Now it is this _system_ of _composite systems_ that deserves special
attention. We know that it exists as a series of relays and refining
processes. In disease it is interrupted, or out of joint, or broken down.

Health means harmony, concord, rhythm between every part, and the power of
the one individual intelligence to use it all, to act or refrain from
action, and to hold and maintain through all, repose, equilibrium, and
self-mastery.

The physical body we know to be a thing of sense and time. We know its
beginning, its gestation, its entrance and exit on this material plane.
Its secrets are all involved in the subtle relations it bears to the soul
that inhabits, unifies, and utilizes it.

The Individual Intelligence, Ego, Soul, or Entity, is as patent to us in
our _awareness of self_ as is the body it inhabits. It is our _very self_.
Our knowledge of it is a _direct personal experience_, so direct,
immediate, and constant that we overlook its significance.

I can see no reason to imagine that a human being, passing from the
earthly plane and consciously living on the spiritual plane and
recognizing itself as the same individual, would be any wiser as to the
exact nature and origin of the Individual Intelligence than he is now;
though his field of vision and range of conscious experience had so
immeasurably increased and expanded.

If he had solved this problem of _ultimates_, he would be at the end of
his thread of life and would compass the Infinite. He would be no longer
Man, but God.

So, from all these considerations, and from all directions, we come back
to human evolution, the upward and onward journey of the human soul.

As man's health, usefulness, and happiness here depend on the perfection
and utility of the physical body he inhabits, and its maintenance in
health and harmony, have we the least reason to imagine that the same
individual, dwelling on the spiritual plane, will not be under the same of
analogous laws and relations there, since we have assumed the persistence
and conscious identity of the soul there as here?

I hold, therefore, that man possesses, now and here, the structure of a
_Spiritual_ Body; and that the "growth of the soul" and our status and
relation to the soul, and our status and relation to the life after death
on the spiritual plane, depend _very largely_ on the character and
integrity of this spiritual body, the "house we have builded."

The whole of life, therefore, he