There is a curious passage in the works of Immanuel Kant,[1] in which he shows that space must be in the mind before we can observe things in space. “For,” he says, “since everything we conceive is conceived as being in space, there is nothing which comes before our minds from which the idea of space can be derived; it is equally present in the most rudimentary perception and the most complete.” Hence he says that space belongs to the perceiving soul itself. Without going into this argument to abstract regions, it has a great amount of practical truth. All our perceptions are of things in space; we cannot think of any detail, however limited or isolated, which is not in space.
[1] The idea of space can “nicht aus den Verhältnissen der äusseren Erscheinung durch Erfahrung erborgt sein, sondern diese äussere Erfahrung ist nur durch gedachte Vorstellung allererst möglich.”
Hence, in order to exercise our perceptive powers, it is well to have prepared beforehand a strong apprehension of space and space relations.
And so, as we pass on, is it not easily conceivable that, with our power of higher space perception so rudimentary and so unorganized, we should find it impossible to perceive higher existences? That mode of perception which it belongs to us to exercise is wanting. What wonder, then, that we cannot see the objects which are ready, were but our own part done?
Think how much has come into human life through exercising the power of the three-dimensional space perception, and we can form some measure, in a faint way, of what is in store for us.
There is a certain reluctance in us in bringing anything, which before has been a matter of feeling, within the domain of conscious reason. We do not like to explain why the grass is green, flowers bright, and, above all, why we have the feelings which we pass through.
But this objection and instinctive reluctance is chiefly derived from the fact that explaining has got to mean explaining away. We so often think that a thing is explained, when it can be shown simply to be another form of something which we know already. And, in fact, the wearied mind often does long to have a phenomenon shown to be merely a deduction from certain known laws.
But explanation proper is not of this kind; it is introducing into the mind the new conception which is indicated by the phenomenon already present. Nature consists of many entities towards the apprehension of which we strive. If for a time we break down the bounds which we have set up, and unify vast fields of observation under one common law, it is that the conceptions we formed at first are inadequate, and must be replaced by greater ones. But it is always the case, that, to understand nature, a conception must be formed in the mind. This process of growth in the mental history is hidden; but it is the really important one. The new conception satisfies more facts than the old ones, is truer phenomenally; and the arguments for it are its simplicity, its power of accounting for many facts. But the conception has to be formed first. And the real history of advance lies in the growth of the new conceptions which every now and then come to light.
When the weather-wise savage looked at the sky at night, he saw many specks of yellow light, like fire-flies, sprinkled amidst whitish fleece; and sometimes the fleece remained, the fire-spots went, and rain came; sometimes the fire-spots remained, and the night was fine. He did not see that the fire-points were ever the same, the clouds different; but by feeling dimly, he knew enough for his purpose.
But when the thinking mind turned itself on these appearances, there sprang up,—not all at once, but gradually,—the knowledge of the sublime existences of the distant heavens, and all the lore of the marvellous forms of water, of air, and the movements of the earth. Surely these realities, in which lies a wealth of embodied poetry, are well worth the delighted sensuous apprehension of the savage as he gazed.