livingness of Life consists in intelligence--in
other words, in the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the
distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we
may say that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive
of matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to
the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and
to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form.
For these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the
distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of
matter is Form. This is a radical distinction from which important
consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the
student.

Form implies extension in space and also limitation within certain
boundaries. Thought implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life as
existing in any particular _form_ we associate it with the idea of
extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly
larger amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we think of Life as
the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension,
and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the
elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. The important point of
this distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid
of the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire
totality anywhere and everywhere--that is to say, at every point of space
simultaneously. The scientific definition of time is that it is the period
occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another,
and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there
can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as
devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the
element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit
as pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as
subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. From
this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on
this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here
and now. In this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in
time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an
actual p