Chapter 3 of 17

II. The Higher Mode of Intelligence Controls the Lower

第二講：より高い知性の様式が低い知性を制御する

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.

私たちは、自分自身において知っている人格性から、いわゆる無生物の形態として知っている物質への下降が、自らの意志力を新たな因果の連鎖を生み出す能力として認識できる存在様式から、自己をまったく認識できない存在様式への、知性の尺度における段階的な下降であることを見てきました。生命の段階が高ければ高いほど知性も高く、このことから、生命の最高原理はまた知性の究極原理でもなければならないことになります。これは宇宙の壮大な自然秩序によって明確に示されています。現代科学の光に照らせば進化の原理は私たちすべてにとって馴染み深いものであり、宇宙の仕組みのあらゆる部分の間に存在する精緻な調整はあまりにも自明であり、強調するまでもありません。科学のあらゆる進歩は、すでに存在しているこの壮大な普遍的秩序における新たな微妙な連関を発見することに他なりません。それは私たちの認識を待つだけで実用に供されるものです。したがって、最も偉大な精神の最高の仕事がすでに存在する秩序を認識することに他ならないのであれば、この秩序として自らを顕す生命原理の中に最高の知性が内在しているという結論から逃れることはできません。こうして、万物の総体の根底に偉大な宇宙的知性が存在しなければならないことがわかります。

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 race shall still continue:--

私たちの惑星の物理的歴史は、まず広大な無限の宇宙空間に散在する白熱した星雲を示し、次にそれが凝縮して中心太陽となり、そのまわりに可塑的な原初の物質からまだ十分に固まっていない灼熱の惑星の一族が取り巻きます。そして数えきれない千年紀にわたる緩やかな地質的形成が続き、最も低い生命形態――植物であれ動物であれ――が地球に住むようになり、その素朴な始まりから壮大で絶え間ない、急がない前進運動が、事物を段階的に私たちが今知っている状態へと導きます。この着実な進歩を見ると、進化の原理の本質をどう考えるにせよ、それが種族の絶え間ない前進を確実に保障していることは明らかです。しかしそれは、個体に対してあらゆる可能な偶発事故に対する広い余裕を残した上でなお種族が存続するよう、それぞれの種類を大量に生み出すことによってこれを行っているのです。

In short, we may say that the cosmic intelligence works by a Law of Averages which allows a wide margin of accident and failure to the individual.

要するに、宇宙的知性は平均の法則によって働いており、個体には偶然と失敗の広い余地を許していると言えるでしょう。

But the progress towards higher intelligence is always in the direction of narrowing down this margin of accident and taking the individual more and more out of the law of averages, and substituting the law of individual selection. In ordinary scientific language this is the survival of the fittest. The reproduction of fish is on a scale that would choke the sea with them if every individual survived; but the margin of destruction is correspondingly enormous, and thus the law of averages simply keeps up the normal proportion of the race. But at the other end of the scale, reproduction is by no means thus enormously in excess of survival. True, there is ample margin of accident and disease cutting off numbers of human beings before they have gone through the average duration of life, but still it is on a very different scale from the premature destruction of hundreds of thousands as against the survival of one. It may, therefore, be taken as an established fact that in proportion as intelligence advances the individual ceases to be subject to a mere law of averages and has a continually increasing power of controlling the conditions of his own survival.

しかし、より高い知性への進歩は、常にこの偶然の余地を狭め、個体を平均の法則からますます引き離し、個体選択の法則に置き換える方向にあります。通常の科学用語で言えば、これは適者生存です。魚の繁殖は、すべての個体が生き残れば海が魚で溢れ返るほどの規模ですが、破壊の余地もそれに対応して膨大であり、こうして平均の法則は単に種族の正常な比率を維持するに過ぎません。しかし尺度の反対側の端では、繁殖が生存を圧倒的に上回ることはまったくありません。確かに、事故や病気が多くの人間を平均寿命に達する前に奪い去る十分な余地はありますが、それでも一匹の生存に対して何十万匹が早期に破壊されるのとはまったく異なる規模です。したがって、知性が進歩するにつれて、個体は単なる平均の法則に従わなくなり、自己の存続の条件を制御する力が絶えず増大するということを、確立された事実として受け入れることができるでしょう。

We see, therefore, that there is a marked distinction between the cosmic intelligence and the individual intelligence, and that the factor which differentiates the latter from the former is the presence of individual volition. Now the business of Mental Science is to ascertain the relation of this individual power of volition to the great cosmic law which provides for the maintenance and advancement of the race; and the point to be carefully noted is that the power of individual volition is itself the outcome of the cosmic evolutionary principle at the point where it reaches its highest level. The effort of Nature has always been upwards from the time when only the lowest forms of life peopled the globe, and it has now culminated in the production of a being with a mind capable of abstract reasoning and a brain fitted to be the physical instrument of such a mind. At this stage the all-creating Life-principle reproduces itself in a form capable of recognizing the working of the evolutionary law, and the unity and continuity of purpose running through the whole progression until now indicates, beyond a doubt, that the place of such a being in the universal scheme must be to introduce the operation of that factor which, up to this point, has been, conspicuous by its absence--the factor, namely, of intelligent individual volition. The evolution which has brought us up to this standpoint has worked by a cosmic law of averages; it has been a process in which the individual himself has not taken a conscious part. But because he is what he is, and leads the van of the evolutionary procession, if man is to evolve further, it can now only be by his own conscious co-operation with the law which has brought him up to the standpoint where he is able to realize that such a law exists. His evolution in the future must be by conscious participation in the great work, and this can only be effected by his own individual intelligence and effort. It is a process of intelligent growth. No one else can grow for us: we must each grow for ourselves; and this intelligent growth consists in our increasing recognition of the universal law, which has brought us as far as we have yet got, and of our own individual relation to that law, based upon the fact that we ourselves are the most advanced product of it. It is a great maxim that Nature obeys us precisely in proportion as we first obey Nature. Let the electrician try to go counter to the principle that electricity must always pass from a higher to a lower potential and he will effect nothing; but let him submit in all things to this one fundamental law, and he can make whatever particular applications of electrical power he will.

したがって、宇宙的知性と個体的知性の間には顕著な区別があり、後者を前者から分かつ要因は、意志の力による自己選択の存在であることがわかります。宇宙的知性は自然の壮大な秩序を生み出し、種族を全体として前進させますが、個体の選択にまでは介入しません。個体的知性は、存在のより低い諸様式を認識し制御する力をもたらし、一定の制限はあるものの周囲の環境を自らの目的に合わせて形作ることを可能にします。こうして、宇宙的な知性の働きと個体的な知性の働きには根本的な違いがあることがわかります。前者は演繹法によって一般から個別へと働き、個体のためには種族の保存を通じてのみ備えます。後者は帰納法によって個別から一般へと働き、主観的観察から客観的実行へと進み、その傾向は常に個体をますます種族的法則への依存から解放し、自己決定的な存在へと高めることにあります。この二つの知性様式は互いに矛盾するのではなく、一方は他方の進化形です。個体的知性はより高い段階にまで引き上げられた宇宙的知性であり、その引き上げは自己を認識する意志の導入によってなされるのです。

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.

これらの考察から、より低い知性の段階とより高い段階を分けるものは、それ自身の自己性の認識であり、その認識が知的であればあるほど、個体に働く力はより大きいということがわかります。これは厳密に科学的な事実です。個体がなぜ種族とは別個に進歩する力を持っているかに対する唯一の答えは、そのより大きな知性が自らに注ぎ込まれる宇宙的知性の流れにある種の方向を与え、したがって宇宙的知性の流れの中に新たな特殊化を生み出すからです。個々の知性は、外的条件を個人的に認識することによって、宇宙的知性をいわば新たな水路に導き入れるのです。

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.

さて、純粋な精神の個体化としての自己のこの高い認識は、必然的に、同じ水準の自己認識にまだ達していない精神のすべての様式を制御しなければなりません。より低い様式は、それ自体の中に意志による自己方向づけの原理を持っていません。なぜなら、意志はまさにこのまだ達成されていない自己認識の結果だからです。これらの低い様式は宇宙的知性の流れの中で作用しますが、その流れは、個体化された知性からの指示がなければ、平均の法則以外の特定の方向を持ちません。したがって、宇宙的知性によって動かされる低い生命形態は、自己認識を持つ個体的知性の前では、常に、それを最善の用途に振り向けるも最悪の用途に振り向けるも、後者の自由に任されています。これが人間の他の動物に対する優位の根拠であり、同時にその優位を伴う責任の根拠でもあります。人間が動物に対して優位に立つのは、より大きな力によってですが、それは思いやりの義務を伴うより大きな力です。下位の生命形態が個体的知性に従うのは、それ自身の中に同じ程度の独創的な方向づけの力を持っていないからです。

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 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.

これらの考察から、あらゆる物質的形態の究極的基礎は精神であり、したがって普遍的知性が自然の中のあらゆる顕現に内在して遍在していることがわかります。この知性の最低の様式は、私たちが物理的・化学的法則と呼ぶものとして現れ、この精神の様式はまだまったく自己認識に目覚めていないため、しばしば私たちからは精神的なものにはまったく見えません。しかし、注意深い考察が示すように、確実にそうなのです。物理的・化学的法則は、常に合理的な比率と秩序正しい連鎖の存在を伴っています。それ自体は計算する力を持ちませんが、計算を行うかのように常に精確な結果を生み出します。それは無意識のうちに知性の法則に従って働き、それゆえ意識的知性の支配下に置かれ得るのです。もしそれが知性と異質なものであったなら、そうはなり得なかったでしょう。実際、自然のあらゆる過程の根底にある精神は、最も低い段階では盲目的に機械的に働き、私たちにはそれが精神的であるとは気づきにくいのです。しかし、そうであるからこそ、知性によって認識される法則に常に従い、人間がそれを自らの目的のために用いることができるのです。こうして私たちは最終的に、精神の普遍性と、その中で高い認識が低い認識を自然に支配するという偉大な原理に到達します。