applications of electrical power he will.
These considerations show us that what differentiates the higher from the
lower degree of intelligence is the recognition of its own self-hood, and
the more intelligent that recognition is, the greater will be the power.
The lower degree of self-recognition is that which only realizes itself as
an entity separate from all other entities, as the _ego_ distinguished from
the _non-ego_. But the higher degree of self-recognition is that which,
realizing its own spiritual nature, sees in all other forms, not so much
the _non-ego_, or that which is not itself, as the _alter-ego_, or that
which is itself in a different mode of expression. Now, it is this higher
degree of self-recognition that is the power by which the Mental Scientist
produces his results. For this reason it is imperative that he should
clearly understand the difference between Form and Being; that the one is
the mode of the relative and, the mark of subjection to conditions, and
that the other is the truth of the absolute and is that which controls
conditions.
Now this higher recognition of self as an individualization of pure spirit
must of necessity control all modes of spirit which have not yet reached
the same level of self-recognition. These lower modes of spirit are in
bondage to the law of their own being because they do not know the law;
and, therefore, the individual who has attained to this knowledge can
control them through that law. But to understand this we must inquire a
little further into the nature of spirit. I have already shown that the
grand scale of adaptation and adjustment of all parts of the cosmic scheme
to one another exhibits the presence _somewhere_ of a marvellous
intelligence, underlying the whole, and the question is, where is this
intelligence to be found? Ultimately we can only conceive of it as inherent
in some primordial substance which is the root of all those grosser modes
of matter which are known to us, whether visible to the physical eye, or
necessarily inferred by science from their perceptible effects. It is that
power which, in every species and in every individual, becomes that which
that species or individual is; and thus we can only conceive of it as a
self-forming intelligence inherent in the ultimate substance of which each
thing is a particular manifestation. That this primordial substance must be
considered as self-forming by an inherent intelligence abiding in itself
becomes evident from the fact that intelligence is the essential quality of
spirit; and if we were to conceive of the primordial substance as something
apart from spirit, then we should have to postulate some other power which
is neither spirit nor matter, and originates both; but this is only putting
the idea of a self-evolving power a step further back and asserting the
production of a lower grade of undifferentiated spirit by a higher, which
is both a purely gratuitous assumption and a contradiction of any idea we
can form of undifferentiated spirit at all. However far back, therefore, we
may relegate the original starting-point, we cannot avoid the conclusion
that, at that point, spirit contains the primary substance in itself, which
brings us back to the common statement that it made everything out of
nothing. We thus find two factors to the making of all things, Spirit
and--Nothing; and the addition of Nothing to Spirit leaves _only_ spirit:
x + 0 = x.
From these considerations we see that the ultimate foundation of every form
of matter is spirit, and hence that a universal intelligence subsists
throughout Nature inherent in every one of its manifestations. But this
cryptic intelligence does not belong to the particular _form_ excepting in
the measure in which it is physically fitted for its concentration into
self-recognizing individuality: it lies hidden in that primordial substance
of which the visible form is a grosser manifestation. This primordial
substance is a philosophical necessity, and we can only picture it to
ourselves as something infinitely finer than the atoms which are themselves
a philosophical inference of physical science: still, for want of a better
word, we may conveniently speak of this primary intelligence inherent in
the very substance of things as the Atomic Intelligence. The term may,
perhaps, be open to some objections, but it will serve our present purpose
as distinguishing _this_ mode of spirit's intelligence from that of the
opposite pole, or Individual Intelligence. This distinction should be
carefully noted because it is by the response of the atomic intelligence to
the individual intelligence that thought-power is able to produce results
on the material plane, as in the cure of disease by mental treatment, and
the like. Intelligence manifests itself by responsiveness, and the whole
action of the cosmic mind in bringing the evolutionary process from its
first beginnings up to its present human stage is nothing else but a
continual intelligent response to the demand
