66 PARACELSUS 



man with a Spirit.' This Spirit, however, is not absorbed 

 immediately by the new-born child, but becomes incarnate 

 gradually, as the man grows and attains reason and in- 

 telligence.^ Many men and women live, and marry, and 

 die without ever coming into full possession of (or without 

 entering into a firm connection with) that divine ray of 

 wisdom that can alone transform them into immortal 

 human beings ; because, although the powers and essences 

 that go to make up their astral souls may be much more 

 enduring in their form than their physical bodies, still 

 these powers will become exhausted and these essences 

 be decomposed into their elements in due time, and there 

 is nothing that endures to the end except the Spirit of 

 God, that may become manifest in man by assimilating 

 the more refined essences of the soul. If no such assi- 

 milation takes place — in other words, if the individual 

 during his life does not become wise and good and 

 spiritually enlightened — the divine ray will, at the death 

 of the person, return again to the source from whence it 

 came; but that individual's personality^ will only remain 

 as an impression in the astral light. There are two 

 kinds of intelligence in man — the higher and the lower 

 intelligence. It is only the human (superhuman) intelli- 

 gence that can combine and unite itself with the spirit. 

 The lower or animal intellect, however clever it may be, 

 and however much learning it may possess, will be lost, 

 because it is not spiritual. It is the spirit or life alone 



1 This Spirit is the same spiritual ray that has overshadowed man in 

 his previous incarnation and afterwards become withdrawn into the divine 

 essence, from which it issues again. It is, therefore, not a new Spirit, but 

 the same that incarnated before. 



2 This is not to be understood as if some astral form in the human 

 shape were waiting to crawl into the body of the child, but that the spiritual 

 element gradually develops and becomes active in the child, in proportion 

 as the human instrument through which it desires to act enables it to 

 manifest that activity. An incarnation generally becomes complete only 

 when the child has attained its seventh year. 



^ There is a difference between individuality and personality ; person* 

 ality being a changeable mask which the individual ray produces. 



