At each successive descent consciousness must find a suitably organised vehicle in which to function and through which it can receive impressions. But each such vehicle will involve corresponding circumscriptions and, conversely, each upward stage will involve an extension of consciousness, until finally, when our evolution is entirely accomplished, we shall be completely and fully Conscious and independent of all limitations of any sort or kind. On the downward half of the journey the characteristic process would, on this theory, be the gaining of individual at the cost of "communal" consciousness, whereas during the second half the latter would continually increase and at last lead to complete "communion" in the widest possible sense without any loss of individuality. This view, which has a good deal to support it especially in point of continuity and general coherence with other well established ideas, has much in common with that held by the Theosophists, which is, to my mind, the strongest plank in their platform. But to revert to the original idea of Life as primarily a four-dimensional force. This does not involve any contravention of the Law of the Conservation of energy for we have only to suppose that the Law is exact only for the Cosmos and for the physical universe, as commonly understood, no more than a very close approximation. The amounts of energy which we must suppose to enter the physical or three-dimensional universe from four-dimensional space may be very small, so small as to defy detection by the methods we are able to apply to the study of living organisms in which alone they could be observed; and yet, by virtue of the "hair-trigger" theory to which I have already referred they might produce effects as large as we please. The foregoing is clearly incomplete, but I think I may fairly claim to have removed the fundamental dilemma which first confronted us. We have seen that life may be supposed to exist entirely apart from ordinary physical matter and yet to affect it so long as we suppose it to do so from some region of higher space. It is a form of energy if we wish to call it so and yet it is distinct from the ordinary forms of physical energy and free from the limitations which would be imposed upon it if we reckoned it as subject to the Law of Conservation as commonly understood. And yet the latter is not broken but rather strengthened; for we now suppose it to be not merely of Universal but of Cosmic application. CHAPTER VI HIGHER SPACE AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. In an earlier chapter I defined a valid hypothesis as one which explained at least _some_ of the observed facts and did not contradict any of them. Since then I have been trying to show that the Higher Space ideas do throw a certain amount of light on quite a number of difficulties and enable us to clear up certain anomalies and dilemmas which seem to be insoluble without its aid.