Science and the Infinite; or, Through a Window in the Blank Wall

E-text prepared by David Clarke, Diane Monico, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
THE MYSTERY OF THE APEX View No. 3
First Published November 1912
Reprinted September 1917
In venturing to prepare this little volume for the eyes of the reading public, I am fully aware of the difficulties of the subject and the inadequacy of the expressions I have been able to employ, but I have made the attempt at the request of those who have found consolation in some of the thoughts herein embodied; and the messages left by others before they passed away, embolden me to hope that many others may find in this volume some points of interest which will help them to appreciate better the joys which this life has for those who know how to look for them, and that perhaps others may even gain a clearer conception of that which awaits us beyond the Veil.
Many of us allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the small worries and vexations of everyday life, clothing them with a reality quite disproportionate to their importance; we are too apt to look at them, as it were, through a powerful microscope, piling power upon power of magnification, until we have made mountains out of mole-hills, whereas if we treated them at their true value we should look at them through a telescope, in the reverse direction, when they would appear not only trivial, but would be seen to be too remote to have any material effect on our lives.
The sub-title of this volume, and indeed its inception, arose from my lately coming in contact with one of those establishments which are doing for humanity what a mother's arms do for the child who is sick unto death —a beautiful home with cheerful rooms and cheerful nurses, where patients are tenderly cared for after severe operations, carried through by our most famous surgeons, some cases, alas, almost hopeless from the first. At the head of this establishment was one of those kindly self-abnegating personalities, whose loving sympathy and encouragement have comforted the dying and smoothed the path for many a weary pilgrim passing from this life to the next. With immense responsibilities on her shoulders, and after a day full of strenuous work, the head of this establishment would often sit through the night for hours by the couch of those whose lives could not possibly be prolonged for more than a few days. It was a few simple answers elicited by the questions brought to me from those poor sufferers, and the way such answers seemed to calm anxieties connected with the fear of death and to render the impenetrable Veil more transparent, which suggested the title, Through a Window in the Blank Wall.