Page:Eddington A. Space Time and Gravitation. 1920.djvu/216

200 connivance with mind in singling out matter for special distinction. Action is generally regarded as the most fundamental thing in the real world of physics, although the mind passes it over because of its lack of permanence; and it is vaguely believed that the atomicity of action is the general law, and the appearance of electrons is in some way dependent on this. But the precise formulation of the theory of quanta of action has hitherto baffled physicists.

There is a striking contrast between the triumph of the scientific mind in formulating the great general scheme of natural laws, nowadays summed up in the principle of least action, and its present defeat by the newly discovered but equally general phenomena depending on the laws of atomicity of quanta. It is too early to cry failure in the latter case; but possibly the contrast is significant. It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has had no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them. This is, however, only a remote possibility; probably if they were really irrational it would not have been possible to make the limited progress that has been achieved. But if the law of quanta do indeed differentiate the actual world from other worlds possible to the mind, we may expect the task of formulating them to be far harder than anything yet accomplished by physics.

The theory of relativity has passed in review the whole subject-matter of physics. It has unified the great laws, which by the precision of their formulation and the exactness of their application have won the proud place in human knowledge which physical science holds to-day. And yet, in regard to the nature of things, this knowledge is only an empty shell—a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest,