2o6 Science Religion and Reality 



the scale through the external world ; they reach Mr. X's body, 

 which is also a part of the external world ; they cause disturbances 

 of the atoms and electromagnetic fields of his body as the impres- 

 sions travel along the nerves. Somewhere there is contact with 

 consciousness ; the mind receives an impression which induces it 

 to create the image of a scale in the external world far removed 

 from the place where the contact occurs. It is through this con- 

 tact that man is able to state that he " knows " certain of the 

 entities of the external world which are used as bricks in building 

 up the world of physics. 



But theoretical physics turns a blind eye on the track which 

 leads to consciousness. It would be loath to admit that its edifice 

 of an external world is " The House that Mr. X built." Mr. X 

 and his colleagues are set down as rather troublesome tenants who 

 have come at a late period of the world's history to inhabit the 

 house which inorganic nature has built. And so theoretical 

 physics turns aside from that opening and follows the cycle round 

 to the starting-point. 



We see the ingenious device of a cycle by which physics has 

 secured for itself a domain of study which is self-connected and 

 independent of the channel leading to the spiritual world of con- 

 sciousness. But I do not think we are disparaging the importance 

 of this domain if we doubt whether it can be held to constitute a 

 self-sufficient world in any reasonable sense of the term. Our 

 consciousness has presented to us for examination a number of 

 apparently disconnected entities, x\\&matter which we see and handle, 

 the stress which we feel in our muscles, the interval of time which 

 we appreciate in our consciousness of the flight of time. Physics 

 has examined what underlies these facts of consciousness, and has 

 shown how each depends on the other and is definable in terms of the 

 other, reducing all to a unity. That unity has taken hundreds 

 of years to discover and a very great part of the achievement of 

 physics is summed up in our cycle of definition. If a subsidiary 

 cycle relating to electromagnetic phenomena were added, practically 

 the whole of that part of theoretical physics which has been reduced 

 to exact order (the so-called field-physics) would be represented. 

 The chain of connection of the entities of the world is the province 

 of physics, but the intrinsic essence of those entities is now recog- 

 nised to lie outside its province. Micromegas, in Voltaire's fable, 

 promised the terrestrial philosophers " a rare book on philosophy. 



