SCIENCE AND REALITY 7 



codifying, simplifying, schematizing. The resulting 

 law is of the human mind and in the human mind, 

 rather than of the extended world or in the extended 

 world. It is an attempt at comprehension, subjec- 

 tive and not objective. And when we take the 

 scientific law, this human product, and attempt to fit 

 it again to any part of the extended world, except 

 precisely that part from which it was derived, we 

 are apt to bump up against reality, and to receive 

 an unpleasant if salutary shock. Reality! there 

 is no more difficult word in any language, and I must 

 explain in what sense I use it. In my own schema of 

 the universe (and I am not going to pursue the 

 irrelevant enquiry as to how far this is in harmony 

 with the schemata of the high priests of philosophy) 

 there is an ultimate, metaphysical reality which 

 enfolds and permeates us. It is without qualities 

 or conditions, relations, parts or magnitude, for all 

 these are modes of human knowledge, the human 

 garment with which we clothe the invisible, and all 

 that we know of ultimate reality is that it is " not- 

 us." About it we know nothing, for we can think 

 and know only in terms of ourselves. (We need not 

 try to reason about it ; it is a mere statement of con- 

 sciousness there is no " us " unless there is " not- 

 us." The fundamental paradox of metaphysics is 

 that the moment part of reality enters into us and 

 becomes known, it ceases to be real. The real 

 presses into us through the avenues of our faculties, 

 forming our knowledge of what we call the extended 

 world, and in so doing acquires the human qualities, 

 conditions, limitations that make it part of us. This 

 immortal has put on mortality. 

 c 



