THE CONCEPTION OP THE GREAT REALITY. 251 



the paper and be more accurate in some of my details. I should 

 have wished that he had pointed out where such revision was 

 necessary. He does indeed mention two as illustrations, but I fail 

 to see that he has shown any need for revision ; he says that I have 

 omitted to prove that ether exists everywhere ; I have made no such 

 statement, neither does my argument take this for granted. In 

 illustration of the human perception sense I was contented to point 

 out the fact that ether extended not only sufficiently far to carry 

 the sight of events a year or a century back, but for millions of 

 years back. But this was only an illustration, it was not meant to 

 argue that God required the presence of ether to gain a knowledge 

 of past events. He also argues that because I state the fact that to 

 our finite senses an insect beats its wings 10,000 times a second, and 

 each beat is in front or behind another, therefore there must be 

 sequence in reality, the whole argument of my paper controverts 

 this. He quotes Bishop Butler as saying, " God did not give us our 

 senses to deceive us," and argues that this proves that matter, time, 

 and space are absolute realities. I do not think that Bishop Butler 

 would feel complimented at being thus quoted, because we know as 

 a fact that our senses do woefully deceive us ; it is a matter of 

 everyday experience that " Perception without knowledge leads us 

 into false concepts," and this, as pointed out in the earlier part of 

 my paper, is our greatest incentive to gain knowledge. 



Professor Orchard fails to grasp the fact that whether you are 

 watching an event in the same room or from a distance which light 

 would take a thousand years to traverse, you are still looking at 

 that event from the same intuitional advantage, you do not see in 

 either case the event as it is, but only as it was. But again, I would 

 like to point out that the method of my argument was to lead the 

 finite mind to appreciate that to an Omnipresent Being every past 

 event was present, it is only the finite sense of sight that is affected 

 by the rate that light travels. I think the illustration I gave of a 

 word starting in the human brain an instantaneous thought, was a 

 fair analogy and useful for forming a conception of Creation as an 

 instantaneous thought of God, where the mind of God may be said 

 to be omnipresent. I also prefer the word Materialisation as being 

 more in consonance with our surroundings, and it does not raise the 

 question of how there can be anything external to an omnipresent 

 being. 



