264 POINTER READINGS 



for a theoretical scheme of physics. We cannot embody 

 it in a differential equation. It is ignored; and the 

 physical properties of matter and other entities are 

 expressed by their linkages in the cycle. And you can 

 see how by the ingenious device of the cycle physics 

 secures for itself a self-contained domain for study with 

 no loose ends projecting into the unknown. All other 

 physical definitions have the same kind of interlocking. 

 Electric force is defined as something which causes 

 motion of an electric charge ; an electric charge is some- 

 thing which exerts electric force. So that an electric 

 charge is something that exerts something that produces 

 motion of something that exerts something that produces 

 . . . ad infinitum. 



But I am not now writing of pure physics, and from 

 a broader standpoint I do not see how we can leave out 

 Mr. X. The fact that matter is "knowable to Mr. X" 

 must be set down as one of the fundamental attributes 

 of matter. I do not say that it is very distinctive, since 

 other entities of physics are also knowable to him; but 

 the potentiality of the whole physical world for awaking 

 impressions in consciousness is an attribute not to be 

 ignored when we compare the actual world with worlds 

 which, we fancy, might have been created. There seems 

 to be a prevalent disposition to minimise the importance 

 of this. The attitude is that "knowableness to Mr. X" 

 is a negligible attribute, because Mr. X is so clever that 

 he could know pretty much anything that there was to 

 know. I have already urged the contrary view — that 

 there is a definitely selective action of the mind; and 

 since physics treats of what is knowable to mind * its 



* This is obviously true of all experimental physics, and must be 

 true of theoretical physics if it is (as it professes to be) based on experi- 

 ment. 



