Science and the Infinite - Sydney T. Klein (free e books to read online .txt) 📗

a Spirit, and therefore akin to the Great Spirit, not only in essence, but in "loving and knowing communion," then look at my last experiment, where we saw two material bodies (remember they are shadow manifestations of the Reality) which could influence each other from the fact that they were akin, not only in substance, but in perfect sympathetic communion.

If now we watch the shadows of two human beings thrown upon a wall, and see those shadows shaking hands and embracing each other, are we not justified in concluding that those images give us a true explanation of what is really taking place? and is not that exactly what I have done? have I not shown, as I proposed to do, that it is possible by examining the phenomena of Nature (the shadows of the Reality) to reach that point where we may even feel that we are listening to, or having divulged to us, some of what may be called the very thoughts of the Great Reality?

VIEW FIVE THE PHYSICAL FILM

We have seen in former Views that the whole Phenomenal Universe, as perceived by our senses, and all intellectual thoughts or concepts based on those perceptions, are, in reality, only mists or shadows; they have no existence apart from our physical senses, and may be likened to a thin film, which at death is pricked and passes away like a scroll, leaving us face to face with the Reality. We thus seemed to grasp that all phenomena, including our Physical Egos, are but the shadows or outline of the Reality, as depicted on our limited plane of consciousness; but these phenomena, having Motion for their basis, are none the less real to us under our present outlook, limited as it is by conditioning in Time and Space, and we have to deal with them as realities in our everyday life. I want to make this distinction clear in the present View.

Those of us who were youngsters in the 'sixties, and were fortunate enough to be taken to that land of wonders for children, the London Polytechnic, will remember seeing what were called Professor Pepper's Ghosts. By means of a large sheet of glass on the stage, the reflection of a human being (otherwise invisible), which we will call the "unreal," was, by the audience, seen walking alongside the people on the stage, and it was impossible to say which was the real and which the unreal. When the unreal was made to appear further back on the stage, it was apparently seen through the real figures and they appeared as ghosts, for they were seen to be transparent. If now we fix, perpendicularly on a table, a small pane of glass, and place, say, an orange in front and another orange behind it, we can arrange so that an observer, looking through the glass, sees two oranges alongside each other, one being the real and the other the unreal, and, with proper lighting and dark background, it is impossible to determine which is which, as they are both apparently real oranges. We will call the real, A, and the unreal, B; we now also introduce a human hand on both sides of the glass, and again we have apparently two real hands close to the oranges; if the real hand is now seen to try to touch the B orange, it passes through it, but it can take up the A; and the same result is seen when the unreal hand tries to grasp them, except that it can grasp the B but not the A; it is, in fact, only the unreal that can apprehend the unreal, and the real the real.

The above simile may help some of my readers to understand how the phenomena of Nature, though having no real existence apart from our senses, have the appearance of reality to us, because both we and the whole Phenomenal Universe are the unreal of our analogy, namely, the reflection or shadow of the Real on the physical plane. If we run against a stone wall, which is also part, with us, of the shadow, we hurt ourselves and acknowledge its existence, but to the Real it would not be an obstruction at all, it is not there. We know that this wall is not really solid, it is made up of Atoms revolving round each other but never touching, but the man in the street would give as the reason why it hurt, that it was dense, or what is called hard; if the wall were made of hay, or cotton wool, or of sunbeams, we should not suffer by running against it; in fact, the denser anything becomes, the more it shows its character of being real to our senses. If we take this as the true explanation for the Physical Universe, we are met with something quite beyond our powers of comprehension, when we try to form a conception of the all-pervading Ether; unless we may look upon it as actually a presentation of the Reality itself. If we wave our hand, we can feel the obstruction of the air, but we cannot feel the Ether. We think our earth very solid, and we know it is rushing round the sun at the enormous rate of 60,000 miles per hour, but it finds no obstruction in the Ether, there is no retardation of its velocity; and yet the study of Radio-Activity has quite lately shown us that that Ether is not only as dense as iron, or a hundred or a thousand times denser, but millions of times denser than that metal; and yet it permeates all matter like a sieve. In Sir Oliver Lodge's words, "the Ether is so dense that matter by comparison is like a gossamer or a filmy imperceptible mist." We can, therefore, by again using our "Ghost" analogy, understand why matter cannot obstruct the Ether, or vice versa; there is no perceivable friction between them, unless, as I shall presently suggest, we may find something akin to obstruction by Matter, not to Ether itself, but to its pressure, in the phenomenon of Gravitation.

The evidence we are gradually winning from Radio-Activity seems to be leading us to the conclusion that all forms of matter are but different motions or strains in the Ether (perhaps, as Lord Kelvin thought, in the form of vortices), that the different atoms of which matter is composed are, as suggested in View Three, apertures of different complexity of outline—namely, those points at which Ether is absent or its density attenuated. Have we not apparently here another example of Positive and Negative, the Invisible the Ether, as the Real, and the Visible, the Material Universe, as its Negative the Unreal, similar to our list of Positives and Negatives in View One? Ether itself cannot be explained by any of the known dynamical laws, though it is probably the very root and cause of all of them; it is absolutely beyond our plane of perception or conception. We can only perceive certain effects of its presence when it comes into our limited world of consciousness, under the aspects of Time and Space—namely, in its movements, which we classify as forms of matter and modes of energy.

It is only lately that we have been able to see clearly that the effects known to us as Light, Heat, Electricity, and Magnetism are caused by pulsations or rills of different rapidity in the Ether (this will be referred to in a later View); it is also probably the cause of what we call Gravitation, and we shall see that the action of Gravitation may, after all, be not in the direction of a pull but must be looked upon as a pushing force. Gravitation is common to all matter; in common language, every particle attracts every other particle with a force directly proportional to its mass, and inversely to the square of its distance; it is a very weak force compared with others we know, and difficult to measure except when a large mass of matter is involved. Perhaps this will be clearer, and not far from the truth, if I say that the force of Gravitation exerted between two masses of matter compared with that which we find acting between the constituents of matter—namely, in chemical affinity, is comparable to the difference existing between the density of matter and the density of Ether.

The latest calculation of the pressure of the Ether is almost inconceivable—namely, about 25,000 tons on the square inch, or 3,600,000 tons on the square foot; it may well therefore be that, in the degree of permeability of matter by the Ether, when we can calculate it, will be found the explanation of what we call Gravitation between two masses; they are each shielding the other from Ether pressure, in its own direction, with an obstructive force equal to its mass. The reason why the earth appears to attract us, is that it is shielding us from a certain amount of pressure in its direction; and we know that we are also apparently attracting every particle of the earth with a force proportionate to our mass, because we are, however slightly, shielding the earth from pressure in our direction; if this is the true explanation, Gravitation is a phenomenon of the Ether; it will be seen to be a movement of matter in the line of least pressure, and is therefore a push and not a pull.

Let us now come down to what we understand better concerning the subject of this View.

The question, "What is Truth?" "What is the Reality?" goes to the very root of the Riddle of the Universe. We are all trying in one direction or another to answer this question. As knowledge increases, old theories become untenable and have to be discarded, and, in their place, fresh ones are formulated to account for new phases of phenomena. There seems a general impression, among even thinking people, that scientists are wedded to, and always trying to find proofs for, their last theories, but this is not the case. The endeavour of the true seeker after truth is not so much to discover fresh facts which coincide with existing theories, as to find phenomena which cannot be explained thereby; there is indeed more joy over one fact which does not agree with preconceived theory, than over ninety-nine facts which are found to fall under that heading. In our everyday life we have become so accustomed to take for granted that what we see, hear, or feel by touch must be real, that it is difficult for the man in the street to realise that our senses woefully deceive us; that perception without knowledge often leads us astray into false concepts, and these false concepts lead us into difficulties which require fresh concepts to be formed, and these again demand further and more exact knowledge to be applied to perceived phenomena. This necessity for overcoming difficulties is the greatest incentive we have for gaining fresh knowledge of our surroundings. Owing to the fact, as already pointed out, that our sense perceptions are based upon the appreciation of change or motion, and must therefore be limited in Time and Space, and that the trueness of our conceptions of the Reality is dependent upon the knowledge which can be brought to bear upon those perceptions, we are forced to postulate two aspects of the Universe; one of these is what may be called the Visible, Finite, or Physical, which indeed carries the appearance of Reality to our limited senses, though it has no real existence for us apart from those senses, and the other is that which transcends our utmost conception, which we call the Invisible, the Infinite, or Spiritual.

At the outset of all