The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science

conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual, moving from the expanded self-recognition of the highest human personality down 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 vitality of Life consists in intelligence—in other words, in the power of Thought. 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 it is 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 it 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