340 BRAINS OF RATS AND MEN 



of things that evoke the experience, partly in terms 

 of the technique employed in enlarging this experi- 

 ence, and partly in terms of the interest or attitude of 

 the experiencing subject. To conform to our present 

 canons of scientific validity, all of these experiences 

 must cohere in a unitary system of cause-and-effect 

 sequences. This way of looking at the cosmos has 

 grown up within scientific experience. It is a sci- 

 entific, not a philosophic, dogma. In fact, in many 

 circles it is in disrepute, on philosophic, religious, or 

 sentimental grounds, not on scientific grounds. 



There are three fields in which this scientific 

 dogma presents especial difficulties — life and death, 

 mind and matter, and the current doctrines of rela- 

 tivity — and mysticism has been invoked in each of 

 these fields without advancing our understanding of 

 them in the slightest degree. The whole trend of sci- 

 ence is in the direction of integration of experience, 

 and in the light of history there is nothing to be gained 

 at present by throwing overboard the scientific 

 method. This method demands that we endeavor to 

 fill existing gaps in experience rather than adopt easier 

 short cuts to a solution through pluralism, a solution 

 which in the end resolves itself into a name for our 

 ignorance. 



That the experience which I do not objectify is 

 causally knit in with that experience which I do 

 objectify and call "natural phenomena'* I regard as 

 scientifically established by the same kind of evidence 



