The Universe. 33 



with a choice of two paradoxical hypotheses, both 

 seemingly incomprehensible in their entirety to man 

 at present, it seems most reasonable to adopt the 

 most intelligible. 



Professor Tait says, the fact of displacement and 

 the compressibility of all known bodies " involve 

 the condition of space or intervals between 

 atoms."* 



Space, again, may be defined as nothing transformed 

 into something, or an equivalent to something, through 

 its enclosure by substance ; and on these lines some 

 notion of its infinity and boundlessness comes as near 

 demonstration as seems possible to man. In a curious 

 way, too, it indicates the undoubted relationship exist- 

 ing between something and nothing, showing how 

 even creation may be daily occurring and yet no thing 

 be actually made. Thus a builder, in taking posses- 

 sion of part of the sky by erecting a tower into the 

 air, practically creates a number of rooms, for the 

 spaces are virtually nothing, although we call them 

 rooms. The exercise of his skill results in merely 

 enclosing the nothing (emptiness) with something 

 (matter), which then, for human purposes, becomes a 

 something, a room or rooms, through this enclosure ; 

 yet the only real something about them is their 

 externals, the walls, floors, and ceilings, those things 

 bounding the nothing. The utility of the rooms, 

 moreover, as rooms consists in their being, or remain- 

 ing nothing or empty space. 



* Properties o/ Matter, p. 18. 



