[Illustration] “Hardly. The universe is a tremendous jig-saw puzzle. If God wanted to keep us amused to all eternity, he couldn’t have hit on anything better. We shall not be able to stay very long, or to take in _all_ past-present-future at once. But you will see enough to realize what cubic time is. You will begin with one small cubic section, which will gradually enlarge until you have taken in as much cubic time as you can hold together in one duration. “Look out through that window. You see that cart coming down the street. It will have to pass Herr Schmidt’s house opposite and the ‘Prussian Soldier,’ and that grocer’s shop and the clock before it gets to the church. “Now you’ll see what’ll happen.” III What Mr. Spalding saw was the sudden stoppage of the cart, which now appeared as standing simultaneously at each station, Herr Schmidt’s house, the inn, the grocery, the clock, the church and the side street up which it had not yet turned. In this vision solid objects became transparent, so that he saw the side street through the intervening houses. In the same way, distributed in space as on a Mercator’s projection, he saw all the subsequent stations of the cart, up to its arrival in a farmyard between a stable and a haystack. In the same duration of time, which was his present, he saw the townspeople moving in their houses, eating, smoking and going to bed, and the peasants in their farms and cottages, and the household of the Graf in his castle. These figures retained all their positions while the amazing experience lasted. The scene widened. It became all Königsberg, and Königsberg became all Prussia, and Prussia all Europe. Mr. Spalding seemed to have eyes at the sides and back of his head. He saw time rising up round him as an immense cubic space. He was aware of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war, the establishment of the French Republic, the Boer war, the death of Queen Victoria, the accession and death of King Edward VII., the accession of King George V., the Great War, the Russian and German Revolutions, the rise of the Irish Republic, the Indian Republic, the British Revolution, the British Republic, the conquest of Japan by America, and the federation of the United States of Europe and America, all going on at once.