The ameliorative and palliative and curative work of medicine and surgery are proved beyond all controversial discussion. The methods employed, such as the vivisection of animals, may rightly cause distress. In spite of all this the indebtedness of mankind to the medical profession is great, and the service rendered to humanity by the profession does largely offset the evil. That they know not everything is true; that there is a small percentage of physicians and surgeons (less than in any other profession) who are self-seeking and no credit to their craft is equally true; that they already know enough to be willing to admit how very much more there is to be known is also correct. But that it is a great and good and self-sacrificing group within the human family, is equally true. Forget this not.

The intent is for men to die, as every man has to die, at the demand of his own soul. When man has reached a higher stage in evolution, with deliberation and definite choice of time, he will consciously withdraw from his physical body. It will be left silent and empty of the soul; devoid of light, yet sound and whole; it will then disintegrate, under the natural process, and its constituent atoms will pass back into "the pool of waiting units," until they are again required for the use of incarnating souls. Again, on the subjective side of life, the process is repeated, but many have already learnt to withdraw from the astral body without being subject to that "impact in the fog," which is the symbolic way of describing the death of a man upon the astral plane. He then withdraws on to the mental level, and leaves his astral carcass to swell the fog and increase its density.