330 SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM 



with an extra artificial sense-organ and, lo! the aether is 

 hideous with the blare of the Savoy bands. Or — 



The isle is full of noises, 

 Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. 

 Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 

 Will hum about mine ears ; and sometimes voices. 



So far as broader characteristics are concerned wc 

 see in Nature what we look for or are equipped to look 

 for. Of course, I do not mean that we can arrange the 

 details of the scene; but by the light and shade of our 

 values we can bring out things that shall have the broad 

 characteristics we esteem. In this sense the value placed 

 on permanence creates the world of apparent substance; 

 in this sense, perhaps, the God within creates the God 

 in Nature. But no complete view can be obtained so 

 long as we separate our consciousness from the world 

 of which it is a part. We can only speak speculatively 

 of that which I have called the "background of the 

 pointer readings"; but it would at least seem plausible 

 that if the values which give the light and shade of the 

 world are absolute they must belong to the background, 

 unrecognised in physics because they are not in the 

 pointer readings but recognised by consciousness which 

 has its roots in the background. I have no wish to put 

 that forward as a theory; it is only to emphasise that, 

 limited as we are to a knowledge of the physical world 

 and its points of contact with the background in isolated 

 consciousness, we do not quite attain that thought of 

 the unity of the whole which is essential to a complete 

 theory. Presumably human nature has been specialised 

 to a considerable extent by the operation of natural 

 selection; and it might well be debated whether its 

 valuation of permanence and other traits now apparently 



