THE NATURE OF REALITY 447 



proves to be is somewhat vague. It is not to be identified 

 with consciousness, 1 and is something more general than our 

 individual minds. 2 However, it may be interpreted in terms 

 of personality, 3 and is that with which one has contact 

 through the mystic experience. The mind-stuff is not spread 

 out in space and time, for the latter are metrical notions 

 associated with pointer readings. In fact the stuff of the 

 world proves to be just those features which elude metrical 

 methods — significance and values, beauty and melody, truth 

 and untruth. When the human heart, perplexed with the 

 mystery of existence, cries, "What is it all about?," the an- 

 swer cannot be given in terms of pointer readings. The 

 satisfying answer is in terms of "a spirit in which truth has 

 its shrine, with potentialities of self-fulfillment in its re- 

 sponse to beauty and right. Shall I not also add that even as 

 light and color and sound come into our minds at the prompt- 

 ing of a world beyond, so these other stirrings of consciousness 

 come from something which, whether we describe it as beyond 

 or deep within ourselves, is greater than our own personality. ' ' 4 

 It can be readily seen that this world of mind-stuff is not 

 really demonstrated on the grounds of science. Science does 

 not — in fact, science cannot — tell us of this world. Only intro- 

 spection and the mystic experience can do this. But science 

 permits such a world as this to exist by virtue of the character 

 of its symbols; scientific symbols are "hollow" and therefore 

 refer only in a highly abstract way to objects. But this resi- 

 due of objects, which is not represented in the symbols, must 

 be mind-stuff. Thus the conclusion from the nature of sym- 

 bols to the character of the real world is based upon the 

 inadequacy of symbolic representation. Because symbols 

 are unlike their referents, the real world cannot be like our 

 symbols of it; hence, since our symbols are mathematical, 

 the world itself cannot be mathematical. The nature of this 

 inference should be clearly seen, since it has an interesting 

 contrast in the position of Jeans, to be examined immediately. 



1 Ibid., pp. 277-278. 3 Science and the Unseen World, p. 50. 



- Ibid., p. 276. 4 New Pathways in Science, pp. 317-318. 



