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

curious facts connected with the sensation of Motion are brought to light by means of this increase in perceptive power. If the sense of sight is increased to 125 units per second, motion at the rate of one inch per second is barely visible; taking the common house-fly, whose wings vibrate about 400 times per second, its units of perception would appear to be about two-thirds of those beats, as I found it had no cognisance of Motion below two inches per second; you can put your finger on any fly provided you do not approach it faster than the above rate, it turns its head up to look at your finger but can see no motion in it; if you approach at over three inches per second it will always fly away before you are within a foot. I found that a dragon-fly, whose wings vibrate about 200 times per second, had only half the number of unit perceptions of the fly and could apparently see motion at about one inch per second but not under. In the converse of the above we have then the principle of a Microscope for Time, somewhat similar to the Microscope for Space of our laboratories. If our perception were increased sufficiently we could slow down any motion for examination, however rapid; there would be no difficulty in following a lightning flash or even arresting its visible motion for purposes of investigation without interfering with the natural sequence of cause and effect.

If, on the other hand, our perception were decreased below six times per second, all motion would be accelerated, until with perception reduced to one unit in twenty-four hours the sun would appear only as a band across the sky, and we could not follow its motion any more than, as we have seen, we could follow the point of a red-hot match. If perception were reduced far enough, plants and trees would grow up visibly before our eyes. But we must leave this subject now, as this and the Time Microscope will be treated in a later View.

Let us try and appreciate the fact that, under our present conditions, our conceptions of the immense and minute—namely, extension in Space, and that of quick and slow or duration in Time—are purely relative, and that from this arise those pseudo-conceptions which we call the infinitely extended and the infinitely lasting. Under our present limitations it is impossible for us to grasp the whole of any Truth, if we could do that, there would be no such mystery of Infinity to puzzle us; we could, as it were, see all around it, but that is again looking through another window. We are now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly visible to the naked eye, and yet we know that that small speck contains not only millions but millions of millions of what are called atoms, all in intense motion and never touching each other. Try and conceive how small each of these atoms must be, and then try and grasp the fact, only lately proved by the discovery of Radio-activity, that each of these atoms is a great family made up of bodies analogous to the planets of our solar system and whose rate of motion is comparable only to that of Light. This is not theory, it is fact clearly demonstrated to us by the study of Radio-activity. Curiously enough, we know more about these bodies than we do of the atom itself; we actually know their size and weight and the speed with which they move. We do not yet know what is at the centre of this system, but we do know that each of these bodies is as far away from the centre as our planet is from the sun (93,000,000 miles), and as far from its neighbours as our planet is, relatively to its size. And now, for the purpose of grasping this subject of relativity, I want you to ask yourself whether it is conceivable that a world, so small as those bodies are, could possibly be inhabited by sentient beings. Leaving you to form your own conclusion upon this point, I will ask you to follow me down another path leading to the elucidation of the same subject.

If at this moment we and all our surroundings were reduced to half their size and everything were moving twice as quickly, we should absolutely have no cognisance of any change, neither could we possibly note any difference if everything were reduced to a hundredth part of the original size and were going a hundred times quicker; and even when reduced a thousand or a million times, or to such minuteness that the whole of our solar system with its revolving planets became no larger than one of those atoms in the needle point, and the whole of the starry universe therefore reduced to the size of the needle point, its millions of suns coinciding with the millions of planetary systems in that steel particle—our earth would still revolve round the sun, though no larger than one of those minute planetary particles and travelling at the rate of light, but we should still have no knowledge of any change, in fact, our life would go on as usual, though it was difficult a few minutes ago to think it conceivable that so small a globe could be inhabited by sentient beings.

Once more let us consider that the change is made in the direction of expansion in space and slowing down of Time; let all our surroundings be so enormously increased that each of the atoms in the steel point became as large as our solar system and the steel point as large as the visible universe, each atom therefore taking the place of a star, and motion being reduced in proportion; it is still absolutely inconceivable that we could know of any change having taken place, though the length of our needle, which was at first, say, one inch, would now be so great that light, travelling 186,000 miles per second, would take 500,000 years to traverse its length, and the stature of each one of us would be so great that light would require over 36,000,000 years to travel from head to foot, and that 36,000,000 years would have to be multiplied 163,000,000 times, making 5860 millions of millions of years to represent the time that an ordinary sneeze would take under such conditions. And yet we have only gone towards the infinitely great exactly as far as we at first went towards the infinitely small, and it is still absolutely inconceivable that we could be conscious of any change, our everyday life would go on as usual, we should be quite oblivious to the fact that every second of time, with all its incidents and thoughts, had been lengthened to 5860 millions of millions of years. Do we not now begin to grasp the fact that immensity and minuteness in extension, and motion in duration, are figments only of our finite minds, that Time and Space have no objective reality apart from our physical senses, that they are only the modes under which we receive impressions of our surroundings? With perfect perception we should know that the only Reality is the Spiritual, the Here comprising all Space and the Now all Time.

One more look through the window before we part, and we may see what I consider the greatest miracle in our everyday life: The Inner-self of each one of us, being part of the Reality or Spiritual, is independent of Space limitations and must therefore be Omnipresent, is independent of Time and therefore Omniscient. This inevitable deduction will be explained more fully in another View.

It is from this store of knowledge that our Physical Ego is ever trying to win fresh forms of thought, and, in response to our persistent endeavours, that Inner-self, from time to time, buds out a new thought; the Physical Ego has already prepared the clothing with which that bud must be clad before it can come into conscious thought, because, as Max Müller has shown us, we have to form words before we can think; so does the Physical Ego clothe that ethereal thought in physical language, and by means of its organ of speech it sends that thought forth into the air in the form of hundreds of thousands of vibrations of different shapes and sizes, some large, some small, some quick, some slow, travelling in all directions and filling the surrounding space; there is nothing in those vibrations but physical movement, but each separate movement is an integral part or thread of that clothing. Another Physical Ego receives these multitudinous vibrations by means of its sense organ, weaves them together into the same physical garment, and actually becomes possessed of that ethereal thought—an unexplained marvel, and probably the most wonderful occurrence in our daily existence, especially as it often enables the second Physical Ego to gain fresh knowledge from its own Real Personality. Now, in connection with this, consider the fact, already emphasized, that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature, but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to make itself known to us by bombarding our sense organs with the particular physical impulses to which those organs can respond, and, if we aspire to gain a knowledge of what is behind the physical, it is clear that all our endeavours must be towards weaving these impulses into garments and then learning from them the sublime Truths which the Reality is ever trying to divulge to us.

VIEW TWO THE VISION

"Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven," is in true consonance with the old philosophic dictum that "Everything in heaven must have its counterpart on earth"; in other words, the Reality has all Its multitudinous manifestations, every noumenon its phenomenon, in the physical universe. If we now examine those traits of our surroundings which affect us most, and best help us to reach the highest level of abstract thought of which our nature is capable, we find that it is the recognition of the Beauty (comprising also the Good and the True) in everything, which constitutes the power held over our minds by what we may call the Glamour of Symbolism, the Rapture of Music, and the Ideal of Art. But this influence is still only sensuous, it does not carry us beyond the extension of that Wonderment and Enchantment which had their birth with our first visit to Fairyland. This is, I think, evident, as Beauty is not the Reality; it is only what may be called the sensuous expression of the Reality or Spiritual on the physical plane. Although we have no words to express, nor indeed minds to grasp, the wonders and glories of that which is behind the Veil, it is possible for some of us to get a glimpse of it through our Window, and to those the following pages may be helpful, but to others the Wall will remain blank; and, here at the commencement, I should like to warn those who have not been through a certain experience, to which I shall refer, that no words of mine will open the Window for them; at the same time it is probable that many of my readers, who think at this stage that they have no knowledge of the subject of this View, will, as we proceed, recognise in the view through the Window something they have experienced more than once in their lifetime, and to these I address myself.

Let us first try to understand what we know