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THE REV. CANON E. MCCLURE, M.A., M.R.I. A., ON 



them, and to the earth which serves us as a system of 

 reference ? How would they be modified, for instance, by a 

 change in the velocity of the earth ? " (p. 8). In discussing 

 this question he shows that according to the theory there is no 

 such thing as simultaneity in events happening at different 

 places. Professor Planck (Berlin Address, October, 1913) is of the 

 same opinion. " The question," he says, " whether two events 

 occurring at different places are simultaneous or not bad a 

 positive physical meaning, quite apart from any previous 

 inquiry as to the observer who took the time-measurement. 

 At present the case is quite otherwise." He then proceeds to 

 illustrate this principle. 



" That the position of the observer conditions his knowledge 

 is a commonplace. But it has a meaning more profound than 

 this. If we could live, for instance, outside the shadow of the 

 earth, we should never know anything of the starry heavens — of 

 those suns in space, many of which " excel in glory " our own 

 sun. Our solar light masks all other lights, and it is within 

 the sphere of probability that what we know may hide rather 

 than reveal a universe greater than our own. Think for a 

 moment of a universe from which night, and the stars it 

 reveals, should be for ever excluded ! Think of the limitations 

 of our " Laws of Nature" in consequence ! 



" Lord Kelvin often asked his audiences to transfer themselves 

 in thought to the centre of the earth, where there would be no 

 evidence of gravitation, nothing would have weight there — 

 water would not flow, nor anything change its position. Think 

 of the consequent limitation of our knowledge on the one hand 

 with the extension of it in some respects on the other ! 



" If, moreover, we could, departing from the earth, take up a 

 position on any other object in space, our whole experience of 

 things would be altered. ' Our laws of nature ' and of its 

 uniformity would be changed by the changed environment." 

 " If everything in the universe," says Sir Oliver Lodge, " had 

 the same temperature, nothing would be visible at all." More- 

 over, the consciousness in which the laws of nature are 

 presented to us may not, as Plotinus and Professor Bergson 

 agree be limited to the brain, and dependent on the molecular 

 changes of the latter. The body, Plotinus contended, is in the 

 soul and not the soul in the body. 



.Memory, says Professor Bergson, overflows the brain, and the 

 brain is very probably an instrument of forgetfulness as well as 

 of remembrance. Sir George Darwin, in his British Associa- 

 tion Address, put forward the view that something for which he 



