Now, apart from the final clause, a plain man might suggest that the argument, so relieved of the obscurantism of metaphysical jargon, is more true than original--true to the point of insipidity. As for the conclusion, no doubt, so left in its native jargon, it comes with the shock of originality; but has it sense? Will any man admit that the God whom he worships and to whom he prays--and without worship and prayer the use of the word “God” is a pure solecism--is no more than the “principle of concretion” in the universe? Has such a definition any bearing on religion as the “longing for justification”? Is it anything more than a phantom of abstract science surreptitiously substituted for the object of faith? The fact is that between the last clause of the argument and what precedes there is a sheer hiatus. It is the age-old fallacy of metaphysics: you take a word used in ordinary speech (“God”) with a perfectly clear connotation; you define the word in a manner to suit your convenience (“the principle of concretion”); you prove that there is something in the nature of things corresponding to your definition, and then casually assume that your proof holds good of the word in its popular sense. It is the oft-repeated adventure of the Absolute: you wrap a common-place up in abstract terminology, and then in that fog of language you find yourself precipitated into an abyss of nonsense (that the “longing for justification” is satisfied by belief in “the inherent nature of all being”).[24] But this is by the way. Our present topic is rather Mr. Whitehead’s philosophy of science, which is his real concern, and in which the terms “God” and “religion” are manifestly unwarranted intrusions. Here, again, to the student of contemporary thought Mr. Whitehead’s _Science and the Modern World_ must be in many ways a welcome book. His comments on the connexion between the poets and the physical theories of their day are illuminating and bring to the subject a knowledge not often found in the literary critic. And I for one am much beholden to him for his treatment of the ghastly relic of materialism bequeathed to us by our fathers--I would almost say his indecent burial of it, were the epithet indecent applicable to the disposal of a corpse which has remained too long above ground. And very cleverly he directs his attack to the two points where the mechanistic philosophy is most vulnerable--its apparent simplicity and its presumptive regard of facts.