"1 



CONCLUSION 



A tide of indignation has been surging in the breast of 

 the matter-of-fact scientist and is about to be unloosed 

 upon us. Let us broadly survey the defence we can set 

 up. 



I suppose the most sweeping charge will be that I 

 have been talking what at the back of my mind I must 

 know is only a well-meaning kind of nonsense. I can 

 assure you that there is a scientific part of me that has 

 often brought that criticism during some of the later 

 chapters. I will not say that I have been half-convinced, 

 but at least I have felt a homesickness for the paths of 

 physical science where there are more or less discernible 

 handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolish- 

 ness. But however much I may have felt inclined to 

 tear up this part of the discussion and confine myself to 

 my proper profession of juggling with pointer readings, 

 I find myself holding to the main principles. Starting 

 from aether, electrons and other physical machinery we 

 cannot reach conscious man and render count of what 

 is apprehended in his consciousness. Conceivably we 

 might reach a human machine interacting by reflexes 

 with its environment; but we cannot reach rational man 

 morally responsible to pursue the truth as to aether and 

 electrons or to religion. Perhaps it may seem unneces- 

 sarily portentous to invoke the latest developments of 

 the relativity and quantum theories merely to tell you 

 this; but that is scarcely the point. We have followed 

 these theories because they contain the conceptions of 

 modern science; and it is not a question of asserting a 

 faith that science must ultimately be reconcilable with 

 an idealistic view, but of examining how at the moment 



343 



