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THE SPIRITUAL BODY¹

How do the people commonly called spirits appear to an observer? Are they always dressed and in what style? If they eat, what is their food? How do they perform their various functions and do they bear children? These are recurring questions. In the progression of Nature from the lowest living substance to the complex organisation of man everything follows the principle of evolution. The lowest is radical and the highest may be termed fruition, because it is perfect unfoldment. In the germ or protoplasm, as it is called by Huxley, are deposited the properties and potencies necessary for the development of each particular organism. The visible process is that of progressive development, and this principle is immortal. It is the mode of action throughout eternal spheres, and it gives true explanations concerning the body of the spirit and its appearance in the Summer Land.

Physiologists know that there are organs in man's body—like certain caecal appendages to the intestines—which do not perform any important offices. They are remnants of a lower stage through which mankind has passed; and a time will come when—by operations of evolutionary law—such parts of the human form will cease to be. In the Summer Land certain organs which

¹ See Views of our Heavenly Home, pp. 179-184.

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are now vital are no longer needed and do not appear within the spiritual body. There are no fluids requiring kidneys, no broken-down blood demanding pulmonary air cavities, no physical digestion involving stomach, liver and intestines,¹ no propagation involving external organs of generation.² Male and female, however, the spiritual body appears—preserving all the symmetry and intrinsic excellence of our most perfect human form. It is sometimes clothed and sometimes not, according to customs of society or peculiarities of latitude. But the ultimates of all organs are preserved and perform spiritual functions corresponding to the natural body. With regard to food, we must realise the difference

¹ This is specifically contradicted in other places and in terms which make any reconciliation impossible between the two statements. See pp. 134, 168, 200, 201 of the present work.
² Later on Davis had occasion to answer a correspondent who called his attention to the fact that this statement was in contradiction to the testimony of Swedenborg. Davis affirmed (1) that the perfect human form is an exact representative of the formative principles which reside eternally in the spirit, and (2) that sex is one of those principles. He said also that during the subordinate stages of evolution these inherent principles clothe themselves in appropriate external organs with legitimate external functions. But when the individual rises into higher kingdoms of life, spiritual progress dominates the material, temporary parts, derived from our animal predecessors, and thus at last the most perfect form is reached as a spiritual ultimation.—Views of our Heavenly Home, p. 232. It seems to follow from these remarks that Davis reverses his former view, but he is meaning to maintain it. He misses the point also when he asks his correspondent whether the latter supposes that a man's teeth in the next world are made of lime. The question is not what they are made of but whether a spiritual body possesses teeth, and why a spiritual body should be devoid of sexual organs and yet have those which are dental. The difficulty of Davis is of course the difficulty of his subject. If we follow analogy by assuming that the spiritual body corresponds to the natural, being an object extended in space and having a spiritual trunk and extremities, that analogy calls on us to go further in the logic of its own position, and we are compelled to suppose something corresponding, e.g. to bowels, with functions belonging to these. But if we renounce the analogy we must have recourse to the purely metaphysical form of the soul, with all that follows in theology.

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between a mortal body and the body incorruptible.¹ Throughout the ages of eternity, all human or angel feeding and all breathing among elements of eternal beauty and youth are accomplished by the mediation of what in the physical body we term erroneously nerves and cellular tissues. Youth and health are eternal because there is a perpetual exchange of these elements, causing and maintaining everlasting equilibrium between the body and the spirit. Sickness, old age, death can never be known where there exists this perfect and just interchange.

Under the protection of her heavenly guardians, the Seeress of Prevost was a remarkable example of cellular and nerve feeding on this plane, but we may recall instances in our own day and country of young women who have lived for weeks and even months without eating anything substantial and sometimes without drinking. But because the patient partook of spiritual meat, which only angels know, the physical body did not waste rapidly away, though its functions were sometimes suspended, and the physiological wonder grew greater, day by day, among men.

The physical body is designed to gather the imponderables and make and prepare an imperishable body for the spirit.² The physical organisation contains all

¹ The food of earth is, however, a matter of importance, because—as we shall see—it builds up the spiritual as well as the physical body. The consequences of tobacco and alcoholic habits are mentioned elsewhere in this connection, and it is affirmed that the spirit body is permeated therewith. The case of a paper-maker is supposed who assumes it to matter nothing what is put into the composition before his article is manufactured. The comment of Davis is that an artist cannot put any admixture of colours on his canvas, because a good picture requires good colours, and it is the same with the food of man. He is making a spiritual body from all he eats, drinks and even breathes.—Morning Lectures, pp. 326, 327. The illustrations offered have of course no ground of comparison with the lesson which it is sought to enforce.
² See The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, pp. 376, 377, 378, 382, etc.

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substances, forms and dynamics of matter, while the soul—or body of the spirit¹—contains all essences, laws and forces of mind. The body contains the primates and the soul the ultimates of matter. They represent therefore the two sides of universal Nature. At the death of a man all that is not human in his body will return into the ocean of life; but the human or spiritual organisation, with its interior essence, will be claimed by and drawn to the spiritual sphere of existence, where it will be appointed an abode in the "house not made with hands." The soul is a super-corporeal organism, out of which inwrought essences and integral forces may enter into admirable and harmonious uses. It is the recipient of an inexhaustible fountain, springing up into everlasting life—the outer garment and permanent form surrounding the eternal spirit. The body does not make and concentrate the essence of which the spirit is composed, but—it is desirable to repeat—gives permanent form to the soul, or spiritual body, which encases the immortal image. The soul-structure which covers the spirit is the masterpiece of the physical organisation, even as the palpable and ponderable body is the masterpiece of organic matter. Nature reaches her end in the perfection of the psychical structure, and because it is not possible for any organisation to be better or higher than the humam this structure does not pass away. The

