109

IX

THE SPIRIT OF MAN¹

The First Cause of all things is spirit, and it is this also which is the ultimate in man.² Matter and motion establish the existence of a First Cause, while the truth that man is a spirit is proved not only by the law of progression and association but by the science of correspondences, in the light of which all sciences should be understood. It is by correspondential investigation that we are led to the universal relation between truths. The universal motion in Nature involves progression, and the whole evolution of the cosmos deposes thereto. So also the universal association in animate and inanimate things bears witness to a corresponding law in the unseen and the future. The truths which are seen are evidence of unseen truths. In the process of natural development every substance enters into the composition of vegetable and animal forms and is individualised in man. By such individualisation it becomes the future

¹ See The Principles of Nature, pp. 72, 74, 76, 79, 93 et seq., extracted and collated.
² It is not a simple indivisible essence, being derived from the ultimate ethers of all elements combined. It is therefore a combined essence, yet at the same time is indivisible in the sense of self-sustaining attractiveness. Moreover, no external essence can decompose it, for the marriage between its essences is harmonious and everlasting.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, p. 63. There is of course no relation between indivisibility as such and attractiveness. It is possible, however, that Davis refers here in his confused and confusing manner not to the interior and absolutely perfect essence, the spirit itself, but to the vesture or spiritual body thereof.—See Ibid., p. 74.

110

The Harmonial Philosophy

and corresponding principle, spirit—representing, in a second condition, the instrument of its individualisation. Matter contains the properties to produce man as a progressive ultimate, and motion contains the properties to produce life and sensation. These together, and perfectly organised, develop the principle of spirit,¹ not as a result of organisation but of a combination of all elements and properties of which the organisation is composed, the latter serving merely as an instrument. The principle of spirit existed eternally, emanating from the Fountain of Intelligence; but it could not be individualised and made manifest without a vessel like unto man. To analyse the principle itself would demand self-comprehension, which is beyond our scope, so long as research depends on material organisation.² In a more exalted sphere we shall be in a position to understand the composite existence of this world below. Did the human embryo possess intelligence it would require as much argument to prove its coming existence on the plane of earth as we demand now to convince us of future identity and existence in the spirit. The embryo would not attain perfect physical being, wanting the proper vehicles for development, and it is the same also with

¹ The spiritual principle is defined elsewhere as a term employed in Harmonial Philosophy to designate that affectional and intelligent dynamical influence by which the human organisation is animated and governed.—Penetralia, p. 78. Both statements contradict the findings of the previous section.
² It is said, however, that the spiritual principle is compounded of infinitely refined essences, and that it cherishes more or less powerful affinities for the several imponderable elements from which it has derived in part its substance and individuality. It is an organised and indestructible substance, clothed by a transitory medium, which is in fact sensation. Ibid. The reference in this place is to the spiritual body, but sensation is also a term applied in the Harmonial Philosophy to an elementary principle of the immortal mind, being that presumably of which the spiritual body is the vehicle in the life to come. It does not appear that Davis gives any alternative or fuller explanation as to his use of the word.

111

The Spirit of Man

the spirit. The perfect development of the child within the body of its mother is the first epoch of physical existence, and in correspondence therewith is the first of spiritual life. From childhood to youth, from youth to manhood and thence to old age are other epochs through which passes our bodily life, and characteristic of these are successive stages of knowledge and experience, involving an accumulation of intellectual properties belonging to each individual. All these correspond to spiritual progression. As the former are developed in the visible form, so unfolds invisibly the principle of spiritual life. As the human embryo contains an essential principle which produces the perfect organisation of man, so is there a corresponding essence which produces spirit as its result.

The end—as already indicated—is that spirit should be individualised, to establish communion and sympathy between the Creator and the thing created. The spirit progresses to the Source from whence it came and so only is fitted for new spheres of eternal existence. The Cause of all things must produce ultimates corresponding with its own nature. If the First Cause be perfect so must be the end also. If the First Essence be progressive in its nature so must be also the ultimate. If the Primal Fountain be Supreme Intelligence it must produce intelligence as a result. If the Beginning be divinely pure so must the end be also. If the First be eternal, so also must be the final end. If the Intelligent Organiser of universal Nature contain within Himself all perfection of beauty and intelligence, beyond the comprehension of finite beings, must not that ultimate which is the spirit of man be in necessary harmony therewith, in specific essences and qualities? As offspring of the Great Father, must it not be pure and divine? If these things be so, then spirit, individualised through the instrumentality of Nature and Man, shall become like the Primitive Essence from which it derives, bearing the

112

The Harmonial Philosophy

impress and containing the properties of its Source. It is from that which the First was and will again be that which the First is.

