In general, we cannot admit for a minute that a statistical method, unless used to smooth out irrelevant details, can ever mark more than a temporary stage in our progress, because the assumption of events taking place according to pure chance constitutes the complete negation of our fundamental assumption of connectivity; such statistical methods always indicate the presence of physical complications which it must be our aim to disentangle eventually. It appears then that present experimental evidence makes very probable structures beyond the electron and the quantum; we may go even further and say that there is no experimental evidence that the sequence of phenomena in nature as we go to ever smaller scales is a terminated sequence, or that a drop of water is not in itself essentially infinite. (This statement contains by implications the meaning that we attach to infinite.) All the more, then, there is no evidence that nature reduces to _simplicity_ as we burrow down into the small scale. Whatever may be one's opinion as to the simplicity of either the laws or the material structure of nature, there can be no question that the possessors of some such conviction have a real advantage in the race for physical discovery. Doubtless there are many simple connections still to be discovered, and he who has a strong conviction of the existence of these connections is much more likely to find them than he who is not at all sure they are there, and is merely hunting for anything that may turn up. It is largely a matter of psychology. Everyone knows that the mere suggestion that a problem has a solution, or the knowledge that someone has already solved it, is often sufficient to suggest a relation that otherwise might not have been noticed. The chances are, therefore, that the relations between phenomena will be found by those who are previously convinced that the relations exist. The observation that most of the discoveries are made by men with particular sorts of conviction naturally strengthens the belief that their convictions are true. But this picture has an obverse side. The man who is convinced that there is a relation where none exists may waste all his time in vain seeking for it. Granted that nature has no particular predisposition to simple relations, the conviction that there are such relations is, from the point of view of any one individual, as likely to be a hindrance as a help. From the point of view of physical society, on the other hand, it is desirable that there be such convictions, for in such a society there will be more discoveries than in a society without such convictions. We have here again the old conflict between the individual and society. As in all other similar conflicts, society will not be able to demand permanently from the individual the acceptance of any conviction or creed which is not true, no matter what the gain in other ways to society. If nature is not simple, physicists will not continue to