24 AN INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



stitutes our bodies is but a part of a universe of matter, and 

 as the force with which we are endowed is but a part of a 

 universe of force, so, too, our consciousness seems to be 

 but a part of universal consciousness. 



How are we to know anything about the universal con- 

 sciousness unless by revelation ? Science has stopped short 

 at the confines of the knowable. This is its boundary. It 

 cannot proceed farther than the five senses. They give 

 it no support in a region where there are no phenomena 

 to be observed. The external relations of consciousness 

 are known only to religion. Religion, which must from the 

 necessities of the case be expressed in human language, 

 is represented by phenomena of the physical universe. To 

 some minds the representation carries a more real, to others 

 a more allegorical meaning, but the form in which it carries 

 most meaning is to the individual most true. Science can 

 throw no light upon religion in its inner sense. It cannot 

 criticise religion. It can only recognise the existence of 

 the other world and retire to its own domain ; and as our 

 subject is science, it is our duty also, having brought our 

 argument to its proper limit, to cease from any attempt to 

 follow it farther. 



But what of the alleged incursions of the spirit-world 

 into the physical universe ; ghosts making themselves sen- 

 sible to eye and ear, spirit-rappings, table-turning without 

 the application of adequate muscular force, materializations, 

 and all the other hocus-pocus of theosophy? Has science 

 no right to resent the trespass ? Of course it has. As soon 

 as the phenomenon becomes a physical phenomenon it is 

 the duty of science to investigate it. It is the duty of the 

 man of science to adopt such tests as Faraday adopted, 

 to fix a false top to a table with a manometer between it 

 and the original top, and to show that the fingers which 

 were supposed to resist the temptation to push exercised 

 the exact amount of force required to move the table ; to 

 devise the "control experiment," which has baffled so many 