Matter and spirit have been regarded heretofore as distinct and independent substances,¹ but instead of this total disconnection the object of the foregoing remarks is to prove by acknowledged laws and principles of matter the mode which Nature follows in the development of intelligence, the perfection of which is spirit. It is further to trace the operations of life, movement and sensation from the Great Positive Mind through all intermediate things up to man, to show that in him the eternal principle of Spiritual Nature becomes individualised, the First working through physical Nature as a second to produce spirit as a third and grand result.

The germ of the immortal nature is spiritual,² and is detached from the deific ocean of spirit when the human foetus is within twelve weeks of birth. Every stage below

¹ A certain confusion arises, here and elsewhere, by an indeterminate use of the word substance. It might appear that in the present place, Davis seeks to affirm that there is only one noumenon behind phenomena, whether manifesting as matter or mind, as against those who say that there is a noumenal or substantial distinction between them. In other places he speaks of matter as if it were identical with substance, which philosophically is that concealed behind the material veils. Again it is looseness of phrasing, for his intention is really the reverse. He says otherwise—in illustration of this—that mind, essentially different from matter, is eternal; and so also is matter—essentially distinct from mind. In speaking of spirit as substance he explains his meaning to be that spirit is the absence of nonentity; that matter, after reaching its highest point of unparticled attenuation (sic), becomes a magnetism, of which the spirit takes hold, and the two are married together. The magnetism in question is called celestial, but material in the next sentence. The proof that spirit is a substance appears to be that it can move weight. The theological notion of spirit is mentioned in derisive terms, but substance is not per se an explanatory word, nor is the recurring use of that unfortunate word eternal, sometimes in an absolute and sometimes in an impermanent sense, otherwise than exceedingly confusing. Two absolute eternals, like two infinites exclude one another, and to postulate either stultifies the mind.
² See The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, pp. 386, 388.

113

The Spirit of Man

or prior to that crisis represents the great animal department. The universal, divine, procreative force first organises the body by means of the governing or fashioning principle within the maternal nature. The grand use of the body is in gathering nervous forces and vital currents, moulding them into its own image and likeness. The ultimate result is the soul, philosophically speaking. It is an organised silver lining to the outer form, and serves—after death—as a beautiful body for the clothing of the golden spirit, which is still more interior and incapable of organisation.¹ The human soul cannot be organised perfectly without the two physical brains, and the impersonal spirit of the Infinite cannot be embodied unless the soul pre-exists, serving both as a magnet and matrix.² It follows that there is a period in the foetal formation and development when the spirit enters upon its individual existence. It is at or very near the close of the seventh month that the immortal part lifts up the unborn infant's mortality far above the animal kingdom.

The law of human birth has three stages as follows: (1) Deposition of the positive germ or masculine form of spiritual essences—as they exist in Nature below man; (2) Reaction of the negative spiritual forces on the feminine side, thus completing the circle in the formation of the spiritual body and precipitating the physical body by the operation of natural birth; (3) Deposition

¹ See p. 106 of the present work.
² See the annotation to p. 115 of this work. The previous section affirms that the soul or psychical body is manufactured gradually through the body of this world, and it does not therefore pre-exist. But if pre-existence is necessary the spirit does not enter humanity—at least fully—till after death. It is to be noted that an earlier volume of The Great Harmonia identifies soul and spirit not less expressly than The Principles of Nature. The alternative view seems to have been presented suddenly to the mind of Davis and also to have left him suddenly, for it scarcely recurs subsequently till the tripartite nature of man is discussed in several places of Answers to Ever-Recurring Questions.

114

The Harmonial Philosophy

and unfoldment of the spirit-germ from this dual vitalic oneness. In other words, the positive side of the spiritual organisation, with its physical vesture, acts on the negative side of the spiritual organisation, with its physical vesture, thus depositing and unfolding the spirit-germ in the soul-substance, and the negative side, reacting, unfolds the organised individual spirit,¹ which is indestructible both in essence and form. As there is a point where minerals cease to be minerals² and become vegetable, and another crisis when the vegetable merges into the animal, so is there a critical juncture in the foetal development of the human brain when that receptacle is capable of attracting and detaching a portion of the Omnipresent Principle of God and of concentrating it in the germ state to unfold the immortal personality.

