every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent; and
this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of
unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have
had the slightest suspicion of the fact.

We see, moreover, that in process of time any cut or lesion upon the
body, however deep, has a tendency to repair the loss and reunite; a
piece of lost skin is very soon replaced by another. Hence, if a man,
partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new
skin, so our astral, vital body--the fourth of the seven (having
attracted and assimilated to itself the second) and which is so much
more ethereal than the physical one--may be made to harden its particles
to the atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving
it out, and separating it from the visible; and while its generally
invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to
gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to
make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve
and replace them. We can say no more. The Magdalene is not the only
one who could be accused of having "seven spirits" in her, though men
who have a lesser number of spirits (what a misnomer that word!) in
them, are not few or exceptional; they are the frequent failures of
nature--the incomplete men and women.*

-----------
* This is not to be taken as meaning that such persons are thoroughly
destitute of some one or several of the seven principles--a man born
without an arm has still its ethereal counterpart; but that they are so
latent that they cannot be developed, and consequently are to be
considered as non-existing.--Ed. Theos.
----------