SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXVII. No. 963 



nardo was doubtless wrong. At all events 

 current scientific views are against him. 

 The earth, we know, has grown, but the 

 growth has been by accretion, by addition 

 from without, and not, in biologic sense, by 

 expansion from within (unless, indeed, we 

 adopt the beautiful hypothesis of the poet 

 and physicist, Theodor Fechner, for which 

 30 hard-headed a scientific man as Bern- 

 hardt Riemann had so much respect, the 

 hypothesis, namely, that the plants, the 

 earth and the stars have souls). The 

 myriad-minded Florentine was, we of to- 

 day think, in error, his error being one of 

 those brilliant mistakes that but few men 

 have been qualified to make. But in saying 

 that space has grown we do not mean that 

 it has grown in the biologic sense of Leo- 

 nardo nor yet in the sense of addition from 

 without. We mean that it has grown as a 

 thing in mind may grow, as a thing in 

 thought may grow; we mean that it has 

 grown in men's conception of it. That 

 space has, in this sense, been enlarged 

 prodigiously in the course of recent time is 

 evident to all. It has been often said that 

 the first grand discovery of modern times 

 is the immense extension of the universe 

 in space." It would be juster to say that 

 the first grand achievement of modern sci- 

 ence has been the immense extension of 

 space itself, the prodigious enlargement of 

 it, in the imagination and especially in the 

 thought of men. If we will but take the 

 trouble to recall vividly the Mosaic cos- 

 mogony, in terms of which most of us have 

 but recently ceased to frame our sublimest 

 conceptions of the vast; if we remind our- 

 selves of Plato's "concentric crystal 

 spheres, the adamantine axis turning in 

 the lap of necessity, the bands that held 

 the heaven together like a girth that clasps 

 a ship, the shaft which led from earth to 

 sky, and which was paced by the soul in a 



thousand years " ; if we compare these con- 

 ceptions with our own; if we think of "the 

 fields from which our stars fling us their 

 light," fields that are really near and yet 

 are so far that the swiftest of messengers, 

 capable of circling the earth eight times in 

 a second, requires for its journey hither 

 thousands of years ; if we do but make some 

 such comparisons, we shall begin to realize 

 dimly that, compared with modem space — 

 the space of modern thought — elder space 

 —the space of elder thought — is indeed 

 "but as a cabinet of brilliants, or rather a 

 little jewelled cup found in the ocean or 

 the wilderness. ' ' 



Suppose that in fact space were thus, 

 like time, not a constant, but a variable; 

 suppose it were a mental thing growing 

 with the growth of mind; an increasing 

 function of increasing thought; suppose it 

 were a thing whose enlargement is essential 

 as a psychic condition or concomitant or ef- 

 fect of the progress of science; would not 

 our questions regarding its figure and its 

 dimensions then lose their meaning? The 

 answer is, no; as rational beings we should 

 still be bound to ask: what are the dimen- 

 sions and what is the figure of space to 

 date? That is not all. If these questions 

 were answered, we could propound the 

 further questions : whether the space so 

 characterized — the space of the present — 

 is adequate to the present needs of science, 

 and whether it is not destined to yet 

 further expansion in response to the future 

 needs of thought. 



Men do not feel, however, that such 

 spatial enlargements as I have indicated 

 are genuine enlargements of space. In 

 spite of whatever metaphysics or psychol- 

 ogy may seem obliged to say to the con- 

 trary, men feel that what is new in such an 

 enlargement is merely an increase of en- 

 lightenment regarding something old ; they 



