The general application of this to the question in hand is obvious enough. But there is another point which it illustrates—a point which we have raised before. I am convinced that science will never yield any very fruitful understanding of the world, until it recognizes that _life_ and _intelligence_ (of course in the broadest signification) pervade all the phenomena of Nature. It is perfectly useless to try to explain human development, human destiny, mental activity, the forces of nature, and so forth, in terms of dead matter. No explanation of such a kind could possibly be satisfying. And more and more it is becoming clear that even what we call the inorganic world is as subtle and swift in its responses as what we call the organic. Many difficulties must inevitably arise in any attempted solution of the problem before us—that problem which is generally denoted by “the nature of the soul and its relation to the body”; but we shall never arrive at any harmonious view of the whole question until we are persuaded, and practically assume, that life and intelligence in some degree are characteristic of all that we call ‘matter’ as well as of all we call mind, and pervade the whole structure of the universe. We shall then see that the forces, for instance, which organize and direct the human body, even down to its minutest parts, are probably just as individual and intelligent in their action as those (to take the example just given) which organize and direct an army-corps. CHAPTER XI ON THE CREATION AND MATERIALIZATION OF FORMS I have suggested more than once, in preceding chapters of this book, and in _The Art of Creation_ and elsewhere, that in the ordinary evolution of thought, in dreams, in trance and in other psychic states, we are witness of a process which is continually and eternally going on, by which the faintest invisible forms and outlines, the nearest cloud-currents of the inner soul, gradually condense themselves, pass into visibility, tangibility, and so forth, and (if the process is continued) ultimately take their place among the substantial things of the outer world.