Material or so-called imponderable elements,³ when perfectly attenuated and etherealised, become exquisitely volatile and forthwith begin to rise out of all visible substances. These elements form that part of man's mentality⁴ which is termed very truly the spiritual body, or dress of the most interior and absolutely perfect essence—the spirit itself. The innermost of man is therefore a self-intelligent⁵ and intercoherent emanation

¹ It will be observed that at this point Davis recurs to that which he has at first affirmed and then denied expressly, namely, the organic nature of spirit.
² This is an old doctrine of occult philosophy and is quoted in aphoristic form by Madame Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled.
³ This and what follows to the end of the present section is drawn from The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, p. 74 et seq.
⁴ See the annotation on p. 106 of this work. A spiritual body can be regarded as a part of our mentality only on the principle that it is a vesture which the mind makes, a thought-body, recognised—as already mentioned—by Eastern philosophy.
⁵ We have to remember that the Divine Self-Intelligent Being is, by the Davis hypothesis, as according to greater theosophies, an ineffable and simple unity. As such it is incapable of division, of being split up indefinitely and of having its parts detached. If therefore man is self-

115

The Spirit of Man

of eternal elements or ideas¹ from the universal ocean of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. The first is feminine, the second is masculine,² and the two form in man—as they do everywhere—a perfect union. This unity is indissoluble and perfect—like the ingredients of which it is composed. In the progress of time therefore man himself may become perfect, "even as our Father Who is in heaven"—that is, he may become spiritual, free³ and consciously true to the innermost and uppermost⁴ of his being; no longer physical, in the sense of material abandonment, nor devoted, as some are, to the gratification of those avaricious wants which take their rise and multiply in the nerve-soul, between the bodily organisation and the central spirit-essence. It should be understood that temperament is phenomenal⁵ and of those etherealised elements which enter into and elaborate the spirit's body, being the nerve-soul just mentioned. The physical body is elaborated, individualised and sustained by the intermediate spiritual organisation.⁶ Each

intelligent—which in any real sense is denied elsewhere by Davis—his generation is of another order than that which appears above.
¹ The possible order is indicated unawares by this use of the word ideas. That which becomes incarnate in man, according to some higher theology—with which kabalistic theosophy agrees—is an eternally pre-existing prototype or idea in the mind of God, conceived in His own likeness and therefore self-conscious being.
² This is the root-thesis of all Christian Mysticism—that the soul is feminine—whatever the sex may be of the physical body—and that it may become united with the Christ-spirit, conceived as masculine.
³ The categorical definition of this possibility may be taken to check the attempted reduction by Davis of human liberty in The Principles of Nature, already noted.
⁴ This is that apex of the soul recognised by Jan van Ruysbroeck and other mystics.
⁵ This passage offers a curious commentary on the postulated immortality of the psychic vesture. Mutability is the characteristic of phenomena and permanence of that which is noumenal. Eastern Mysticism recognises successive vestures and final liberation from all.
⁶ See the annotations on pp. 113 and 127.

116

The Harmonial Philosophy

works for and upon the other, until the innermost is perfectly individualised and separated from the universal ocean of Divine Essences.¹ Then the nerve-soul takes the reins of government, controls heart and brain, the blood and nervo-muscular systems, retaining this distinction and mastery for years or centuries, or until the divine spirit-essence is permitted to ascend the throne and rule over the kingdom of heaven which is within us. But amidst these terms and philosophical discriminations let it be remembered always that man's spirit per se is an unparticled, indivisible,² self-attractive, inter-magnetic, perfect, unprogressive³ essence, a treasury of ideas,⁴ a lake separated from the universal ocean⁵ of inter-intelligent principles. Be it also kept vividly in mind—as a rule of faith and practice all through this world—that although men differ widely and antagonise extensively in the realm of phenomena, there is in the deepest of each a fraternal or like essence, by virtue of which all strangers will one day become friends, all enemies eventual lovers, all slaves the peers of masters, all wanderers inmates of one home-world, "beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb."

¹ Compare the affirmation just previously made that man is self-intelligent, as if ab origine symboli, by virtue of something belonging essentially to him. It has been said also that he emanates or comes forth in a state of intercoherence, which—if it means anything—is a synonym for individuality.
² That which is "unparticled" or indivisible can add nothing to itself, and cannot therefore take on further individuality.
³ That which is incapable of progression cannot grow in self-knowledge.
⁴ That which is simple and indivisible cannot be a treasury of ideas: it can only embrace all things in a single notion, and this is what St. Thomas Aquinas postulated of the Divine Mind.
⁵ If an ocean is universal no lake can be separated therefrom, and if such ocean—see ante—is one of Divine Essence, no finite essence can be separated therefrom to form the spirit of man. In that which is universal no room is found for anything but itself.