14 Science Religion and Reality 



particular scientific ideal. They are persuaded that if only we 

 had the right kind of knowledge and adequate powers of calcula- 

 tion, we should be able to explain the whole contents of possible 

 experience by applying mathematical methods to certain simple 

 data. They refuse to believe that this calculable " Whole " can 

 suffer interference at the hands of any incalculable power. They 

 find no room in the close-knit tissue of the world process, as they 

 conceive it, for any arbitrary element to find lodgment. They 

 have a clear notion of what science ought to be, and that notion 

 is incompatible with the " miraculous." 



XI 



Now it is certainly true that, so far as Nature is concerned, 

 the idea of a calculable " whole " is one which makes a most 

 powerful appeal to most of us. And it is also true that remote as 

 we are from its attainment, the science of our own day has made, 

 and is making, marvellous advances towards it. We now know 

 that the units of which the material universe is built are of only 

 two kinds, and strictly conform to one or other of two patterns. 

 We know approximately their size and their mass. We know a 

 good deal about their motions and their powers of radiation. We 

 know that they repel members of their own class and attract 

 members of the other ; we know that they constitute the essence 

 of all that interests the physicist, the astronomer, the chemist ; of 

 all the objects which are valued for their beauty ; of all the 

 physiological devices through which organic life becomes possible, 

 and mind becomes cognisant of matter. In spite of our almost 

 limitless ignorance of details, in spite of the unbridged chasms 

 which still divide one branch of scientific knowledge from another, 

 these discoveries do certainly dangle before our eyes with a new 

 brilliancy, the idea of a cosmic flow of calculable events depending 

 on measurable conditions, and (in theory at least) amenable to 

 mathematical treatment. 



xu 



The conception of a material universe, overwhelming in its 

 complexity and its splendour, yet potentially susceptible of com- 

 plete explanation by the actions and reactions of two very minute 



