The Soul and the Substance of Existence: Selections from “The Perfect Way or The Finding of Christ” by Dr. Anna Kingsford (vegetarian), Part 3 of 3

“The history and progress of the soul. Souls work upwards from plants and animals to man. In man they attain their perfection and the power to dispense altogether with material bodies. Their ability to do this is the cause and consequence of their perfection. And it is the attainment of this that is the object of the culture of the soul — the object, that is, of religion. Spirit alone is good, is God. Matter is that whereby spirit is limited, and is, therein, the cause of evil; for evil is the limitation of good. Wherefore to escape from Matter and its limitations, and return to the condition of spirit, is to be superior to the liability to evil.
Formerly the way of escape for human souls was more open than now, and the path clearer. Because, although ignorance of intellectual things abounded, especially among the poorer folk, yet the knowledge of divine things, and the light of faith, were stronger and purer. The anima bruta, or earthly mind, was less strongly defined and fixed, so that the anima divina, or heavenly mind, subsisted in more open conditions. Wherefore the souls of those ages of the world, not being enchained to earth as they now are, were enabled to pass more quickly through their avatars; and but few incarnations sufficed where now many are necessary. For in these days the mind's ignorance is weighted by materialism, instead of being lightened by faith; and the soul is sunk to earth by love of the body, by atheism, and by excessive care for the things of sense. And being crushed thereby, it lingers long in the atmosphere of earth, seeking many fresh lodgements, and so multiplies bodies, the circumstances of each of which are influenced by the use made of the previous one.
For every man makes his own fate, and nothing is truer than that Character is Destiny. It is by their own hands that the lines of some are cast in pleasant places, of some in vicious, and of some in virtuous ones, so that there is nothing arbitrary or unjust. But in what manner so ever a soul conducts itself in one incarnation, by that conduct, by that order of thought and habit, it builds for itself its destiny in a future incarnation.”
“Wherefore man is, strictly, his own creator, in that he makes himself and his conditions, according to the tendencies he encourages.”