stimulate devotional feeling in all those who come under their
influence, though in the case of the Muhammadan that devotion is to
Allah, while for the Zoroastrian it is to Ahuramazda, or for the
Christian to Jesus. A man thinking keenly upon some high subject pours
out from himself vibrations which tend to stir up thought at a similar
level in others, but they in no way suggest to those others the special
subject of his thought. They naturally act with special vigour upon
those minds already habituated to vibrations of similar character; yet
they have some effect on every mental body upon which they impinge, so
that their tendency is to awaken the power of higher thought in those to
whom it has not yet become a custom. It is thus evident that every man
who thinks along high lines is doing missionary work, even though he may
be entirely unconscious of it.




THE FORM AND ITS EFFECT


Let us turn now to the second effect of thought, the creation of a
definite form. All students of the occult are acquainted with the idea
of the elemental essence, that strange half-intelligent life which
surrounds us in all directions, vivifying the matter of the mental and
astral planes. This matter thus animated responds very readily to the
influence of human thought, and every impulse sent out, either from the
mental body or from the astral body of man, immediately clothes itself
in a temporary vehicle of this vitalised matter. Such a thought or
impulse becomes for the time a kind of living creature, the
thought-force being the soul, and the vivified matter the body. Instead