[Footnote 5: Perhaps an analogy will serve to make this clear. Suppose that a certain quantity of some foodstuff is consumed by ⅒ head of population. The false inference would be that a population is possible which has ⅒ heads! In the same way the statistics may be quite correct in arriving at the figure ⅕ suicides, but if we leave the realms of calculation, then the £ suicide loses its meaning entirely.] M.: I must resign myself to giving up these illusions. I must frankly confess that I do so with a certain sadness, for such bold flights of constructive fancy exert a powerful attraction on me. At one time I was near outdoing Lumen by assuming a Super-Lumen, who was to traverse all worlds at once with infinite velocity. He would then be in a position to take a survey of the whole of universal history at a single glance. From the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, he would see the earth as it was four years ago; from the Pole Star, as it was forty years ago; and from the boundary of the Milky Way, as it was four thousand years ago. At the same moment he could choose a point of observation that would enable him to see the First Crusade, the Siege of Troy, the Flood, and also the events of the present day simultaneously. EINSTEIN: And this flight of thought, which, by the way, has been indulged in repeatedly by others too, has much more sense in it than the former one, because you may make an abstraction which disregards speed altogether. It is only a limiting case of reflection.