TIME 131 



are going in a certain direction or coming back on our steps. 

 There is nothing similar in time. Time is the very condition 

 of the existence of the three directions of space, which, we 

 repeat, begin to exist for us only from the moment we see 

 them. If we cover a distance in a certain direction, stop and 

 then come back on our footsteps, we have in all evidence 

 evolved in time. But time, which is concreted by the succes- 

 sion of our states of consciousness, cannot distinguish between 

 the different directions which we have taken. We say that it 

 has been simply unrolled, and we mean by this that we have 

 lasted. It is therefore absurd to try to compare time and 

 space, for space has no significance for us outside of time. It is 

 as absurd as trying to compare the wavelength 0-589 [j. to 

 yellow light. The colour or impression which we translate 

 by the word 'yellow' and which has a very definite meaning 

 for us, exists only if an electromagnetic radiation of a wave- 

 length equal to 0-589 [i. is intercepted on its path by a human 

 eye. The same is true of a rainbow, so clearly seen and which 

 we carry with us in the rain. In reality it exists, as we see it, 

 only at the back of our eye. We carry our time with us, and 

 it is through its intermediary that we construct universe and 

 space. A traveller in time, in a remarkable story by H. G. 

 Wells says: 'There is no difference between Time and any of 

 the three dimensions of Space, except that our consciousness 

 moves along it.' (The Time Machine.) In citing this phrase 

 Silberstein,^ one of the first commentators on the theory of 

 relativity, stated that Wells had thus marvellously anticipated 

 this theory. 



The preceding lines have been written with the aim of 

 preparing the reader to accept the modern conception 

 deduced by Minkowski from the first works of Einstein. This 

 concept is based on altogether different reasoning, but also re- 

 sults in the intimate fusion of time and space. It is admitted that 

 matter is electric in its structure, so that all physical and chem- 

 ical phenomena are, in the last resort, electrical phenomena. 

 Minkowski demonstrated that the theory of relativity requires 



^ Silberstein, The Theory of Relativity. London, 1914, p. 134. 



