mists and illusions of our everyday thoughts, and can look through our
Window with, I hope, a clearer vision, I shall venture in this present
View to carry the subject of the _Future_ still further, and show
that, just as we have now before us and can read the papyri which were
written 5000 years ago, so it is possible to conceive that books,
written and being written and printed 5000 years hence, are _at
present_ in existence, and that it is even possible the human race has
actually already read them; whether we shall be able to see them and
read them in our own lifetime may be open to question; that may again
depend upon the development of special cross-circuiting of brain
filaments. Meanwhile, in order to carry our present View to the utmost
limit of our conception, in a manner somewhat similar to what we did
for Space, I will again ask you to join me in a thought-flight
towards the appreciation of this second great Mystery.
With this object in view we will first consider the human senses of
sight and hearing, commencing with sound, or the vibrations which
affect the tympanum of the human ear. Sound travels in air at about
1130 feet per second, and if the vibrating body, giving out the sound,
oscillates sixteen times in one second, it follows that, spreading
over this 1130 feet, there will be sixteen waves, giving a length of
about 70 feet to each wave. This is the lowest sound that the human
ear can appreciate as a musical note, and is, what may be called, the
fourth Octave above one vibration in one second. When the number of
vibrations in a second sinks below sixteen, the ear no longer
appreciates them as a musical sound, but is able to hear them as
separate vibrations or beats. The easiest way of illustrating this is
by means of a revolving disc, with sixteen holes pierced at regular
intervals round the edge, and a jet of high-pressure air, which is
forced through each of the holes successively as they revolve. When
the disc does not quite complete one revolution in a second, only
fifteen puffs come to the ear in a second of time, and they are heard
as puffs; but when the rate reaches one revolution in a second, the
sound, as if by magic, changes into the lowest musical sound. The same
result may be obtained in a more pronounced form by means of
explosions or pistol shots; when these are slow and heard separately,
they are painful and almost unbearable to the ear, but, as soon as
their rapidity, namely, at sixteen per second, gets beyond the power
of the ear to differentiate between the explosions, the impression, as
if by magic, changes into a continuous or musical sound, like a
thirty-foot pipe note of an organ.
To go back to our disc. The octave above this lowest musical note is
obtained by doubling the rate of puffs, namely, by revolving the disc
twice in one second, and the next octave by revolving four times in a
second, and so on, doubling each time, until, at about the thirteenth
octave, the sound has become so high that the majority of listeners
cannot hear it, and fancy it must have stopped, whereas a few will
still be saying: "How shrill it is!" At last, at about the fourteenth
octave, when there are 20,000 beats to the second and each wave is
about half an inch long, it passes beyond human audition, and,
although we can show that the air is still vibrating, all is silent,
the human ear being incapable of hearing so many beats in a second
even as a continuous sound, though I have evidence to show that many
insects can hear probably considerably beyond this limit. It is,
however, possible to make these higher vibrations perceptible to our
senses by means of what are called sensitive flames: we can actually,
by these, measure the length of these silent waves, and as we know the
rate at which they travel, we can at once compute the number which
occur in a second of time, and thus ascertain their pitch. By this
means we can follow for about three more octaves above the audible
limit, namely, up to 160,000 pulsations per second, with a length of
wave of one-twelfth of an inch.
Two and a half octaves above these numerically, _i.e._ at about the
twentieth octave, we reach the frequency of Electro-Magnetic Rills,
used by the Marconi System of wireless telegraphy, which pulsate at
about 950,000 per second, and have a wave-length of something like
1000 feet. The reason for this great increase in length of wave is
caused by these frequencies being propagated in the Ether at the rate
of 186,000 miles per second, instead of, as with sound waves, in the
air, at only 1130 feet per second. We can trace these particular
frequencies, called, after their discoverer, Hertzian waves, for about
fifteen octaves, when we arrive at the frequency of 32,000,000,000 in
a second, with a wave-length decreased to a quarter of an inch; we
can render the effect of these waves visible, but have no physical
organ by which we can feel these pulsations. After this, however, we
get into the region of frequencies which, though still of exactly the
same kind, we know and can feel as Radiant heat; these are situated in
the next fourteen octaves, and bring us up to those subtle frequencies
which affect another of our sense organs, and which we appreciate as
light; these we have already seen have the enormous frequency of
530,000,000,000,000 pulsations per second for red light, up to
930,000,000,000,000 per second for violet, and having wave-lengths so
small that it takes 40,000 and 70,000 of them respectively to cover
one inch in length. There is only a little over half an octave that
the eye can appreciate as light, and then all is darkness; but we can
still go on further by the help of Science: beyond the violet we have
the actinic or chemical rays, which are used in photography, and which
enable us to trace the frequencies for a further two octaves. Beyond
this we cannot pierce with our present knowledge; but there may be,
and probably are, latent in our nature, senses which, properly
developed, will be able to appreciate still more subtle vibrations,
and organs which, perhaps, even now are being prepared for the
reception of these influences.
We have no organs yet developed for receiving and appreciating what
are called Wireless waves, but we have already been able to devise
physical Receivers, of wonderful sensitiveness, for them and other
waves of the same nature, such as those of Radiant heat. In the case
of Radiant heat, the Bolometer invented by Professor Langley has been
able to receive and record a change of temperature of the one
millionth of a degree Centigrade, and can easily make visible the heat
of a candle at a distance of one and a half miles. In wireless
telegraphy also the Receiver, perfected by Marconi, is affected by
rills, made by a splash of electric discharge, over 3000 miles away.
If our eyes were sensitive to these frequencies, both of which are
composed, as is also light, of electro-magnetic rills, we could see
anything that was happening anywhere in the world, for they go through
matter as though it did not exist, as light passes through glass;
indeed, if our region of Sight waves was only put an octave lower we
could not use glass in our windows, it would be too opaque, we should
be obliged to have our windows made of thin slabs of carbon or other
substances permeable to Radiant heat waves. Science indeed steadily
points to electricity and magnetism being a form of motion, and it may
be that in these invisible rays we may some day discover the nature
of those mysterious forces; and, even far beyond those, as suggested
in View Four, we may in the not far distant future be able to
appreciate Physical Life itself as a mode of frequency.
We want, as it were, a special "Time Microscope," which I have already
referred to, to examine these vibrations, and a method similar to that
already mentioned in "Space," under Celestial Photography, by which we
may traverse and examine hundreds or thousands of octaves by each
second of exposure; for, although the path extends to infinity, we
have already arrived at the utmost limits of our finite senses, and
find that after all we can only appreciate fifty-one octaves, a few
inches only, as it were, along the line of Infinite extent, reaching
from the finite up to the Reality; and even so it must be borne in
mind that we have only travelled in one direction, whereas the path we
have taken extends in the opposite direction also to infinity. We
started with sixteen vibrations in a second, as the lowest number of
beats we human beings can appreciate as a musical sound; let us now
descend by octaves. The octave below is eight vibrations in a second,
and there are probably many animals that can only hear these as a
musical sound; the next octave is four, then two, and then one
vibration in a second. But we do not stop there; the octave below
this is one vibration in two seconds, then in four seconds, eight
seconds, sixteen seconds, and so on, until it is possible to conceive
that even one frequency in a million years might be appreciated as a
musical sound, or even as one of the colours of the spectrum, by a
being whose time sensations were enormously extended in both
directions, but still finite.
Once more we must call a halt. Our finite minds become bewildered in
attempting even to glance at these infinities of time.
We measure space by miles, yards, feet, and inches; we measure time by
years, hours, minutes, and seconds; and by these finite units we try
to fathom these two marvellous infinities. With our greatest efforts
of thought we find, however, that we can get relatively no distance
whatever from the HERE of Space and the NOW of Time. It is true that
the present, as a mathematical point, appears to be hurrying and
bearing us with it along the line stretching from the past to future
eternity, but in reality we get no further from the one nor nearer to
the other. Let us change our view and examine this subject under a
different aspect.
First of all, look round a room and note the different objects to be
seen. Even in a small room we do not see the objects as they really
_are_ at this instant, but only as they _were_ at a certain fixed
length of time ago. The present time is common to every point in space
and each person is in the present, but only to his own perception; to
everyone else in the room, each individual is, at this moment, being
seen acting in the past; those objects which are further away are
being seen further behind in point of time than those that are nearer;
in fact, however near we are to an object, we can never see it as it
is but only as it was. We are dealing with very minute differences
here, they being based upon the rate at which light travels; but they
are differences which are known with a wonderful degree of accuracy.
