated to the etheric body by the Vital Soul; then, in proportion
as the purely instinctive action of the Vital Soul is controlled by the
conscious thought, so its action upon the two lowest principles is
modified.

Here, then, is the crucial point. In what direction is the conscious
thought going to modify the action of the three principles that are
below it? If it takes the soul of mere racial desire and the physical
body as its standard of thought, then it naturally follows that it
cannot raise it any higher. It has descended to _their_ level and so
cannot pour any stream of life into it, on the simple principle that no
current can ever flow from a lower to a higher level, whether the
difference in level be that of actual elevation, as in the case of
water, or different in potential, as in the case of electricity. On the
other hand if the conscious mind recognizes that itself proceeds from
some higher source, it looks to receive life from that source, and its
thought is modified accordingly, and in turn re-acts correspondingly
upon the lower principles.

If this is clear to the student, he will now see how it is that by
limiting our conception of life to the current ideas entertained by the
race, we impress these ideas on our three lower principles. It is true
that these three principles are not capable of reasoning themselves, but
the highest of them, the Vital Soul, has its action modified by the
reasoning principle above it, and so communicates to the two lowest
principles corresponding waves of vibration. And in this connection we
must remember the distinction between the two systems of nerves; the
voluntary system connected with the brain and forming the medium of all
voluntary action, and the involuntary, or sympathetic system connected
with the solar plexus and controlling all the automatic actions of the
body, and thus being the agent of that continual renewal of the physical
organism which is always going on, and keeps in existence for a life
time a body which begins to disintegrate immediately the soul has left
it.[5] Now it is through this inner Builder of the Body that our Thought
re-acts upon our physical organism. The res