138 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



The prima facie difficulties in the way of this view are 

 chiefly derived from an unduly conventional theory of 

 space. It might seem at first sight as if we had packed the 

 world much fuller than it could possibly hold. At every 

 place between us and the sun, we said, there is to be a 

 particular which is to be a member of the sun as it was a 

 few minutes ago. There will also, of course, have to be a 

 particular which is a member of any planet or fixed star 

 that may happen to be visible from that place. At the 

 place where I am, there will be particulars which will be 

 members severally of all the &quot; things &quot; I am now said to 

 be perceiving. Thus throughout the world, everywhere, 

 there will be an enormous number of particulars co 

 existing in the same place. But these troubles result 

 from contenting ourselves too readily with the merely 

 three-dimensional space to which schoolmasters have 

 accustomed us. The space of the real world is a space of 

 six dimensions, and as soon as we realise this we see that 

 there is plenty of room for all the particulars for which 

 we want to find positions. In order to realise this we 

 have only to return for a moment from the polished space 

 of physics to the rough and untidy space of our immediate 

 sensible experience. The space of one man s sensible 

 objects is a three-dimensional space. It does not appear 

 probable that two men ever both perceive at the same 

 time any one sensible object ; when they are said to see 

 the same thing or hear the same noise, there will always 

 be some difference, however slight, between the actual 

 shapes seen or the actual sounds heard. If this is so, and 

 if, as is generally assumed, position in space is purely 

 relative, it follows that the space of one man s objects 

 and the space of another man s objects have no place in 

 common, that they are in fact different spaces, and not 

 merely different parts of one space. I mean by this that 

 such immediate spatial relations as are perceived to hold 



