76 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
of the dense body that these higher vehicles become of value
at present. He will thus avoid a mistake frequently made by
people who, when they come into the knowledge that there
are higher bodies, grow to despise the dense vehicle; to
speak of it as “low” and “vile”—turning their eyes to heaven
and wishing that they might soon be able to leave this
earthly lump of clay and fly about in their “higher vehicles.”
These people generally do not realize the difference
between “higher” and “perfect.” Certainly, the dense body is
the lowest vehicle in the sense that it is the most unwieldy,
correlating man to the world of sense with all the limitations
thus implied. As stated, it has an enormous period of
evolution back of it; is in its fourth stage of development and
has now reached a great and marvelous degree of efficiency.
It will, in time, reach perfection, but even at present it is the
best organized of man's vehicles. The vital body is in its
third stage of evolution, and less completely organized than
the dense body. The desire body and the mind are, as yet,
mere clouds—almost entirely unorganized. In the very
lowest human beings these vehicles are not even definite
ovoids; they are more or less undefined in form.
The dense body is a wonderfully constructed instrument
and should be recognized as such by everyone pretending to
have any knowledge of the constitution of man. Observe the
femur, for instance. This bone carries the entire weight of
the body. On the outside it is built of a thin layer of compact
bone, strengthened on the inside by beams and cross-beams
of cancellated bone, in such a marvelous manner that the
most skilled bridge or construction engineer could never
accomplish the feat of building a pillar of equal strength
with so little weight. The bones of the skull are built in a
similar manner, always the least possible material is used