160 MATTER, ENERGY, CONSCIOUSNESS, SPIRIT 



have acquired the sense of direction, though whole 

 territories may await exploration. Though the road 

 to the absolute truth stretches, as always, into a 

 distance that may be approached but for ever 

 recedes, we know the direction that the road takes. 

 This is the crux of the whole matter. Its direc- 

 tion is definitely away from and not towards the 

 mysteries of life and spirit. The path hewn by 

 knowledge through ignorance points two ways in 

 the direction of the absolute unattainable truth. 

 Man has always tended to confound these two 

 classes of the ultimately unknowable. Heaven is 

 at once the abode of the constellations, which obey 

 the laws of mechanics with undeviating precision, 

 and where events and consequences are predicted 

 before they occur to the fraction of a second, and also 

 the abode of God, and the heavenly host of dis- 

 embodied spirits. Magnetism is in a different world 

 from the "animal magnetism" of Mesmer, and the 

 wireless telegraphy that transmits messages through 

 space affords no justification for believing, or other- 

 wise, in telepathy. I have been struck with one 

 curious point in the interest aroused by the recent 

 advances in physics in the minds of the general 

 public. I believe it is largely due to the underlying, 

 if unexpressed, belief that, in thus laying bare the 

 deeper secrets of external nature, we are approaching 

 the nearer to the solution of the problems of life and 

 the soul. One's scientific sense of direction tells 

 that the further one advances towards the ultimate 

 insoluble problems of physics, the more completely 

 one leaves behind the phenomenon of life and all its 

 mysteries. The advance in this direction has been 

 from life and not towards it, and the clouded horizons 

 towards which we move, whatever they may contain 

 of wonder and revelation, are likely to afford little of 

 moment to the real mystery of life. 



