202 Science Religion and Reality 



has to deal with a number of entities called subscribers. The 

 subscriber is an entity with various aspects ; he is (i) a number, 

 (2) a plug-hole, (3) a voice, and even (4) a human being. In the 

 first and second aspects (which are the aspects with which the 

 operator is most concerned), subscriber No. 1357 may be dissected 

 into digits, i, 3, 5, 7, or into board i, section 3, row 5, column 7. 

 This dissection is of importance in explaining some of the mysterious 

 properties of subscribers — for example, why Lady Blank, No. 1 357, 

 is so often confused with the chimney-sweep. No. 1397, a pheno- 

 menon not explicable by reference to the undissected aspects of 

 these subscribers. Again, it explains why on one occasion the 

 voices for which the first digit is 2 all became silent simultaneously. 

 The telephone operator might well get into the habit of thinking 

 that subscribers were entities composed of four constituents, 

 because this analysis is true of the aspects which he studies ; but 

 we cannot analyse a human being into four parts corresponding 

 to the digits of his telephone number. 



The problem on which we may hope to attain some light is 

 that perplexing dualism of spirit and matter which always confronts 

 us when we try to get to the bottom of things. I will state the 

 problem quite crudely in the way it first seems to present itself. 

 The spiritual phenomenon of consciousness is the one thing of 

 which our knowledge is immediate and unchallengeable. It 

 seems to be the most undoubtedly real thing we are aware of. " I 

 think, therefore I am." But physics in alliance with common sense 

 brings before us a different kind of reality — a world of matter and 

 electricity, space and motion, which seems to us even more real 

 because it is so clear cuf, accurately describable, governed by precise 

 and unfailing laws. Physics does not endorse the beliefs of common 

 sense without some reservations ; it teaches us that our knowledge 

 of this world of matter is indirect and comes to us through very 

 complex channels — is, for example, borne to us from a distance by 

 light-waves and then by some kind of disturbance of the material 

 of the nerves to the brain. The existence of the material world 

 around us is not direct knowledge but common inference ; how- 

 ever, science approves the inference in its main essentials. In this 

 material reality the first reality (consciousness) seems to have no 

 place of its own ; at the most, its existence is grudgingly admitted 

 — z. very late arrival after aeons of consciousless past, and occur- 

 ring only in specks in those strangely complicated mechanical 