We have here another example of how perception without knowledge leads
to false concepts. When anyone views an extended landscape, he thinks
that his sight shows him that the same point of Time, which he is
experiencing, is common to every man, animal, plant, or material
visible there, but we know now that he is seeing every part of that
scene in the past compared with himself. Just as all objects therein
are situated at separate distinct points of space, so to our vision
the objects of that scene are acting or existing in different epochs
of time. An Artist gives us on a flat surface a picture of that
landscape, and his representations of all objects in that scene
appear therefore to us as being in the same moment of Time, but to get
that effect he has to draw objects at a distance smaller than those
close at hand; a fly in the foreground has to be drawn larger than a
horse supposed to be in the distance, though both are on the same flat
surface; they have the same parallax and are therefore the same
distance from the observer, and as this produces a similar image on
our retina, we accept it though we know it is only a make-believe; it
serves its purpose by giving us an impression on our retina which we
have learnt to interpret as representing that landscape, but such a
picture would indeed be a marvel of absurdity to a being who had
perfect sight, such as we have already referred to, and who could
appreciate parallel rays; in such a vision there would be no
perspective, no vanishing point in perception.
Now let us take a wider landscape. The Moon is 240,000 miles distant.
We do not, therefore, ever see her as she is but as she was 1-1/4
seconds ago. In the same way we see the Sun as he was eight minutes
ago, and we see Jupiter as he was nearly an hour ago. Let us look
still further to one of the nearest fixed stars. We at this moment
only see that star as it was more than ten years ago; that star may
therefore have exploded or disappeared ten long years ago, and yet we
still see it shining, and shall continue to see it _there_ until the
long line of light has run itself out; all around us, in fact, we see
the appearance of blazing suns not as they are now but as they were
thousands of years ago, and, by the aid of the telescope and of our
sensitive plate, we are only now recording the light which started
from clusters and firmaments probably millions of years ago.
Now let us take the converse of this. To anybody on the moon at this
moment the earth would be seen from there not as it is, but as it was
1-1/4 seconds ago, and from the sun as it was eight minutes ago, and
if we were in Jupiter, and were looking back, we should, at this
particular moment, be viewing what was happening on this earth, and
seeing what each of us was doing an hour ago. Now let us go in
imagination to one of the nearest fixed stars, and looking back we
should see what was happening ten years ago; going still further to a
far-off cluster, the light would only just now be arriving there,
which started from the earth at the time when man first appeared; or
we might go to so remote a distance that the scene of the formation of
the Solar System would be only now arriving there, and all the events
which have taken place from that remote time to the present would, as
time rolled on, reach there in exactly the same succession as they
have happened on this earth; and remember that we should be looking,
from that great distance, at all these past events with the same
intuitional advantage as though we were actually present here in time,
for however near we are to an object, we never see it as it is but
only as it was in the past.
Let us but turn to any point of space and we shall find at each point,
according to its remoteness, the actual scenes of the past being
enacted, in fact it may be said that throughout infinite space every
event in past eternity is now indelibly recorded.
A murder committed hundreds of years ago, in a country house, may
never have been found out, the criminal and his victim have alike
turned to dust, the blood has been washed from the floor, the very
house and its surroundings have crumbled and disappeared, and in their
place a waving corn field is all that can be seen, but at this very
moment if we were at a certain point in space, we should now be
witnessing there, the whole actual living scene from beginning to end,
as though we were present _here_ hundreds of years ago: the murderer
standing over his victim, the knife driven in and the blood gushing
out. If we went further away we should at this same moment be seeing
the criminal just arriving and knocking at the door of that house,
then going upstairs into the room, and the same terrible scene with
all its minutiae would again be enacted. From a point still further
removed, we should now see him, say, having lunch at a country inn
some miles away, concocting his villainy, then he would be seen
walking across the fields towards the house, again knocking at the
door, mounting the staircase, and once more would that murderous scene
be enacted before our eyes, and so on for ever; the scene, with the
house and its surroundings, have indeed been completely swept away
from the present _here_, but the whole tragedy will always be acting
in the future _there_ in the presence of the Reality.
Let us now come, in imagination, towards the earth, from some far-off
cluster of stars. If we traverse the distance in one year, the whole
of the events from the formation of this world would appear before us,
only thousands of times quicker. Make the journey in a month, a day,
an hour, a second, or a moment of time, and all past events, from the
grandest to the most trivial, would be acted in an infinitesimal
portion of time.
