MICHAEL PUPIN 195 



telligible physical entity when the laws of its actions 

 and reactions were formulated in accordance with 

 Newtonian dynamics and verified by electrical radia 

 tion experiments. The scientist looks for a similar 

 intelligibility of the other ultra-material substance, and 

 asks: Can a similar statement be made concerning the 

 soul? Is the soul a dynamically definite entity? If it 

 is not, what hope is there for the methods of scien- 

 tific enquiry to make it so? In answer to these legit- 

 imate questions, we certainly can say that the soul 

 acts and reacts; but we cannot say that its actions and 

 reactions, like those of the electrical flux, can be ex- 

 pressed in terms of the Newtonian concepts of actions 

 and reactions. 



The following consideration, however. Is certainly 

 reasonable: If the soul does not act and react, how 

 does the beauty of the sunset appear In the world of 

 our consciousness; or how do the objective physical 

 realities revealed by science during the last four hun- 

 dred years, become subjective realities in our sensi- 

 tive selves? It would indeed be a very great achieve- 

 ment If we could reduce these psychic actions and re- 

 actions, the operators of the creative power of the 

 soul, to the simple laws of Newton's dynamics. But 

 why despair If we cannot. The actions and reactions 

 of an individual radiating atom have not yet been 

 reduced to that simplicity; but that fact does not shake 

 any one's faith In the radiating power of the atom. 

 Our faith in the creative power of the soul should be 

 at least as strong, for surely the world of conscious- 

 ness, the product of that creative power, Is at least as 

 real as atomic radiation. The existence of this crea- 

 tive power is the most fundamental human experience 



