One remark more and I have done.  By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told that the living body is divided into two parts: 

1.  The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most tangible form.

2.  The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others.

Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings of science.  I need only remind you of what I have said before with regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its formative agent the protoplasm.  Formed structure is considered as material which has already passed out of the realms of life; what lives in it is the protoplasm.  So far the esoteric conception fully agrees with the result of the latest investigations of modern science.

But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground, for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body itself.  It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts.  But it dies with the cessation of life.  It is true it is capable of a sort of resuscitation.  For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy.  But for all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible; it is assimilable—­that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life, through its being taken up by a living body.  But such an eventual chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of indestructibility; for we need only leave the dead animal or plant containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay—­organs, tissues, and protoplasm altogether.

To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately by others.  The vital principle to the Esoteric Doctrine would then appear to be a sort of abstract force, not a force inherent in the living protoplasm—­this is the scientific conception—­but a force per se, independent altogether of the material with which it is connected.

Now I must confess this is a doctrine which puzzles one greatly, although one may have no difficulty in accepting the spirit of man as an entity, for the phenomena of ratiocination are altogether so widely different from all physical phenomena that they can hardly be explained by any of the physical forces known to us.  The materialist, who tells us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether so many outcomes of certain