THE REAL AND THE CONCRETE 275 



chapter we are takfng a larger view in which the cyclical 

 schemes of physics are embraced with much besides. 

 But before venturing on this more risky ground I have 

 to emphasise one conclusion which is definitely scien- 

 tific. The modern scientific theories have broken away 

 from the common standpoint which identifies the real 

 with the concrete. I think we might go so far as to say 

 that time is more typical of physical reality than matter, 

 because it is freer from those metaphysical associations 

 which physics disallows. It would not be fair, being 

 given an inch, to take an ell, and say that having gone 

 so far physics may as well admit at once that reality is 

 spiritual. We must go more warily. But in approaching 

 such questions we are no longer tempted to take up the 

 attitude that everything which lacks concreteness is 

 thereby self-condemned. 



The cleavage between the scientific and the extra- 

 scientific domain of experience is, I believe, not a 

 cleavage between the concrete and the transcendental 

 but between the metrical and the non-metrical. I am 

 at one with the materialist in feeling a repugnance 

 towards any kind of pseudo-science of the extra- 

 scientific territory. Science is not to be condemned as 

 narrow because it refuses to deal with elements of 

 experience which are unadapted to its own highly 

 organised method ; nor can it be blamed for looking super- 

 ciliously on the comparative disorganisation of our knowl- 

 edge and methods of reasoning about the non-metrical 

 part of experience. But I think we have not been guilty 

 of pseudo-science in our attempt to show in the last two 

 chapters how it comes about that within the whole 

 domain of experience a selected portion is capable of 

 that exact metrical representation which is requisite for 

 development by the scientific method. 



