The true path of wisdom consists in seeing that our intellect is foolishness--that our conclusions are absurd and mistaken, not in speculating on the world as a form of thought projected from the thinking principle within us--rather to be amazed that our thought has so limited the world and hidden from us its real existences. To think of ourselves as any other than things in space and subject to material conditions, is absurd, it is absurd on either of two hypotheses. If we are really things in space, then of course it is absurd to think of ourselves as if we were not so. On the other hand, if we are not things in space, then conceiving in space is the mode in which that unknown which we are exists as a mind. Its mental action is space-conception, and then to give up the idea of ourselves as in space, is not to get a truer idea, but to lose the only power of apprehension of ourselves which we possess. And yet there is, it must be confessed, one way in which it may be possible for us to think without thinking of things in space. That way is, not to abandon the use of space-thought, but to pass through it. When we think of space, we have to think of it as infinity extended, and we have to think of it as of infinite dimensions. Now, as I have shown in “The Law of the Valley,”[3] when we come upon infinity in any mode of our thought, it is a sign that that mode of thought is dealing with a higher reality than it is adapted for, and in struggling to represent it, can only do so by an infinite number of terms. Now, space has an infinite number of positions and turns, and this may be due to the attempt forced upon us to think of things higher than space as in space. If so, then the way to get rid of space from our thoughts, is, not to go away from it, but to pass through it--to think about larger and larger systems of space, and space of more and more dimensions, till at last we get to such a representation in space of what is higher than space, that we can pass from the space-thought to the more absolute thought without that leap which would be necessary if we were to try to pass beyond space with our present very inadequate representation in it of what really is. [3] “Science Romances,” No. II. Again and again has human nature aspired and fallen. The vision has presented itself of a law which was love, a duty which carried away the enthusiasm, and in which the conflict of the higher and lower natures ceased because all was enlisted in one loving service. But again and again have such attempts failed. The common-sense view, that man is subject to law, external law, remains--that there are fates whom he must propitiate and obey. And there is a strong sharp curb, which, if it be not brought to bear by the will, is soon pulled tight by the world, and one more tragedy is enacted, and the over-confident soul is brought low.