THE REACTION FROM ANALYSIS 105 



Suppose that we were asked to arrange the following 

 in two categories — 



distance, mass, electric force, entropy, beauty, melody. 



I think there are the strongest grounds for placing 

 entropy alongside beauty and melody and not with the 

 first three. Entropy is only found when the parts are 

 viewed in association, and it is by viewing or hearing 

 the parts in association that beauty and melody are 

 discerned. All three are features of arrangement. It is 

 a pregnant thought that one of these three associates 

 should be able to figure as a commonplace quantity of 

 science. The reason why this stranger can pass itself 

 off among the aborigines of the physical world is, that 

 it is able to speak their language, viz. the language of 

 arithmetic. It has a measure-number associated with it 

 and so is made quite at home in physics. Beauty and 

 melody have not the arithmetical pass-word and so are 

 barred out. This teaches us that what exact science looks 

 out for is not entities of some particular category, but 

 entities with a metrical aspect. We shall see in a later 

 chapter that when science admits them it really admits 

 only their metrical aspect and occupies itself solely with 

 that. It would be no use for beauty, say, to fake up a 

 few numerical attributes (expressing for instance the 

 ideal proportions of symmetry) in the hope of thereby 

 gaining admission into the portals of science and carrying 

 on an aesthetic crusade within. It would find that the 

 numerical aspects were duly admitted, but the aesthetic 

 significance of them left outside. So also entropy is 

 admitted in its numerical aspect; if it has as we faintly 

 suspect some deeper significance touching that which 

 appears in our consciousness as purpose (opposed to 

 chance) , that significance is left outside. These fare no 



