A HARMONIOUS DEVELOPMENT REQUIRED. 



301 



imates to the soul. In neither case, indeed, does 

 the lower become absorbed into the higher, but it 

 becomes more distinctly subordinated to it. As 

 we progress, the higher intellectual and moral 

 qualities play a more and more important part 

 in life, and tend to predominate in consciousness 

 over the physical functions. For the physical 

 processes tend to become unconscious. Conscious- 

 ness, therefore, is less engrossed by the mechanism 

 of life. Hence the body itself becomes more and 

 more fitted to be the body of a spiritual being, better 

 and better adapted as the vehicle of a life which is 

 more than physical. It develops higher physical 

 powers, and becomes less of an obstacle to spiritual 

 progress. And when the individual development 

 is allowed to proceed normally and harmoniously, 

 there does not arise any conflict between the higher 

 and the lower stages : the lower are the potential- 

 ities of which the higher are the realization, the 

 promise of which the higher are the fulfilment, the 

 foundation upon which the higher rear the edifice, 

 the stem of which the higher are the flowers. 

 Hence the higher does not destroy or supersede the 

 lower, but transforms it, and includes it in what is 

 its realization also. The intellectual and the moral 

 life is higher than and more than the physical, and 

 also its perfection. 



Wherever, therefore, there appears an antagon- 

 ism between the higher and the lower, we may 

 rest assured that there the hiofher also has not been 

 fully attained, and that whether the blame fall on 

 the individual, or, as is more frequently the case, 

 on the society, a higher life which involves the 

 mortification and neglect of the physical is both 

 wrong and foolish, i.e., both morally and intellectu- 