¹ This distinction calls to be noted carefully as it constitutes an important difference between the psychology of The Principles of Nature and The Great Harmonia. The earlier work in no place recognises the soul as a psychic body enclosing an essence called spirit. On the contrary, not only does it use soul and spirit as interchangeable terms denoting the immortal essence, but points out specifically that it does. Subsequently there is no question that Davis reconsidered the classification as the result of dipping into one or other of the old theosophies. It is of course largely a question of words, because—as will be seen in an earlier part of the present work—Davis recognised from the beginning the existence of a spiritual body, which he now elects to term soul, confusing his previous terminology and most express distinctions.

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things which pass are things which give place to others, but this is in the highest place and its substitute is not found. Furthermore, the elements which compose it are not elements of decomposition. The spirit within is incapable of organisation.¹ It has not been created and cannot be destroyed; and as the aromal body through which that imperishable and impersonal combination of principles expresses itself is made and perfected by this physical body which man now wears, he is every day and moment refining material for that body which he will wear eternally in the worlds beyond. All this wonderful preparation is accomplished by the water he drinks, the food he eats, the air he breathes, the thoughts he thinks and the works and deeds that he performs.² The cloth manufacturer procures appropriate materials with which to fashion his fabric, and

¹ This also is entirely at issue with the speculations of The Principles of Nature. See in particular pp. 109, 110 of the present work. It is at issue, moreover, with that sentence which follows next in the text above, for a spirit which is defined as a combination of principles is obviously a spirit organised. I have dealt sparingly with inconsistencies of this kind, though they abound everywhere. The reader will have understood long since that Davis not only began his intellectual and psychical life as a person imperfectly educated but he remained always a loose and inconsistent thinker, having an exceedingly ready flow of words, the strict sense of which he grasped in part only. His titles to consideration are entirely of the psychic order, and he is to be judged by these, not as a thinker or philosopher and—as there is no need to say—not as a qualified writer on any matter of science, even the simplest.
² Had Davis been acquainted with the Eastern hypothesis of the thought body, he would have given a fuller consideration to the last two points. He would have seen that on his own showing the second and interior vesture of the soul is a body of desire, and that if its specific qualities are determined by the life on earth it is not by our food or drink but by all that which goes to make up our character—aspirations, tendencies, habits, thoughts, words and acts. I should add that the latter conception as a mere hypothetical possibility came into the mind of Davis, but he affirms categorically that man's spirit is clothed with a substantial form, having nothing to do with the ideas of which the life of the spirit is composed.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, p. 410.

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the manufacturer of the psychical body procures the proper substances with which to build up the psychical constitution. Thus the body of the spirit is material and yet is unlike visible matter, being the last degree of material refinement. To sum up, the term soul is used to express that fine, impalpable, almost immaterial body¹ which clothes the spirit from the moment of death to all eternity. The soul in this life is composed of all the magnetisms, electricities, forces and vital principles which—in more general terms—are called life, motion, sensation and instinct. The term spirit is used to signify the centre-most principle of man's existence, the divine energy, or life of the soul of Nature. In yet other language, soul is the life of the outer body and spirit is the life of the soul. After physical death the soul or life of the natural body becomes the form or body of the eternal spirit. Hence in the Second Sphere the spirit is surrounded by the physical imperfections of the soul. But the soul is ultimately purified by this spirit, which is king.² The soul is chemically related to the body by means of vital electricity,³ and the spirit is chemically related to the soul by means of vital magnetism. Vital electricity belongs to the element of motion in the soul, and vital magnetism is an emanation of the soul, comparable to the aroma from the life of a rose. If a human being lives out the full measure of life then the vital electricity imperceptibly loosens its hold and dissolves the relation so gradually that the spirit is not even conscious of death until after the change is all over, like the birth of an infant into this world.⁴ If, however, the change is forced

¹ See Answers to Ever-Recurring Questions from the People, p. 20.
² Ibid., p. 49. 3 Ibid., pp. 51-54.
³ This psychic doctrine is in remarkable analogy with that of Eliphas Levi concerning the astral body—as developed in Le Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. The point is interesting because the work of the French magus appeared in Paris about the same time that the Answers

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and premature, the spirit is compelled to realise the fact and also something of the unnatural shock which occasioned death. In such cases there is often a temporary suspension of all sensation, a sleep which may continue for days in the other world. In such cases, moreover, the soul-body calls for further preparation before it can become the vehicle of the spirit. Hours and sometimes days are consumed in perfecting the work of this final organisation. While the beautiful process continues the spirit does not feel anything in the sensuous order, but is all intuition, memory, meditation, love. Its personality is not self-conscious¹ until the new senses in the new body are completed, opened and adapted to the use of the spirit. When, however, the death is natural—that is to say, is the result of old age—the spirit is immediately clothed with its new body, and there is neither sleep nor suspension of identity. But it should be understood that violent deaths signify only the confusion of a moment, and there is hence no reason to fear, e.g., destruction at the cannon's mouth. We should fear rather the moral disadvantages accruing from a struggle in which the inspiration of universal freedom is not at once the mainspring and the end in view.

to Ever-Recurring Questions was published in America, so that one could not have drawn from the other.
¹ The meaning is that the reflex act of self-realisation does not take place, but the metaphysical position of the text will not bear examination.