Thomas Troward - THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE

one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of

intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that

what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured

by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that

places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man

higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. The

increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher

order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more

completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in

the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding

increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a

self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded

self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of

visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which

self-recognition is entirely absent.

We see, then, that the livingness of Life consists in intelligence--in

other words, in the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the

distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we

may say that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive

of matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to

the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and

to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form.

For these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the

distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of

matter is Form. This is a radical distinction from which important

consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the

student.

Form implies extension in space and also limitation within certain

boundaries. Thought implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life as

existing in any particular _form_ we associate it with the idea of

extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly

larger amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we think of Life as

the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension,

and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the

elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. The important point of

this distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid

of the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire

totality anywhere and everywhere--that is to say, at every point of space

simultaneously. The scientific definition of time is that it is the period

occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another,

and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there

can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as

devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the

element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit

as pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as

subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. From

this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on

this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here

and now. In this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in

time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an

actual present entity, and not as something that _shall_ be in the future,

for where there is no sequence in time there can be no future. Similarly

where there is no space there can be no conception of anything as being at

a distance from us. When the elements of time and space are eliminated all

our ideas of things must necessarily be as subsisting in a universal here

and an everlasting now. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract conception,

but I would ask the student to endeavour to grasp it thoroughly, since it

is of vital importance in the practical application of Mental Science, as

will appear further on.

The opposite conception is that of things expressing themselves through

conditions of time and space and thus establishing a variety of _relations_

to other things, as of bulk, distance, and direction, or of sequence in

time. These two conceptions are respectively the conception of the abstract

and the concrete, of the unconditioned and the conditioned, of the absolute

and the relative. They are not opposed to each other in the sense of

incompatibility, but are each the complement of the other, and the only

reality is in the combination of the two. The error of the extreme idealist

is in endeavouring to realize the absolute without the relative, and the

error of the extreme materialist is in endeavouring to realize the relative

without the absolute. On the one side the mistake is in trying to realize

an inside without an outside, and on the other in trying to realize an

outside without an inside; both are necessary to the formation of a

substantial entity.

We have seen that the descent from personality, as we know it in ourselves,

to matter, as we know it under what we call inanimate forms, is a gradual

descent in the scale of intelligence from that mode of being which is able

to realize its own will-power as a capacity for originating new trains of

causation to that mode of being which is incapable of recognizing itself at

all. The higher the grade of life, the higher the intelligence; from which

it follows that the supreme principle of Life must also be the ultimate

principle of intelligence. This is clearly demonstrated by the grand

natural order of the universe. In the light of modern science the principle

of evolution is familiar to us all, and the accurate adjustment existing

between all parts of the cosmic scheme is too self-evident to need

insisting upon. Every advance in science consists in discovering new

subtleties of connection in this magnificent universal order, which already

exists and only needs our recognition to bring it into practical use. If,

then, the highest work of the greatest minds consists in nothing else than

the recognition of an already existing order, there is no getting away from

the conclusion that a paramount intelligence must be inherent in the

Life-Principle, which manifests itself _as_ this order; and thus we see

that there must be a great cosmic intelligence underlying the totality of

things.

The physical history of our planet shows us first an incandescent nebula

dispersed over vast infinitudes of space; later this condenses into a

central sun surrounded by a family of glowing planets hardly yet

consolidated from the plastic primordial matter; then succeed untold

millenniums of slow geological formation; an earth peopled by the lowest

forms of life, whether vegetable or animal; from which crude beginnings a

majestic, unceasing, unhurried, forward movement brings things stage by

stage to the condition in which we know them now. Looking at this steady

progression it is clear that, however we may conceive the nature of the

evolutionary principle, it unerringly provides for the continual advance of

the race. But it does this by creating such numbers of each kind that,

after allowing a wide margin for all possible accidents to individuals, the