336 SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM 



of seeing a joke. There is no reason why he should not 

 take high honours in geloeology, and for example write 

 an acute analysis of the differences between British and 

 American humour. His comparison of our respective 

 jokes would be particularly unbiased and judicial, seeing 

 that he is quite incapable of seeing the point of either. 

 But it would be useless to consider his views as to which 

 was following the right development; for that he would 

 need a sympathetic understanding — he would (in the 

 phrase appropriate to the other side of my analogy) need 

 to be converted. The kind of help and criticism given 

 by the geloeologist and the philosophical theologian is 

 to secure that there is method in our madness. The 

 former may show that our hilarious reception of a 

 speech is the result of a satisfactory dinner and a good 

 cigar rather than a subtle perception of wit; the latter 

 may show that the ecstatic mysticism of the anchorite 

 is the vagary of a fevered body and not a transcendent 

 revelation. But I do not think we should appeal to 

 either of them to discuss the reality of the sense with 

 which we claim to be endowed, nor the direction of its 

 right development. That is a matter for our inner sense 

 of values which we all believe in to some extent, though 

 it may be a matter of dispute just how far it goes. If we 

 have no such sense then it would seem that not only 

 religion, but the physical world and all faith in reasoning 

 totter in insecurity. 



I have sometimes been asked whether science cannot 

 now furnish an argument which ought to convince any 

 reasonable atheist. I could no more ram religious con- 

 viction into an atheist than I could ram a joke into the 

 Scotchman. The only hope of "converting" the latter 

 is that through contact with merry-minded companions 

 he may begin to realise that he is missing something 



