HEBER D. CURTIS 67 



rules which we call laws for this force, which is all- 

 pervading. It is so minute a force that we cannot 

 experiment with it, for it is smaller than electrical 

 attraction by the factor one followed by forty-one 

 ciphers. It obeys the inverse square law, and when 

 we have said that we have finished; our main reason 

 for believing in it is that we have to have something. 

 At the risk of insulting the reader's acumen, I must 

 call to his attention here the essential peculiarity of 

 this assumption. We had certain facts; it was neces- 

 sary to explain them; so gravitation was assumed; 

 quite easy ! Is the assumption of a First Cause by 

 the religionist any less logical? 



The second and modern alternative hypothesis is 

 that there is no such force as gravitation. The uni- 

 verse is supposed to be built on a strange four-dimen- 

 sional basis which is so transcendental — in the mathe- 

 matical use of the word — that it is impossible for our 

 three-dimensional minds to make any picture of it. 

 In this strange and transcendental universe, space is 

 curved wherever there is matter; hence things roll 

 down to the earth in this curved space because they 

 can not help doing so any more than a ball at the 

 outer edge of a wash basin can help rolling to the bot- 

 tom of the basin. 



Let me at this point, as promised earlier, consider 

 two illustrations of the liberty of speculation which 

 modern science is forced to assume. This new atti- 

 tude, observed with sanity, is highly commendatory, 

 and Indicates some measure of rapprochement with 

 philosophy and religion, at least in method. 



Our first illustration may be derived from modern 

 atomic theories. This was preceded by a stage, rep- 



