relative though inferior reality; even while we admit that the presence of spirit is in inverse proportion to the density of matter. In the view of Plotinus the universe is a single vast conscious organism of which all the parts are similarly endowed with consciousness. He attributes a species of divinity to the Sun and the stars, and appears to accept the theory of planetary spirits. Thus also Origen observes: “As our body while consisting of human members is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being which is held together by one soul, the power of the logos, God.” According to Plotinus it is truer to state that the body is in the soul than that the soul is in the body, inasmuch as the soul is transcendent as well as immanent in the corporeal form. Thus, when a particular body acquires life the soul which is destined to animate it does not in reality descend into it and become identified with it, but rather the body comes within the sphere of its influence, thus attaining to the world of life. This explanation is, it seems to me, helpful in enabling us to understand the gradual process by which the individual consciousness becomes _en rapport_ with the immature bodies of childhood. Following out the same theory we can understand the doctrine of early Gnostic sects, that Jesus of Nazareth was overshadowed by the Christ, and also we may believe, if we will, that the guardian angels of the little children who, as Jesus asserted, “do always behold the face of My Father which is in Heaven” are indeed their own higher spiritual selves, attracted on the one hand to those physical bodies of which they are the prospective tenants, and on the other looking regretfully back to their pre-natal home in the spiritual world.