CHAPTER VIII 



SPACE AS A THOUGHT-CATEGORY 



" AND I KNOW NOT IF, SAVE IN THIS, SUCH GIFT 

 BE ALLOWED TO MAN, THAT OUT OF THREE SOUNDS HE 

 FRAME, NOT A FOURTH SOUND, BUT A STAR," 



The human mind has so long followed its early 

 cow-paths through the wilderness of sense that great 

 hardihood is required even to suggest that there may 

 be other and better ways of traversing the empirical 

 common. It is in full consciousness of the danger 

 of jungles that I proceed. 



Three dimensions do not suffice to set forth the 

 ways of our joy in the sense world about us. What 

 of this perceptual residue? Obviously to give it ex- 

 tension we shall have to ascribe to reality other di- 

 mensions than those of our present space-realm. 

 Some disciple of Bergson interrupts : " Ah, this 

 whereof you speak is a spiritual thing and as such is 

 given by the intuition. Why, then, do you seek 

 to spatialise it ? " And the layman out of his 



mental repugnance to things mathematical echoes, 



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