The lesson I learned was this: Nature is vast. Nature knows nothing of Time. Nor does Nature know anything of Space. It is we who import spatial and temporal limitations into Nature. Because we look up with two eyes, and feel forth with two arms, and walk about with two legs, we think, not only that _our_, but that _the_, universe is an infinite sphere!--an actual objective sphere of which each stupidly assumes that _he_ is the centre! Which means that there are, supposedly, millions of centres, and each centre changing its place by millions of miles a day!--positive proof of the preposterousness of the assumption.--To an animalcule born and bred inside an old garden hose, the universe, I suppose, is an endless tunnel. To a baby cockroach hatched between floor and carpet, the universe is a limitless plane. Well, we are animalcules on a little rolling clod; and this clod may bear the same relation to some supernal, _n_-dimensional mansion and garden--and gardeners and Owner, as does my supposititious caoutchouc hose or patterned carpet to some terrestrial demesne. * * * * * And so with Time. Time is a matter of individual memory, of remembering past events and of anticipating (which is memory reversed, as it were; memory projected) events to come. And memory, as we know it, is purely a matter of this or that sort of nerve-substance in the brain. Had we no memory, we should know nothing whatsoever of time; an event would be a point, and no past point could be recalled, nor any future one conjectured. So, could an infinite number of memories coalesce, there would be no time either, for in that case all events would occur here and now. * * * * * Nature--the Cosmos--the All--the Deity ... _He_ is not limited by cubical contents nor by clocks striking the hours. § 25 How convey a notion of this mysterious Unity? Shall we essay a gross and inadequate analogy? There are in the blood of man little things called white corpuscles. They are alive; they are, in fact, little living personages. Indeed, it would be hard to deny that they possess a certain sort of "intelligence"; for, according to the phagocytic theory, they attack their foes and help their friends. Now, if these white corpuscles ever reason about the world which they inhabit, they must think that it consists of an immense red ocean in a perpetual flux, limitless and restless, and peopled with myriads of beings like unto themselves. Yet they are an integral part of the human frame; indeed without them the human frame could not be what it is. Well, man's place in _his_ universe may be very similar to that of the white corpuscle in its; and the intelligence and nature of the Being of which man forms an integral part may be as inconceivable to man--to bewildered man, buried 'neath an ocean of air, and blown about space without even a "by your leave"--as are man's to the leucocytes of the blood.