It is not my purpose to emphasize unduly the superiority of the apple's view over Newton's, but rather to regard both on an equal footing. I have perhaps been a little unfair to Newton. His position on the surface of the earth was unfortunate, but he would have been perfectly content to be at the centre of the earth, where he could have remained without support, i.e. without disturbance by molecular bombardment. From there he would still have observed the well-known acceleration of the apple; and the apple would have observed a corresponding acceleration of Newton without any molecular bombardment causing it. From either point of view there is a mysterious agent at work. How shall we picture to ourselves this agent? Shall we picture it as a force--a tug of some kind? But if so, to which of them is the tug applied? If we take the standpoint of Newton the tug is applied to the apple, if the standpoint of the apple the tug is applied to Newton; so that in our synthesis of all standpoints we cannot decide which is being tugged, and the picture of gravitation as a tugging agent becomes impossible. Einstein replaces it by a different picture, which we shall perhaps better understand if we compare it with a very similar revolution of scientific thought which occurred long ago. The ancients believed that the earth was flat. The small portion of its surface with which they were chiefly concerned could be represented without serious distortion on a flat map. As more distant countries were added, it would be natural to think that they also could be included in the flat map. You have all seen such maps of the world, e. g. Mercator's projection, and you will remember how Greenland appears enormously exaggerated in size. Now those who adhered to the flat-earth theory must hold that the flat map gives the _true_ size of Greenland. How then would they explain that travellers in that country reported that the distances were much shorter? They would, I suppose, invent a theory that a demon resided in that country who helped travellers on their way, making the journeys appear much shorter than they 'really' were. No doubt the scientists would preserve their self-respect by using some Graeco-Latin polysyllable instead of the word 'demon', but that must not disguise from us the fact that they were appealing to a _deus ex machina_. The name demon is rather suitable, however, because he has the impish characteristic that we cannot pin him down to any particular locality. We might equally well start our flat map with its centre in Greenland; then it would be found that journeys there were quite normal, and that the activities of the demon were disturbing travellers in Europe. We now recognize that the true explanation is that the earth's surface is curved; and the demoniacal complications appeared because we were forcing the earth's surface into an inappropriate flat frame which distorts the simplicity of things.