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Page 32
* * * * *
How the idea of infinite Space may affect a mind incomparably more
powerful than my own, I cannot know;--neither can I divine the nature
of certain problems which the laws of space-relation present to the
geometrician. But when I try to determine the cause of the horror
which that idea evokes within my own feeble imagination, I am able
to distinguish different elements of the emotion,--particular forms
of terror responding to particular ideas (rational and irrational)
suggested by the revelations of science. One feeling--perhaps the
main element of the horror--is made by the thought of being _prisoned_
forever and ever within that unutterable Viewlessness which occupies
infinite Space.
Behind this feeling there is more than the thought of eternal
circumscription;--there is also the idea of being perpetually
penetrated, traversed, thrilled by the Nameless;--there is likewise
the certainty that no least particle of innermost secret Self could
shun the eternal touch of It;--there is furthermore the tremendous
conviction that could the Self of me rush with the swiftness of
light,--with more than the swiftness of light,--beyond all galaxies,
beyond durations of time so vast that Science knows no sign by which
their magnitudes might be indicated,--and still flee onward, onward,
downward, upward,--always, always,--never could that Self of me reach
nearer to any verge, never speed farther from any centre. For, in that
Silence, all vastitude and height and depth and time and direction are
swallowed up: relation therein could have no meaning but for the speck
of my fleeting consciousness,--atom of terror pulsating alone through
atomless, soundless, nameless, illimitable potentiality.
And the idea of that potentiality awakens another quality of
horror,--the horror of infinite Possibility. For this Inscrutable that
pulses through substance as if substance were not at all,--so subtly
that none can feel the flowing of its tides, yet so swiftly that no
life-time would suffice to count the number of the oscillations which
it makes within the fraction of one second,--thrills to us out of
endlessness;--and the force of infinity dwells in its lightest tremor;
the weight of eternity presses behind its faintest shudder. To that
phantom-Touch, the tinting of a blossom or the dissipation of a
universe were equally facile: here it caresses the eye with the charm
and illusion of color; there it bestirs into being a cluster of giant
suns. All that human mind is capable of conceiving as possible
(and how much also that human mind must forever remain incapable of
conceiving?) may be wrought anywhere, everywhere, by a single tremor
of that Abyss....
* * * * *
Is it true, as some would have us believe, that the fear of the
extinction of self is the terror supreme?... For the thought of
personal perpetuity in the infinite vortex is enough to evoke sudden
trepidations that no tongue can utter,--fugitive instants of a horror
too vast to enter wholly into consciousness: a horror that can be
endured in swift black glimpsings only. And the trust that we are one
with the Absolute--dim points of thrilling in the abyss of It--can
prove a consoling faith only to those who find themselves obliged to
think that consciousness dissolves with the crumbling of the brain....
It seems to me that few (or none) dare to utter frankly those
stupendous doubts and fears which force mortal intelligence to
recoil upon itself at every fresh attempt to pass the barrier of the
Knowable. Were that barrier unexpectedly pushed back,--were knowledge
to be suddenly and vastly expanded beyond its present limits,--perhaps
we should find ourselves unable to endure the revelation....
* * * * *
Mr. Percival Lowell's astonishing book, "Mars," sets one to thinking
about the results of being able to hold communication with the
habitants of an older and a wiser world,--some race of beings more
highly evolved than we, both intellectually and morally, and able to
interpret a thousand mysteries that still baffle our science. Perhaps,
in such event, we should not find ourselves able to comprehend the
methods, even could we borrow the results, of wisdom older than all
our civilization by myriads or hundreds of myriads of years. But would
not the sudden advent of larger knowledge from some elder planet prove
for us, by reason, of the present moral condition of mankind, nothing
less than a catastrophe?--might it not even result in the extinction
of the human species?...
The rule seems to be that the dissemination of dangerous higher
knowledge, before the masses of a people are ethically prepared to
receive it, will always be prevented by the conservative instinct; and
we have reason to suppose (allowing for individual exceptions) that
the power to gain higher knowledge is developed only as the moral
ability to profit by such knowledge is evolved. I fancy that if the
power of holding intellectual converse with other worlds could now
serve us, we should presently obtain it. But if, by some astonishing
chance,--as by the discovery, let us suppose, of some method of
ether-telegraphy,--this power were prematurely acquired, its exercise
would in all probability be prohibited.... Imagine, for example, what
would have happened during the Middle Ages to the person guilty of
discovering means to communicate with the people of a neighboring
planet! Assuredly that inventor and his apparatus and his records
would have been burned; every trace and memory of his labors would
have been extirpated. Even to-day the sudden discovery of truths
unsupported by human experience, the sudden revelation of facts
totally opposed to existing convictions, might evoke some frantic
revival of superstitious terrors,--some religious panic-fury that
would strangle science, and replunge the world in mental darkness
for a thousand years.
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