29/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

The idea of the relative value of size must already have occurred to us, in following this discussion. We have no absolute standard of size. Any line may be considered either long or short, according to the length of our measuring rule. If we measure with an inch rule, a yard-stick seems long; if with a ten-foot pole, it seems short.

To one riding in an express train, a mile seems short; to the creeping infant, it seems long. By conceiving space to be infinite, we imply that our standard of measurement is finite. To the animalcule sporting in a drop of water, the ocean would seem boundless, were the animalcular mind capable of such a thought; but to the astronomer, the ocean represents a very small portion of an insignificant planet, itself like a grain of sand on the seashore.

We judge objects to be large or small by comparison with the human body. How absurd to claim that a transient, thought-created phenomenon, based on ever-changing conceptions, can have any value as an absolute standard of measurement! Yet we have no better one. If we attempt to gauge the magnitude of any object, it must be by this unstable, imaginary unit of measure.

But aside from the question of convenience, is there any better warrant for adopting the human body as our standard, than there is for selecting the atom, or some one of the heavenly bodies? Is it not within the bounds of reason to infer that beings may exist, to whom the compass of the universe lying within the limit of human vision, would appear as the point of a needle in size?

and by analogy, is it not reasonable to assume that to their vision there would appear, in regions altogether unapproachable by human sight, bodies whose forms and peculiar characteristics are quite incomprehensible from our point of view?

Now let us turn again from considering the extent of the physical universe, to the question of number in relation to it. No doubt it sometimes seems to the prosaic, matter-of-fact materialist, that the number of suns and solar systems must be limited, because they are large enough to be readily appreciable by human vision, and, therefore, might be counted, could we only see them all.

But as we have just intimated, an absolute standard of size is unthinkable. The atom seems small because we compare it with a body of the human type. According to the materialistic interpretation of things, every body that lies within the range of our perceptive powers, may be resolved into lesser organic units which, too, possess values of only relative importance; and every body, likewise, forms a part of some larger body or aggregation of bodies.