entred in the individual. This
race-consciousness is none other than the ever-present "will-to-live"
which is the basis of physical evolution--that automatically acting
principle--which causes plants to turn towards the sun, animals to seek
their proper food, and both animals and men to try instantly to escape
from immediate danger. It is what we call instinct which does not
reason. I may give a laughable experience of my own to illustrate the
fact that conscious reason is not the method of this faculty. Once when
on leave from India I was walking along a street in London in the heat
of a summer's day and suddenly noticed just at my feet a long dark thing
apparently wriggling across the white glare of the pavement. "Snake!" I
exclaimed, and jumped aside for all I was worth, and the next moment was
laughing at myself for not recollecting that cobras were not common
objects in the London streets. But it looked just like one, and of
course turned out to be nothing but a piece of rag. Well, instinct did
its duty even if it did make a fool of me; but there is certainly no
conscious reasoning in the matter, only the automatic action of inherent
Law--"Self-preservation is the first law of Nature."

This Vital Soul, then, is the seat of all those instincts which go
towards the preservation of the individual's physical body, and towards
the propagation of the race; and it is on this account that our
theosophical friends call it the "Desire Body" or, to use the Indian
term "Kama rupa." It acts with conscious intention, but not with
conscious _reasoning_. It is thus distinguished on the one hand from the
etheric body, which is a mere vehicle for finer vibrations than can take
place in the denser matter of the physical body, but which has _no
intention_; and on the other from the _mind_ which acts by conscious
reasoning, and it thus forms an intermediary between the two.

The importance of recognizing the place of this higher intermediary in
the ascending scale of living principle is, that for all practical
purposes the animal world does not rise higher than this in the scale.
It is true that in particular instances we find the first dawning of the
mental faculty in an animal, but it is only very faint; so this does not
affect the broad general principle. The point to be noted is that up to
this stage human beings are built on the same lines as animals, and what
distinguishes us, is the addition in ourselves of a higher factor,--th