46 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



force of fourteen pounds on every square Inch of my 

 body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travel- 

 ling at twenty miles a second round the sun — a frac- 

 tion of a second too early or too late, the plank would 

 be miles away. I must do this while hanging from a 

 round planet head outward Into space, and with a 

 wind of ether blowing at no one knows how many 

 miles a second through every Interstice of my body. 

 The plank has no solidity of substance. To step on It 

 Is like stepping on a swarm of flies. Shall I not slip 

 through? No, If I make the venture one of the flies 

 hits me and gives me a boost up again. I fall once 

 more and am knocked upwards by another fly; and 

 so on. 



I may hope that the net result will be that I remain 

 about steady; but If unfortunately I should slip 

 through the door or be boosted too violently up to the 

 celling, the occurrence would be, not a violation of the 

 laws of nature, but a rare coincidence. These are 

 some of the minor difficulties. I ought really to look 

 at the problem four-dlmenslonally as concerning the 

 intersection of my world-line with that of the plank. 

 Then again. It is necessary to determine in which di- 

 rection the entropy of the world is increasing in order 

 to make sure that my passage over the threshold is 

 an entrance, not an exit. 



Verily, It Is easier for a camel to pass through the 

 eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass 

 through a door. And whether the door be barn door 

 or church door it might be wiser that he should con- 

 sent to be an ordinary man and walk In, rather than 

 wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scien- 

 tific ingress are resolved. 



