338 SCIENCE AND MYSTICISM 



the scientific world out of the metrical symbols of the 

 mathematician. If not, it can only be left ungraspable — 

 an environment dimly felt in moments of exaltation but 

 lost to us in the sordid routine of life. To turn it into 

 more continuous channels we must be able to approach 

 the World-Spirit in the midst of our cares and duties in 

 that simpler relation of spirit to spirit in which all true 

 religion finds expression. 



Mystical Religion. We have seen that the cyclic scheme 

 of physics presupposes a background outside the scope 

 of its investigations. In this background we must find, 

 first, our own personality, and then perhaps a greater 

 personality. The idea of a universal Mind or Logos 

 would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the 

 present state of scientific theory; at least it is in harmony 

 with it. But if so, all that our inquiry justifies us in assert- 

 ing is a purely colourless pantheism. Science cannot tell 

 whether the world-spirit is good or evil, and its halting 

 argument for the existence of a God might equally well 

 be turned into an argument for the existence of a Devil. 

 I think that that is an example of the limitation of 

 physical schemes that has troubled us before — namely, 

 that in all such schemes opposites are represented by 

 + and — . Past and future, cause and effect, are repre- 

 sented in this inadequate way. One of the greatest 

 puzzles of science is to discover why protons and elec- 

 trons are not simply the opposites of one another, 

 although our whole conception of electric charge 

 requires that positive and negative electricity should be 

 related like + and — . The direction of time's arrow 

 could only be determined by that incongruous mixture 

 of theology and statistics known as the second law of 

 thermodynamics; or, to be more explicit, the direction 



