The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science

II.

THE HIGHER MODE OF INTELLIGENCE CONTROLS THE LOWER.

We have seen that the descent from personality—as we know it in ourselves—to matter—as we know it in what we call inanimate forms—is a gradual descent in the scale of intelligence. It moves from that mode of being which is able to realize its own will-power as a capacity for originating new chains of cause and effect original: "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 emphasizing. Every advance in science consists of discovering new, subtle connections in this magnificent universal order—an order which already exists and only requires our recognition to bring it into practical use. If, then, the highest work of the greatest minds consists of nothing more than the recognition of an already existing order, there is no...