HORIZON LINES 



study. We should be in a position opposite to that 

 which we should occupy at the North Pole. That 

 every point on the surface of a cosmic sphere should 

 be on top, or rather that there should be no top, and 

 no bottom; that these concepts should be abolished; 

 that if two inhabited globes should come in collision, 

 each would seem to the people upon the other to 

 be falling down out of the heavens upon them; that 

 out in sidereal space not even the Huns could drop 

 bombs, or send up balloons, because there would be 

 no up and no down — when we grasp these facts, I 

 say, we are at the end of our tether; we not only do 

 not know "where we are at," but we find there is no 

 "at." Our minds can deal with the cosmos only in 

 an abstract or mathematical way. As a concrete 

 fact even our little earth is too much for us. Not 

 merely too big, it contradicts all our experience. If 

 we could build a sphere a mile through, or ten miles 

 or a hundred miles, or ten thousand miles through, 

 could we stand upon it at the South Pole? When we 

 think of the daily revolutions of the earth upon its 

 axis, we are compelled to think of it as turning over, 

 because it brings the sun above us by day and be- 

 neath us by night, and hence the puzzle to the un- 

 lettered mind as to why the lakes and ponds do not 

 all spill out. 



Among the heavenly bodies other laws prevail; 

 there is motion without friction or dissipation of 

 energy; there is no body at rest; there is no motion 



231 



