ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



which the intellect reveals, the unthinkable myster- 

 ies that surround us, the heavens over us, the earth 

 under us always — the relativity of all things — 

 thus does thought set us adrift on a shoreless sea. 



VIII. SENSE CONTRADICTIONS 



Bergson says that we are in trouble the moment 

 we think of a creator and a thing created; in other 

 words, the moment we apply to the universe as a 

 whole the concepts which our practical lives yield 

 us. The only alternative I see is to think of the uni- 

 verse as uncreated, which, I confess, does not make 

 the problem much easier. I try to help myself out by 

 saying that our concepts are formed in a world 

 in which we deal with parts and fragments, lines 

 and angles on the surface of a sphere, and not with 

 the sphere as a whole. Our senses do not reveal 

 the earth to us as a globe, but as a boundless plain 

 with no under side; we find no limits, and if we con- 

 tinue our search long enough, we come back to the 

 place from which we set out, but from the opposite 

 direction. 



When we try to think in terms of spheres and 

 solar systems, our everyday concepts avail us very 

 little; in fact, they set us down wrong-end up. We 

 look at the moon or the sun and we say, Surely if we 

 were at the South Pole of either of these bodies, we 

 should be as truly on the under side of it as the fly is 

 when it alights at the South Pole of the globe in our 



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