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202 HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
mately connected with and influence each other." Every
change that takes place in the macrocosmus may be sensed
by the spiritual body which surrounds the spirit of the
minutum mundum. The forces composing the one are iden-
tical with those of the other. 1
II. We find, in the next place, the doctrine of Elemental
spirits, which it is a common error to suppose originated
with the Eosicrucians. This graceful and fanciful hypo-
thesis also owes its development, if not its invention,
to the seer of Hohenheim. It was naturalised on French
soil by the author of the " Comte de Gabalis," and is
known chiefly in England through the preface to " The
Eape of the Lock," and of later years through the German
" Komance of Undine," which has been many times
translated. 5 " When you shall be numbered among the
Children of the philosophers," says the " Comte de Gabalis,"
"and when your eyes shall have been strengthened
by the use of the most sacred medecine, you will learn that
the Elements are inhabited by creatures of a singular per-
fection, from the knowledge of, and communication with,
whom the sin of Adam has deprived his most wretched
posterity. Yon vast space stretching between earth and
Heaven has far nobler dwellers than the birds and the
gnats ; these wide seas hold other guests
and the dolphins j
than the whales
the depths of the earth are not reserved
for the moles alone ; and that element of fire which is
nobler than all the rest was not created to remain void and
useless." According to Paracelsus,
"the Elementals are
not spirits, because they have flesh, blood, and bones ; they
live and propagate offspring ; they eat and talk, act and
sleep, &c. . . . They are beings occupying a place between
1
"Paracelsus," by Franz Hartmann, M.D., p. 44.