When we have fully grasped this we recognise that Omniscience is
synonymous with Omnipresence, and some may find, in this thought, a
glimpse of that Great Book wherein are said to be registered every
thought, word, and deed, which, in the direction of the Reality, has
helped to nourish, or, in the direction of the shadow, has tended to
starve the personality of each one of us; for we know that every word
we utter, or that has been uttered from the beginning of the world,
and every motion of our brain connected with thought is indelibly
imprinted upon every atom of matter. If our sense of perception were
greatly increased we need not go to Palestine to see on the rocks
there the impressions of the image of Christ and His disciples, or of
the words they uttered as they passed by, but any stone by the wayside
_here_ would show His every action and resound with every word He
uttered. In fact, every particle of matter on this earth is a witness
to that which has happened, every point in space and every moment of
time contains the history of the past in the smallest minutiae. The
_Here_, embracing all space, and the _Now_, embracing all time, are
the only realities to the Omniscient.
Let us once more change the scene and we may grasp even more clearly
that Time and Space are not realities but are only modes or conditions
under which our material senses act. A tune may be played either a
thousand times slower or a thousand times quicker, but it still
remains the same tune, it contains the same sequence of notes and
proportion in time, the only characteristics by which we recognise a
tune. And so in the same way with our sense of sight, an event may be
drawn out to a thousand times its length or acted a thousand times
quicker, it is still the same scene. An insect vibrates its wings
several thousands of times in a second and must be cognisant of each
beat, whereas we have seen that we, with our Senses of Sight and
Hearing, can only appreciate respectively at the most seven and
sixteen vibrations in a second as separate beats. That insect must
therefore be able to follow a flash of lightning under the conditions
of a Time microscope magnifying a thousand times compared with our
vision. The whole life of some of these insects extends over a few
hours only, but owing to their quick unit of perception it is to them
as full of detail as our life of seventy years; but to them there is
no day and night, the Sun is always stationary in the Heavens, they
can have no cognisance of Seasons.
I have already referred in View One to the curious results of
increasing our unit of perception by a Time Microscope, and I will now
carry the investigation of this subject a step further.
As conceptional knowledge is based on perceptional knowledge, and we
can only perceive about six times per second, and as the principal
forms of knowledge are gained through the eye, we are conceiving
progress in phenomena under a very restricted outlook; we cannot
recognise such slow motions as, for instance, the hour-hand of a
watch, the growth of a tree, or rise of the tide, except by noting the
change that has occurred after a long interval; there is therefore a
whole world of events which we cannot see. Owing to this limit, in our
unit of time perception, we also cannot perceive events which are
taking place beyond a certain quickness, they become blurred and give
the impression of continuity, and constitute another world of events
lost to us. For the same reason there is a whole world of sensation
lost to us by our limited unit of sound perception; we cannot follow
separate sound-events if they occur quicker than sixteen in a second,
beyond that they become blurred and give the impression of continuity.
If, on the other hand, our units of perception were increased a
thousandfold, as is probably the case with some insects, our conscious
lives would contain a thousand more events than they do at present,
and, as the consciousness of length of life is dependent upon the
number of events that have been perceived, we should under these
conditions have passed on this earth a life equivalent to, say, 70,000
years under our present restricted unit; every second of that long
period would have been as full of events for us as is a second in our
present life of seventy years. If, on the other hand, our unit of
perception were decreased a thousandfold, our length of life, based
upon perception of events, would be no longer than 25-1/2 of our
present days; if our life were actually reduced to that period (so as
to regain our present units of perception) we should be old and
grey-headed before the sun had risen for the twenty-fifth time since
our birth. If our unit of perception, with our length of life, were
again reduced a thousandfold, the whole of our life of seventy years
would now only be equal to forty-three minutes, and, in the whole of
that life, we could only see the sun move ten degrees, namely, twenty
of its own diameters in the heaven; if we were born, say, at noon on
midsummer's day, we could never have any idea of anything but daytime,
and neither our fathers, nor grandfathers, nor great-grandfathers for
fifteen generations before them could have seen the sun rise; but
there would have been a tradition, handed down from a far distant past
generation, that a long time ago, beyond the memory of man, there was
no sun at all, everything was pitch dark, and that time was called the
"Great Shadow." If their records could have gone still further back
for the same length of time they would have heard that, before the
"Great Shadow," the sun was always shining in the heavens, and that
that great "Sun" day lasted twice as long as the great shadow.