326 SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM 



World-losers and world-forsakers, 



On whom the pale moon gleams: 

 Yet we are the movers and shakers 



Of the world for ever, it seems. 



Reality and Mysticism, But a defence before the scien- 

 tists may not be a defence to our own self-questionings. 

 We are haunted by the word reality. I have already tried 

 to deal with the questions which arise as to the meaning 

 of reality; but it presses on us so persistently that, at the 

 risk of repetition, I must consider it once more from 

 the standpoint of religion. A compromise of illusion 

 and reality may be all very well in our attitude towards 

 physical surroundings; but to admit such a compromise 

 into religion would seem to be a trifling with sacred 

 things. Reality seems to concern religious beliefs much 

 more than any others. No one bothers as to whether 

 there is a reality behind humour. The artist who tries 

 to bring out the soul in his picture does not really care 

 whether and in what sense the soul can be said to exist. 

 Even the physicist is unconcerned as to whether atoms 

 or electrons really exist; he usually asserts that they do, 

 but, as we have seen, existence is there used in a 

 domestic sense and no inquiry is made as to whether 

 it is more than a conventional term. In most subjects 

 (perhaps not excluding philosophy) it seems sufficient 

 to agree on the things that we shall call real, and after- 

 wards try to discover what we mean by the word. And 

 so it comes about that religion seems to be the one field 

 of inquiry in which the question of reality and existence 

 is treated as of serious and vital importance. 



But it is difficult to see how such an inquiry can be 

 profitable. When Dr. Johnson felt himself getting tied 

 up in argument over "Bishop Berkeley's ingenious 

 sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that 



