first into the aerial and afterwards into the terrestrial condition. Each of these regions teems also with an appropriate population which never passes, like the human soul, from one to the other--"gods," "demons," and animals.* As to duration, "the shortest of all is that of the terrestrial vehicle. In the aerial, the soul may inhabit, as they define, many ages, and in the ethereal, for ever." --------- * The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have called the "Elementals." They never become men. --Ed. Theos. --------- Speaking of the second body, Henry More says "the soul's astral vehicle is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a sword without tearing or scorching of it." And again, "I shall make bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their quitting the terrestrial one; that heavenly chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the heavenly. When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction. Phaedo):--"After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from surrounding air; for according to the arcana of the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while on the contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial regions with its ethereal vehicle alone."