MYSTICAL RELIGION 341 



As scientists we realise that colour is merely a question 

 of the wave-lengths of aethereal vibrations; but that does 

 not seem to have dispelled the feeling that eyes which 

 reflect light near wave-length 4800 are a subject for 

 rhapsody whilst those which reflect wave-length 5300 

 are left unsung. We have not yet reached the practice of 

 the Laputans, who, "if they would, for example, praise the 

 beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe 

 it by rhombs, circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other 

 geometrical terms". The materialist who is convinced 

 that all phenomena arise from electrons and quanta and 

 the like controlled by mathematical formulae, must 

 presumably hold the belief that his wife is a rather 

 elaborate differential equation; but he is probably 

 tactful enough not to obtrude this opinion in domestic 

 life. If this kind of scientific dissection is felt to be 

 inadequate and irrelevant in ordinary personal relation- 

 ships, it is surely out of place in the most personal 

 relationship of all — that of the human soul to a divine 

 spirit. 



We are anxious for perfect truth, but it is hard to say 

 in what form perfect truth is to be found. I cannot 

 quite believe that it has the form typified by an inventory. 

 Somehow as part of its perfection there should be in- 

 corporated in it that which we esteem as a "sense of 

 proportion". The physicist is not conscious of any 

 disloyalty to truth on occasions when his sense of 

 proportion tells him to regard a plank as continuous 

 material, well knowing that it is "really" empty space 

 containing sparsely scattered electric charges. And the 

 deepest philosophical researches as to the nature of the 

 Deity may give a conception equally out of proportion 

 for daily life; so that we should rather employ a concep- 

 tion that was unfolded nearly two thousand years ago. 



