gressing from life to life under conditions exactly suited to each
individual, until in time we shall attain to a higher evolution and become
Supermen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes has so beautifully voiced that aspiration and its
consummation in the lines:

"Build thee more stately mansions Oh! my soul,
As the swift seasons roll,
Leave thy low-vaulted past;
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast.
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thy outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

CHAPTER III. THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE WORLD

_The Chemical Region._

If one who is capable of consciously using his spiritual body with the
same facility that we now use our physical vehicles should glide away from
the earth into interplanetary space, the earth and the various other
planets of our solar system would appear to him to be composed of three
kinds of matter, roughly speaking. The densest matter, which is our
visible earth, would appear to him as being the center of the ball as the
yolk is in the center of an egg. Around that nucleus he would observe a
finer grade of matter similarly disposed in relation to the central mass,
as the white of the egg is disposed outside the yolk. Upon a little closer
investigation he would also discover that this second kind of substance
permeates the solid earth to the very center, even as the blood percolates
through the more solid parts of our flesh. Outside both of these mingling
layers of matter he would observe a still finer, third layer corresponding
to the shell of the egg, except that this third layer is the finest most
subtile of the three grades of matter, and that it inter-penetrates both
of the two inner layers.

As already said, the central mass, spiritually seen, is our visible world,
composed of solids, liquids and gases. They constitute the earth, its
atmosphere, and also the ether, of which physical science speaks
hypothetically as permeating the atomic substance of all chemical
elements. The second layer of matter is called the Desire World and the
outermost layer is called the World of Thought.

A little reflection upon the subject will make clear that just such a
constitution is necessary to account for facts of life as we see them. All
forms in the world about us are built from chemical substances: solids,
liquids and gases, but in so far that they do move, these forms obey a
separate