SELECTIVE INFLUENCE OF THE MIND 243 



which are part of it; and the measuring appliances 

 result from the plan of building in the same way as the 

 entities which they measure. If, for example, we had 

 used some of the "lumber" to build an entity x, we 

 could presumably construct from the same lumber an 

 appliance for measuring x. The difference is this — if the 

 pointer of the weighing machine is reading 5 lbs. a 

 human consciousness is in a mysterious way (not yet 

 completely traced) aware of the fact, whereas if the 

 measuring appliance for x reads 5 units no human mind 

 is aware of it. Neither x nor the appliance for measur- 

 ing x have any interaction with consciousness. Thus the 

 responsibility for the fact that the scheme of the scientific 

 world includes mass but excludes x rests ultimately with 

 the phenomena of consciousness. 



Perhaps a better way of expressing this selective 

 influence of mind on the laws of Nature is to say that 

 values are created by the mind. All the "light and shade" 

 in our conception of the world of physics comes in this 

 way from the mind, and cannot be explained without 

 reference to the characteristics of consciousness. 



The world which we have built from the relation- 

 structure is no doubt doomed to be pulled about a good 

 deal as our knowledge progresses. The quantum theory 

 shows that some radical change is impending. But I 

 think that our building exercise has at any rate widened 

 our minds to the possibilities and has given us a different 

 orientation towards the idea of physical law. The points 

 which I stress are: 



Firstly, a strictly quantitative science can arise from 

 a basis which is purely qualitative. The comparability 

 that has to be assumed axiomatically is a merely quali- 

 tative discrimination of likeness and unlikeness. 



Secondly, the laws which we have hitherto regarded 



