as highest. So, also, with our longings and aspirations
towards ultimate perfection, those desires which we recognise as our
noblest and best: surely they must have some correspondence with the
facts of existence, else had they been unattainable by us. Reality is
not to be surpassed, except locally and temporarily, by the ideals of
knowledge and goodness invented by a fraction of itself; and if we
could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to

"shatter it to bits and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire,"

we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random
imaginings. The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it
has a reality apart from them; nevertheless, they themselves constitute
a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character in so
far as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can
clearly and consistently conceive, that is _ipso facto_ in a sense
already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something
better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality.

* * * * *

EXPLANATORY NOTE ON CONSTRUCTIVE THOUGHT AND OPTIMISM.

(_Partly reprinted from "Mind."_)

It may be worth while to explain how it is that, to a physicist
unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which
is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond,
or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience
of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. For
instance, it can be shown that in an electric field, however
complicated, any distribution of potential which satisfies boundary
conditions, and one or two other essential criteria, must be the actual
distribution; for it has been rigorously proved that there cannot be
two or more distributions which satisfy those conditions, hence if one
is arrived at theoretically, or intuitively, or by any means, it must
be the correct one; and no further proof is required.

So, also, in connection with analogies and working models: although
they must necessarily be imperfect, so long as they are only analogies,
yet the making or imagining of models (not necessarily or usually a
material model, but a conceptual model) is a recognised way of arriving
at an understanding of recondite and ultra-sensual processes, occurring
say in the ether or elsewhere. As an additio