238 WORLD BUILDING 



For every item on the credit side an equal item appeared 

 somewhere else on the debit side. "Ha I" said the 

 Bursar, "I have discovered one of the great laws con- 

 trolling the college. It is a perfect and exact law of the 

 real world. Credit must be called plus and debit minus; 

 and so we have the law of conservation of £ s. d. This 

 is the true way to find out things, and there is no limit 

 to what may ultimately be discovered by this scientific 

 method. I will pay no more heed to the superstitions 

 held by some of the Fellows as to a beneficent spirit 

 called the King or evil spirits called the University 

 Commissioners. I have only to go on in this way and 

 I shall succeed in understanding why prices are always 

 going up." 



I have no quarrel with the Bursar for believing that 

 scientific investigation of the accounts is a road to exact 

 (though necessarily partial) knowledge of the reality 

 behind them. Things may be discovered by this method 

 which go deeper than the mere truism revealed by his 

 first effort. In any case his life is especially concerned 

 with accounts and it is proper that he should discover 

 the laws of accounts whatever their nature. But I would 

 point out to him that a discovery of the overlapping of 

 the different aspects in which the realities of the college 

 present themselves in the world of accounts, is not a 

 discovery of the laws controlling the college; that he 

 has not even begun to find the controlling laws. The 

 college may totter but the Bursar's accounts still balance. 



The law of conservation of momentum and energy 

 results from the overlapping of the different aspects in 

 which the "non-emptiness of space" presents itself to 

 our practical experience. Once again we find that a 

 fundamental law of physics is no controlling law but a 

 "put-up job" as soon as we have ascertained the nature 



