158 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



faculty. The farthest star and the page of this book are 

 both for us merely groups of sense-impressions, and the 

 space which separates them is not in them, but is our 

 mode of perceiving them. 



There is a cheap and, unfortunately, common form 

 of emotional science which revels in contrasting the 

 " infinities of space " with the " finite capacities of man." 

 As instructive samples of this we may take the following 

 passages from a well-known man of science writing on 

 astronomy for the people : — 



" Can it be true that these countless orbs are really 

 majestic suns, sunk to an appalling depth in the abyss of 

 unfathomable space ? " 



" Yet, after all, how little is all we can see even with 

 our greatest telescopes, when compared with the whole 

 extent of infinite space ! No matter how vast may be 

 the depth which our instruments have sounded, there is 

 yet a beyond of infinite extent. Imagine a mighty globe 

 described in space, a globe of such stupendous dimensions 

 that it shall include the sun and his system, all the stars 

 and nebula, and even all the objects which our finite 

 capacities can imagine. Yet, after all, what must be the 

 relation of even this great globe to the whole extent of 

 infinite space ? The globe will bear to that a ratio in- 

 finitely less than that which the water in a single drop of 

 dew bears to the water in the whole Atlantic Ocean." ^ 



To speak of the mode in which we perceive coexisting 

 phenomena as an abyss of appalling depth is perhaps 

 rather meaningless phraseology ; but the statement that 

 infinite space contains more than our finite capacity can 

 imagine is hopelessly misleading. In the first place, the 

 space of our perceptions, the space in which we discri- 

 minate phenomena, is not infinite : it is exactly commen- 

 surate with the contents of that finite capacity we term 

 our perceptive faculty. In the second place, if by " all 

 the objects which our finite capacities can imagine " the 

 author means conceptions and not perceptions, he is 

 confusing two different things — space, as the order of real 



^ Sir Robert Ball's St07y of the Heavetis, pp. 2 and 538. 



