55. It has been said that the spirit is a flame, a spark this should be understood
of the soul, properly so called, the intellectual and moral principle, to which we cannot
attribute any determinate form ; but, whatever its degree of advancement, the soul is
always clothed with an envelope,
or perispirit, the nature of which becomes more and more etherealised, in proportion as
the soul itself becomes purer and raises itself higher and higher in the hierarchy of
spirits. This conjunction of the soul and perispirit is as absolute as that of the idea of
spirit with the idea of form , so that we cannot conceive of the one without the other.
The perispirit is therefore an integral part of the spirit, as the body is an integral part of
the man; but the perispirit, alone, is no more the spirit, than the body, alone, is the man
For the perispirit does not think ; it is, to the soul, what the body is to the man; it is the
agent, the instrument, of the soul's action.
