MATTER. INTELLIGENCES. I. AS TO SPACE. The school-boy is told that the idea held by people generally in the days of Columbus was that if the venturesome ships were to sail too far out on the ocean they would fall off into space; and in his silent meditations he often wonders where, in such a case, those ships would have gone. The natural answer to his mind is that they would have gone down; but when he learns later that the words "down" and "up" relate only to the earth, and that in speaking of space, there are no such terms as up or down, or east or west, or north or south, all his ideas of direction are at sea. His conception of space increases, however. Later in school life he studies with interest the movements of the planetarium, and is surprised to find the earth, whose geographical extent has hitherto seemed so vast, represented by such an insignificant ball, so near the sun. This, however, is only the beginning of his surprises. He is told later that, large as the solar system seems, yet if our sun, viewed from one of the fixed stars, were as large as the orbit of Neptune, it would be eclipsed by a pin-head held at arm's length. And so his ideas of space continue to enlarge as he grows in understanding. As we study Herschel's diagram of the group of stars in which we dwell and let the mind contemplate with the astronomer the nebulae, supposed by some to be other groups of stars, much more magnificent than our own, the mind is lost in wonder at the immensity of space and the grandeur of the works of God. But even this is simply a beginning. The Lord gives us a still deeper insight into the situation when He reveals to us the fact that all these vast systems, as well as other systems of which as yet we know nothing, are revolving about other systems which are all controlled from a common centre, His "first creation," [3] the great Kolob. [4] When, therefore, the Lord, standing in the midst of His works, comprehending and controlling them all, speaks to us of the "immensity of space," [5] how shall mortal, finite man, state his conception of space! How far is the philosopher advanced above the school-boy with his query about the ships of Columbus? So far as reason can answer the question as to the bounds of space, it is answered by Professor Orson Pratt. Discussing the necessity for endless time and boundless space, he says: