Suppose that the energy which we term "Life" is located to start with in higher space--in four-dimensional space for example. Suppose that it is really pressing against the "dam" of three-dimensional matter trying to use it for a vehicle of manifestation. The extent to which it will be able to do so will depend on the presence or absence in the matter concerned of those qualities which enable it to be acted on by four-dimensional forces. What these qualities are it is at present impossible to say although one might hazard a guess to the effect that the essential factor might be one of greater or less molecular extension in the direction of the fourth dimension. But wherever matter exists which possesses the suitable properties, there will Life "squeeze through the dam" to a greater or less extent and we shall have a "living" organism which will continue to live until the matter through which Life is--in each particular case--manifesting, loses the properties which enable it to be made use of. Whether there is any sort of matter which can truly be called completely inanimate or whether, as some people hold, all matter is to some extent "alive" I am not prepared to say. Personally I should be sorry to have to draw a distinct dividing line anywhere and it seems more in accordance with the general continuity of things to suppose that no such line can really be drawn. For myself I tend more and more to the view that Life, Vitality, Consciousness--call it what you will--is something which dips down, as it were, for the purpose of gaining experience and of self-evolution, from its original location--wherever and whatever that may be--through successive limitations of consciousness until it reaches this, the lowest, the most restricted and the most individual state of all. These successive limitations may conveniently be represented by saying that consciousness functions in spaces of successively decreasing dimensionality although it must be borne in mind, as was pointed out at the end of the last chapter, that this may be only a convenient way of expressing the effect of a change which belongs to the consciousness itself more properly than to its environment.