142 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
for the individual desire body.
Were the vital body to have continual and unrestrained
sway in the human kingdom, as it has in the plant, man
would grow to an enormous size. There was a time in the
far-distant past when man was constituted like a plant,
having only a dense body and a vital body. The traditions of
mythology and folk-lore all over the world concerning
giants in olden times are absolutely true, because then men
grew as tall trees, and for the same reason.
BIRTH OF THE DESIRE BODY
The vital b ody of t he plant builds leaf after leaf, carrying
the stem higher and higher. Were it not for the macrocosmic
desire body it would keep on in that way indefinitely, but the
macrocosmic desire body steps in at a certain point and
checks further growth. The force that is not needed for
further growth is then available for other purposes and is
used to build the flower and the seed. In like manner the
human vital body, when the dense body comes under its
sway, after the seventh year, makes the latter grow very
rapidly, but about the fourteenth year the individual desire
body is born from the womb of the macrocosmic desire
body and is then free to work on its dense body. The
excessive growth is then checked and the force theretofore
used for that purpose becomes available for propagation,
that the human plant may flower and bring forth. Therefore
the birth of the personal desire body marks the period of
puberty. From this period the attraction towards the opposite
sex is felt, being especially active and unrestrained in the
third septenary period of life—from the fourteenth to the
twenty-first year, because the restraining mind is then still
unborn.