I suppose the most sweeping charge will be that I have been talking what at the back of my mind I must know is only a well-meaning kind of nonsense. I can assure you that there is a scientific part of me that has often brought that criticism during some of the later chapters. I will not say that I have been half-convinced, but at least I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are more or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness. But however much I may have felt inclined to tear up this part of the discussion and confine myself to my proper profession of juggling with pointer readings, I find myself holding to the main principles. Starting from aether, electrons and other physical machinery we cannot reach conscious man and render count of what is apprehended in his consciousness. Conceivably we might reach a human machine interacting by reflexes with its environment; but we cannot reach rational man morally responsible to pursue the truth as to aether and electrons or to religion. Perhaps it may seem unnecessarily portentous to invoke the latest developments of the relativity and quantum theories merely to tell you this; but that is scarcely the point. We have followed these theories because they contain the conceptions of modern science; and it is not a question of asserting a faith that science must ultimately be reconcilable with an idealistic view, but of examining how at the moment it actually [Pg 344] stands in regard to it. I might sacrifice the detailed arguments of the last four chapters (perhaps marred by dialectic entanglement) if I could otherwise convey the significance of the recent change which has overtaken scientific ideals. The physicist now regards his own external world in a way which I can only describe as more mystical, though not less exact and practical, than that which prevailed some years ago, when it was taken for granted that nothing could be true unless an engineer could make a model of it. There was a time when the whole combination of self and environment which makes up experience seemed likely to pass under the dominion of a physics much more iron-bound than it is now. That overweening phase, when it was almost necessary to ask the permission of physics to call one’s soul one’s own, is past. The change gives rise to thoughts which ought to be developed. Even if we cannot attain to much clarity of constructive thought we can discern that certain assumptions, expectations or fears are no longer applicable. Is it merely a well-meaning kind of nonsense for a physicist to affirm this necessity for an outlook beyond physics? It is worse nonsense to deny it. Or as that ardent relativist the Red Queen puts it, “You call that nonsense, but I’ve heard nonsense compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary”.