CONVICTION 335 



what they seem. But we do not pluck out our eyes 

 because they persist in deluding us with fanciful 

 colourings instead of giving us the plain truth about 

 wave-length. It is in the midst of such misrepresenta- 

 tions of environment (if you must call them so) that we 

 have to live. It is, however, a very one-sided view of 

 truth which can find in the glorious colouring of our 

 surroundings nothing but misrepresentation — which 

 takes the environment to be all important and the 

 conscious spirit to be inessential. In our scientific 

 chapters we have seen how the mind must be regarded 

 as dictating the course of world-building; without it 

 there is but formless chaos. It is the aim of physical 

 science, so far as its scope extends, to lay bare the 

 fundamental structure underlying the world; but science 

 has also to explain if it can, or else humbly to accept, 

 the fact that from this world have arisen minds capable 

 of transmuting the bare structure into the richness of 

 our experience. It is not misrepresentation but rather 

 achievement — the result perhaps of long ages of bio- 

 logical evolution — that we should have fashioned a 

 familiar world out of the crude basis. It is a fulfilment 

 of the purpose of man's nature. If likewise the spiritual 

 world has been transmuted by a religious colour beyond 

 anything implied in its bare external qualities, it may 

 be allowable to assert with equal conviction that this 

 is not misrepresentation but the achievement of a divine 

 element in man's nature. 



May I revert again to the analogy of theology with 

 the supposed science of humour which (after consulta- 

 tion with a classical authority) I venture to christen 

 "geloeology". Analogy is not convincing argument, but 

 it must serve here. Consider the proverbial Scotchman 

 with strong leanings towards philosophy and incapable 



