320 SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM 



to take from time to time so that we may return with 

 greater vigour to the more legitimate employment of 

 the mind in scientific investigation. Just possibly it 

 might be defended on the ground that it affords to the 

 non-mathematical mind in some feeble measure that 

 delight in the external world which would be more 

 fully provided by an intimacy with its differential 

 equations. (Lest it should be thought that I have 

 intended to pillory hydrodynamics, I hasten to say in 

 this connection that I would not rank the intellectual 

 (scientific) appreciation on a lower plane than the 

 mystical appreciation; and I know of passages written 

 in mathematical symbols which in their sublimity might 

 vie with Rupert Brooke's sonnet.) But I think you will 

 agree with me that it is impossible to allow that the one 

 kind of appreciation can adequately fill the place of the 

 other. Then how can it be deemed good if there is 

 nothing in it but self-deception? That would be an 

 upheaval of all our ideas of ethics. It seems to me that 

 the only alternatives are either to count all such sur- 

 render to the mystical contact of Nature as mischievous 

 and ethically wrong, or to admit that in these moods 

 we catch something of the true relation of the world to 

 ourselves — a relation not hinted at in a purely scientific 

 analysis of its content. I think the most ardent material- 

 ist does not advocate, or at any rate does not practice, 

 the first alternative; therefore I assume the second alter- 

 native, that there is some kind of truth at the base of the 

 illusion. 



But we must pause to consider the extent of the 

 illusion. Is it a question of a small nugget of reality 

 buried under a mountain of illusion? If that were so it 

 would be our duty to rid our minds of some of the 

 illusion at least, and try to know the truth in purer form. 



