III. The Pre-Michaelite Way, and the Way of Michael

It is a feeling that has passed through different stages; and the stages depended upon the particular part of his being, with which Man realized what he to-day calls his ‘ideas.’ To-day is the age of the Spiritual Soul's evolution, when the statement holds good without reservation, which was made in the recent Leading Thoughts[^1]: “The Thoughts of man have their true seat in the etheric body. There, however, they are forces of real life and being. They imprint themselves upon the physical body, and as such ‘imprinted thoughts’ they have the shadowy character in which the every-day consciousness knows them.”