SPACE AS A THOUGHT-CATEGORY 169 



sciousness, said Henri Poincare, " the greatest of 

 moderns," is a new table of distribution: that is, a 

 breaking up of old associations of ideas and the 

 forming of new relations a simple matter were it 

 not for our mental inertia. Lester Ward speculates 

 that life remained aquatic for the vast periods that 

 paleontology would indicate : Cambrian, Silurian, De- 

 vonian, Carboniferous a duration greater than all 

 subsequent time for the reason that the creature 

 had not sufficiently progressed to move otherwise 

 than in a straight line when actuated by the desire 

 for food or mate. Life was not able to maintain it- 

 self on land until it had overcome this one-dimen- 

 sional limitation. A venturesome Pterodactyl was 

 he who first essayed to make his way among the many 

 obstructions to be found ashore ! By what intuition 

 was he impelled? 



The significance of the much fumbling and groping 

 of earth's creatures is the desire for a larger out- 

 look. Man has to feel his way out of a three-fold 

 world even as the worm out of his hole. CThat we are 

 hearing much of the principle of relativity is perhaps 

 the best indication we have that the collective human 

 consciousness is about to enter a higher dimension. 

 So long as man knew only an absolute good was his 

 world a definitely determined world. Now that the 

 question of relative values obtrudes itself on every 

 side, the range of consciousness promises to be in- 

 finite. 



