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 which each stage in the
progress has made for an adjustment between itself and its environment.
Since, then, we have recognized the presence of a universal intelligence
permeating all things, we must also recognize a corresponding
responsiveness hidden deep down in their nature and ready to be called into
action when appealed to. All mental treatment depends on this
responsiveness of spirit in its lower degrees to higher degrees of itself.
It is here that the difference between the mental scientist and the
uninstructed person comes in; the former knows of this responsiveness and
makes use of it, and the latter cannot use it because he does not know it.
III
THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT.
We have now paved the way for understanding what is meant by "the unity of
the spirit." In the first conception of spirit as the underlying origin of
all things we see a universal substance which, at this stage, is not
differentiated into any specific forms. This is not a question of some
bygone time, but subsists at every moment of all time in the _innermost_
nature of all being; and when we see this, we see that the division between
one specific form and another has below it a deep essential unity, which
acts as the supporter of all the several forms of individuality arising out
of it. And as our thought penetrates deeper into the nature of this
all-producing spiritual substance we see that it cannot be limited to any
one portion of space, but must be limitless as space itself, and that the
idea of any portion of space where it is not is inconceivable. It is one of
those intuitive perceptions from which the human mind can never get away
that this primordial, all-generating living spirit must be commensurate
with infinitude, and we can th
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