* The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the
elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have
called the "Elementals." They never become men.
--Ed. Theos.
---------

Speaking of the second body, Henry More says "the soul's astral vehicle
is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of
the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a
sword without tearing or scorching of it." And again, "I shall make
bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in
the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high
happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their
quitting the terrestrial one; that heavenly chariot necessarily
carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is
capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if
the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the
heavenly. When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not
heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass
of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the
Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most
thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of
the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction.
Phaedo):--"After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul
will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the
impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections,
will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross
vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a
propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a
certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed