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the result that the void space which had been the principal element
of it diminished in importance. Space appeared to be ablaze, yet the
radiant points were not confused, and I thereupon completed my
sentence with the exclamation: 'But *what* Twinkles!'
20. The next stage of this vision led to an identification of
the blazing points with the stars of the firmament, with ideas,
souls, etc. I perceived also that each star was connected by a ray
of light with each other star. In the world of ideas, each thought
possessed a necessary relation with each other thought; each such
relation is of course a thought¸ in itself; each such ray is itself a
star. It is here that logical difficulty first presents itself. The
seer has a direct perception of infinite series. Logically, there-
fore, it would appear as if the entire space must be filled up with a
homogeneous blaze of light. This is not, however, the case. The
space is completely full, yet the monads which fill it are perfectly
distinct. The ordinary reader might well exclaim that such state-
ments exhibit symptoms of mental confusion. The subject demands more
than cursory examination. I can do no more than refer the critic to
Bertrand Russell's 'Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy', where
the above position is thoroughly justified, as also certain positions
which follow.
I want you to note in particular the astonishing final identifi-
cation of this cosmic experience with the nervous system as described
by the anatomist.
21. At this point we may well be led to consider once more what
we call the objective universe, and what we call our subjectiveÜ
experience. What is Nature? Immanuel Kant, who founded an epoch-
making system of subjective idealism, is perhaps the first philoso-
pher to demonstrate clearly that space, time, causality (in short,
all conditions of existence) are really no more than conditions of
thought. I have tried to put it more simply by defining all possible
predicates as so many dimensions. To describe an object properly it
is not sufficient to determine its position in the space-time con-
tinuum of four dimensions, but we must enquire how it stands in all
the categories and scales, its values in all 'kinds' of possibility.
What do we know about it in respect of its greenness, its hardness,
its mobility, and so on? And then we find out that what we imagine
to be the description of the object is in reality nothing of the
sort.
22. All that we recorded is the behaviour of our instruments.
What did our telescopes, spectroscopes, and balances tell us? And
these again are dependent upon the behaviour of our senses; forÚ the
reality of our instruments, of our organs of sense, is just as much
in need of description and demonstration as are the most remote
phenomena. And we find ourselves forced to the conclusion that
anything we perceive is only perceived by us as such 'because of our
tendency so to perceive it.' And we shall find that in the fourth
stage of the great Buddhist practice, Mahasatipatthana, we become
directly and immediately aware of this fact instead of digging it out
of the holts of these interminable sorites which badger us! Kant
himself put it, after his fashion: 'The laws of nature are the laws
of our own minds.' Why? It is not the contents of the mind itself
that we can cognise, but only its structure. But Kant has not gone
to this length. He would have been extremely shocked if it had ever
struck him that the final term in his sorites was 'Reason itself is
the only reality.' On further examination, even this ultimate truth
turns out to be meaningless. It is like the well known circular
defiËnition of an obscene book, which is: one that arouses certain
ideas in the mind of the kind of person in whom such ideas are
excited by that kind of book.
23. I notice that my excellent chairman is endeavouring to
stifle a yawn and to convert it into a smile, and he will forgive me
for saying that I find the effect somewhat sinister. But he has
every right to be supercilious about it. These are indeed 'old, fond
paradoxes to amuse wives in ale-houses.' Since philosophy began, it
has always been a favourite game to prove your axioms absurd.
You will all naturally be very annoyed with me for indulging in
these fatuous pastimes, especially as I started out with a pledge
that I would deal with these subjcts from the hard-headed scientific
point of view. Forgive me if I have toyed with these shining gos-
samers of the thought-web! I have only been trying to break it to
you gently. I proceed to brush away with a sweep of my lily-white
hand all this tenuous, filmy stuff, 'such stuff aØs dreams are made
of.' We will get down to modern science.
24. For general reading there is no better introduction than
'The Bases of Modern Science', by my old and valued friend the late
J. W. N. Sullivan. I do not want to detain you too long with quota-
tions from this admirable book. I would much rather you got it and
read it yourself; you could hardly make better use of your time. But
let us spend a few moments on his remarks about the question of
geometry.
Our conceptions of space as a subjective entity has been com-
pletely upset by the discovery that the equations of Newton based on
Euclidean Geometry are inadequate to explain the phenomena of gravi-
tation. It is instinctive to us to think of a straight line; it is
somehow axiomatic. But we learn that this does not exist in the
objective universe. We have to use another geometry, Riemann's
Geometry, which is one of the curved geometries. (There are, of
course, as many systems of geometry as there are absurd axioms to
build them on. ThÁree lines make one ellipse: any nonsense you like:
you can proceed to construct a geometry which is correct so long as
it is coherent. And there is nothing right or wrong about the
result: the only question is: which is the most convenient system
for the purpose of describing phenomena? We found the idea of
Gravitation awkward: we went to Riemann.)
This means that the phenomena are not taking place against a
background of a flat surface; the surface itself is curved. What we
have thought of as a straight line does not exist at all. And this
is almost impossible to conceive; at least it is quite impossible for
myself to visualise. The nearest one gets to it is by trying to
imagine that you are a reflection on a polished door-knob.
25. I feel almost ashamed of the world that I have to tell you
that in the year 1900, four years before the appearance of Einstein's
world-shaking paper, I described space as 'finite yet boundless,'
which is exactly the description in general terms that he gave in
more mathematical detail.(*) You will see at once that these three
words do describe a curved geometry; a sphere, for instance, is a
finite object, yet you can go over the surface in any direction
without ever coming to an end.
I said above that Riemann's Geometry was not quite sufficient to
explain the phenomena of nature. We have to postulate different
kinds of curvature in different parts of the continuum. And even
then we are not happy!
26. Now for a spot of Sullivan! 'The geometry is so general
that it admits of different degrees of curvature in different parts
of space-time. It is to this curvature that gravitational effects
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