Such is the admitted rationale of heredity and atavism.  That the same things apply to our ordinary conduct is apparent from the notorious ease with which “habits,”—­bad or good, as the case may be—­are acquired, and it will not be questioned that this applies, as a rule, as much to the moral and intellectual, as to the physical world.

Furthermore, History and Science teach us plainly that certain physical habits conduce to certain moral and intellectual results.  There never yet was a conquering nation of vegetarians.  Even in the old Aryan times, we do not learn that the very Rishis, from whose lore and practice we gain the knowledge of Occultism, ever interdicted the Kshetriya (military) caste from hunting or a carnivorous diet.  Filling, as they did, a certain place in the body politic in the actual condition of the world, the Rishis as little thought of interfering with them, as of restraining the tigers of the jungle from their habits.  That did not affect what the Rishis did themselves.

The aspirant to longevity then must be on his guard against two dangers.  He must beware especially of impure and animal* thoughts.  For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous action expanding outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the physical man.  The inner men,** however sublimated their organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are still subject to the law that an “action” has a tendency to repeat itself; a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser “shell” they are in contact with, and concealed within.

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* In other words, the thought tends to provoke the deed.—­G.M.

** We use the word in the plural, reminding the reader that, according to our doctrine, man is septenary.—­G.M. ----------

And, on the other hand, certain actions have a tendency to produce actual physical conditions unfavourable to pure thoughts, hence to the state required for developing the supremacy of the inner man.

To return to the practical process.  A normally healthy mind, in a normally healthy body, is a good starting-point.  Though exceptionally powerful and self-devoted natures may sometimes recover the ground lost by mental degradation or physical misuse, by employing proper means, under the direction of unswerving resolution, yet often things may have gone so far that there is no longer stamina enough to sustain the conflict sufficiently long to perpetuate this life; though what in Eastern parlance is called the “merit” of the effort will help to ameliorate conditions and improve matters in another.