The acquisition of improved breechloaders by one modern army confers no
absolute superiority if the enemy also becomes possessed of them.
Consequently it will be at once apparent, to those who think on the
subject, that much of the training by which what is known as "a powerful
and determined nature," perfects itself for its own purpose on the stage
of the visible world, necessitating and being useless without a parallel
development of the "gross" and so-called animal frame, is, in short,
neutralized, for the purpose at present treated of, by the fact that its
own action has armed the enemy with weapons equal to its own. The force
of the impulse to dissolution is rendered equal to the will to oppose
it; and being cumulative, subdues the will-power and triumphs at last.
On the other hand, it may happen that an apparently weak and vacillating
will-power residing in a weak and undeveloped physical frame, may be so
reinforced by some unsatisfied desire--the Ichcha (wish)--as it is
called by the Indian Occultists (for instance, a mother's heart-yearning
to remain and support her fatherless children)--as to keep down and
vanquish, for a short time, the physical throes of a body to which it
has become temporarily superior.
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