“From the remotest antiquity _mankind_ as a whole _have always been convinced of the existence of a personal spiritual entity within the personal physical man_. This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity to the _crown_. The closer the union the more serene man’s destiny, the less dangerous the external conditions. This belief is neither bigotry nor superstition, only an ever-present, instinctive feeling of the proximity of another spiritual and invisible world, which, though it be subjective to the senses of the outward man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego. Furthermore, they believed that _there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions_. They rejected fatalism, for fatalism implies a blind course of some still blinder power. But they believed in _destiny_ or _Karma_, which from birth to death every man is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and this destiny is guided by that presence termed by some the guardian angel, or our more intimate astral inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the man of flesh or the _personality_. Both these lead on MAN, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable _law of compensation and retribution_ steps in and takes its course, following faithfully the fluctuations of the conflict. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this _self-made_ destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or like a feather carries him away in a whirlwind raised by his own actions.” Such is the destiny of the MAN—the true Ego, not the Automaton, the _shell_ that goes by that name. It is for him to become the conqueror over matter. THE COMPLEX NATURE OF MANAS. ENQ. But you wanted to tell me something of the essential nature of Manas, and of the relation in which the Skandhas of physical man stand to it?