The reason is that in using our creative power of Thought we do not operate directly upon material elements--to do that is the work of construction from without and not of creation from within.

The whole tendency of modern physical science is to reduce all matter in the final analysis to energy working in a primary ether.

Whence this energy and this ether proceed is not the subject of physical analysis.

That is a question which cannot be answered by means of the vacuum tube or the spectroscope.

Physical science is doing its legitimate work in pushing further and further back the unanalyzable residuum of Nature, but, however far back, an ultimate unanalyzable residuum there must always be; and when physical science brings us to this point it hands us over to the guidance of psychological investigation just as in the Divina Commedia Virgil transfers Dante to the guidance of Beatrice for the study of the higher realms.