During that time no name was quoted so often as that of this man. Everything sank away in face of this universal theme which had taken possession of humanity. The converse of educated people circled about this pole, could not escape from it, continually reverted to the same theme when pressed aside by necessity or accident. Newspapers entered on a chase for contributors who could furnish them with short or long, technical or non-technical, notices about Einstein's theory. In all nooks and corners social evenings of instruction sprang up, and wandering universities appeared with errant professors that led people out the three-dimensional misery of daily life into the more hospitable Elysian fields of four-dimensionality. Women lost sight of domestic worries and discussed co-ordinate systems, the principle of simultaneity, and negatively-charged electrons. All contemporary questions had gained a fixed centre from which threads could be spun to each. Relativity had become the sovereign password. In spite of some grotesque results that followed on this state of affairs it could not fail to be recognized that we were watching symptoms of mental hunger not less imperative in its demands than bodily hunger, and it was no longer to be appeased by the former books by writers on popular science and by misguided idealists. And whilst leaders of the people, statesmen, and ministers made vain efforts to steer in the fog, to arrive at results serviceable to the nation, the multitude found what was expedient for it, what was uplifting, what sounded like the distant hammering of reconstruction. Here was a man who had stretched his hands towards the stars; to forget earthly pains one had but to immerse oneself in his doctrine. It was the first time for ages that a chord vibrated through the world invoking all eyes towards something which, like music or religion, lay outside political or material interests. The mere thought that a living Copernicus was moving in our midst elevated our feelings. Whoever paid him homage had a sensation of soaring above Space and Time, and this homage was a happy augury in an epoch so bare of brightness as the present. * * * * * * * *