20 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT 



to the students of University College, London, 

 having considered these alternatives of which I 

 have been speaking, proclaimed his belief that 

 " science positively affirmed creative power." 

 And certainly it is to the physicists that we must 

 go if we are to get information as to the properties 

 and possibilities of matter. Science cannot tell us 

 how things began. 



Professor Ward somewhere remarks that many 

 explanations are excellent once one has got inside 

 a system ; but they do not explain the system itself. 

 But science is still further limited, for there are a 

 whole range of things with which she has nothing 

 to do, and can have nothing to do, since, as we 

 have lately been told by Mr. Balfour, " Science 

 depends on measurement, and things not measure- 

 able are therefore excluded, or tend to be ex- 

 cluded from its attention. But life and beauty 

 and happiness are not measurable." I do not press 

 this part of the argument further here. What I 

 want to emphasize is this, that science has its own 

 corner a large one but there are other corners ; 

 that science cannot tell us anything about the 

 other corners, any more than the other corners 

 can tell us about science. Finally, that science 

 admittedly cannot give us any convincing answer 

 as to how there come to be any corners at all. All 

 this has been long and well known, and fully 

 recognized by writers of the first importance. 



In connection with aesthetic enjoyments, Hux- 

 ley was obliged to describe such things as the en- 

 joyment of music, of art, of scenery, which cannot 

 be shown to be, or even imagined to be, of any 



