200 Science Religion and Reality 



considerations indicate the limits to the sphere of exact science. 

 We have said that knowledge of the elephant must consist in know- 

 ledge of the response of the various objects of the world to its 

 presence ; but this response cannot always be reduced to a pointer- 

 reading or such-like indicator, and the corresponding knowledge 

 is then automatically excluded from exact science. For example, 

 the affection inspired by the elephant in its mahout is one response 

 of the outside world to its presence. A spiritual phenomenon, no 

 doubt, and yet it has the aspects of a physical force, since it causes 

 material objects — sweetmeats — to move in a direction that they 

 otherwise would not have taken. This phenomenon is excluded 

 from exact science not because of any antithesis of nature between 

 the spiritual and the material, but because there is no pointer- 

 reading that can stand for the " likeableness " of the elephant in 

 the way that the reading of the weighing-machine can stand for 

 its " ponderosity." 



I venture to say that the division of the external world into a 

 material world and a spiritual world is superficial, and that the deep 

 line of cleavage is between the metrical and the non-metrical 

 aspects of the world. 



We may doubt whether there is any branch of knowledge from 

 which exact science is entirely excluded. The modern psycholo- 

 gist is continually devising appliances by which he can read off on a 

 pointer the various differences in our intellectual make-up. In 

 this way he penetrates into the nature of the human mind just as 

 much (or as little) as the physicist penetrates into the nature of the 

 material world. It may be objected that the psychologist is not 

 dealing with the mind but with the material apparatus of brain and 

 nervous system. The distinction seems an idle one. His pointer- 

 readings are symptoms of the activities and limitations of the mind, 

 and they are also perhaps symptoms of material constitution of the 

 brain and nervous system ; the derived knowledge hears upon both, 

 but it is actually knowledge of pointer-readings. In the same way 

 the physicist's knowledge bears upon the nature of matter and 

 ether, but it is a knowledge of pointer-readings. 



Even as there is no branch of knowledge from which exact 

 science is wholly excluded, so it would seem that there is no branch 

 which exact science wholly covers. There is, however, one ex- 

 ception. The devotee of the physical laboratory or the observatory 

 spends his whole energy in making pointer-readings. Every 



