Thus it is not when man simply gives himself up to pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, that the ego is working on the astral body, but when the peculiarities of these qualities of the soul are changed; and the work is extended in the same way to the etheric body, when the ego applies its energies to changing the character or temperament. This change, too, is one in which every person living is engaged, whether consciously or not. The most powerful incitement to this kind of change in ordinary life is that given by religion. If the ego allows the impulses which flow from religion to work upon it again and again, they become a power within it which extends to the etheric body and changes it as lesser impulses in life effect the transformation of the astral body. These lesser impulses, which come to man through study, reflection, the ennobling of feeling, and so on, are subject to the manifold changes of existence; but religious feelings impress a certain stamp of uniformity upon all thinking, feeling, and willing. They diffuse an equal and single light over the whole life of the soul. Man thinks and feels one thing to-day, another to-morrow, the causes of which are of many different kinds; but one who, consistently holding to his religious convictions, has a glimpse of something which persists through all changes, will relate his thoughts and feelings of to-day, as well as his experiences of to-morrow, to that fundamental feeling he possesses. Thus religious belief has the power of permeating the whole of the soul-life. Its influences increase in strength as time goes on because they are constantly repeated. Hence they acquire the power of working upon the etheric body. In a similar way the influences of true art work upon man. If,—going beyond the outer form, colour and tone of a work of art,—he penetrates to its spiritual foundations with his imagination and feeling, then the impulses thus received by the ego actually reach the etheric body. When this thought is followed out to its logical conclusion, the immense significance of art in all human evolution may be estimated. Only a few instances are pointed out here of what induces the ego to work upon the etheric body. There are many similar influences in human life which are not so apparent at the first glance. But these instances are enough to show that there is yet another principle of man’s nature hidden within him, which the ego is making more and more manifest. Occult science denotes this second principle of the spirit the _Life-Spirit_. (It is the same which in current theosophical literature is called Budhi, a term borrowed from Eastern wisdom.) The expression “Life-Spirit” is appropriate, because the same forces are at work within it as are active in the vital body, with the difference that when they are manifesting in the latter the ego is not active. When, however, these powers express themselves as the Life-Spirit, they are interpenetrated by the ego.