The “tabernacles” mentioned above have improved in texture and symmetry of form, growing and developing with the Globe that bears them; but the physical improvement has taken place at the expense of the spiritual Inner Man and of Nature. The three middle principles, in earth and man, became with every Race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the Physical Intellect; the essence of the Elements becoming the material and composite elements now known. Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the “Lord God”; but he _is_ the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the singular number and masculine gender. The first Dhyânis, commissioned to “create” man in their image, could only throw off their Shadows, as a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the “Lord God breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life,” unless that God is identified with the “One Life,” omnipresent though invisible, and unless the same operation is attributed to “God” on behalf of every “Living Soul,” which is the _Vital_ Soul (Nephesh), and not the Divine Spirit (Ruach) which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is owing to the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our Western metaphysicians, who are unable to understand, and hence to accept, more than a triune man—Spirit, Soul, Body—that the “Breath of Life” has been confused with the immortal “Spirit.” This applies also directly to the Protestant theologians, who in translating a certain verse in the Fourth Gospel(356) have entirely perverted its meaning. This mistranslation runs, “the _wind_ bloweth where it listeth,” instead of “the _spirit_ goeth where it willeth,” as in the original, and also in the translation of the Greek Eastern Church. The learned and very philosophical author of _New Aspects of Life_ would impress upon his reader that the Nephesh Chiah (Living Soul), according to the Hebrews: Proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to supersede and take the place of that Spirit in the thus constituted Self, so that the Spirit passed into, was lost sight of, and disappeared in the Living Soul.