shown by the process of breathing and the pulsation of the blood. This
system, too, provides the foundation for a certain type of
psychological process, namely feeling. That feeling is an activity of
the soul distinct from both thinking and willing, and that it has its
direct counterpart in the rhythmic processes of the body, can be most
easily tested through observing oneself when listening to music.

As one might expect from its median position, the feeling sphere of the
soul is characterized by a degree of consciousness half-way between
waking and sleeping. Of our feelings we are not more conscious than of
our dreams; we are as little detached from them as from our dream
experiences while these last; what remains in our memory of past
feelings is usually not more than what we remember of past dreams.

This picture of the threefold psycho-physical structure of man will now
enable us to understand the evolution of consciousness both in
individual life and in the life of mankind. To furnish the foundation
of waking consciousness, parts of the body must become divorced from
life. This process, however, is one which, if we take the word in its
widest sense, we may call, ageing. All organic bodies, and equally that
of man, are originally traversed throughout by life. Only gradually
certain parts of such an organism become precipitated, as it were, from
the general organic structure, and they do so increasingly towards the
end of that organism's life-span.

In the human body this separation sets in gently during the later
stages of embryonic development and brings about the first degree of
independence of bones and nerves from the rest of the organism. The
retreat of life continues after birth, reaching a certain climax in the
nervous system at about the twenty-first year. In the body of a small