And there can be no possible mental harm in going through this bit of training, for all that it comes to is looking at a real thing as it actually is—turning it round and over and learning it from every point of view.
CHAPTER VI.
FUNCTION OF MIND. SPACE AGAINST METAPHYSICS. SELF-LIMITATION AND ITS TEST. A PLANE WORLD.
We now pass on to the question: Are there any other self elements present in our knowledge of the block of cubes?
When we have learnt to free it from up and down, is there anything else to be got rid of?
It seems as if, when the cubes were thus learnt, we had got as abstract and impersonal a bit of knowledge as possible.
But, in reality, in the relations of the cubes as we thus apprehend them there is present a self element to which the up and down is a mere trifle. If we think we have got absolute knowledge we are indeed walking on a thin crust in unconsciousness of the depths below.
We are so certain of that which we are habituated to, we are so sure that the world is made up of the mechanical forces and principles which we familiarly deal with, that it is more of a shock than a welcome surprise to us to find how mistaken we were.
And after all, do we suppose that the facts of distance and size and shape are the ultimate facts of the world—is it in truth made up like a machine out of mechanical parts? If so, where is there room for that other which we know—more certainly, because inwardly—that reverence and love which make life worth having? No; these mechanical relations are our means of knowing about the world; they are not reality itself, and their primary place in our imaginations is due to the familiarity which we have with them, and to the peculiar limitations under which we are.
But I do not for a moment wish to go in thought beyond physical nature—I do not suppose that in thought we can. To the mind it is only the body that appears, and all that I hope to do is to show material relations, mechanism, arrangements.