s of things, we are making the human body
our standard--the body whose dimensions are no doubt determined by
convenience in relation to terrestrial conditions, but have otherwise
no sort of sanctity or superiority, rightness or fitness. It happens
to be the object to which is attached the highest form of
consciousness we know; but consciousness itself has neither parts nor
magnitude. And consciousness itself is essentially greater than the
very vastness which appals us, seeing that it embraces and envelops
it. Enormous depths of space are pictured in my brain, through my
optic nerve; and what eludes the magic mirror of my retina, my mind
can conceive, apprehend, make its own. It is not even true to say that
the mind cannot conceive infinity--the real truth (if I may for once
be Chestertonian), the real truth is that it can conceive nothing
else. "When Berkeley said there was no matter"--it mattered greatly
what he said. Nothing can be more certain than that, apart from
percipience, there is no matter that matters. From the point of view
of pantheism (the only logical theism) God, far from being a Veiled
Being, or an Invisible King, is precisely the mind which translates
itself into the visible, sensible universe, and impresses itself, in
the form of a never-ending pageant, upon our cognate minds. It has
been thought that human consciousness may have come into being because
God wanted an audience. He was tired of being a cinematograph-film
unreeling before empty benches. Some people have even carried the
speculation further, and wondered whether the attachment of
percipience to organized matter, as in the case of human beings, may
not be a necessary stage in the culture of a pure percipience, capable
of furnishing the pageant of the universe with a permanent and
appreciative audience. In that case the Scottish Catechism would be
justified, which asks "What is the chief end of man?" and answers (as
Stevenson says) nobly if obscurely: "To glorify God and to enjoy Him
forever." But enough of these idle fantasies. What is certain is that
we can hold up our heads serenely among the immensities, knowing that
we are immenser than they. Even if they were malevolent--and that they
do not seem to be--they are no more terrible than the familiar dangers
of our homely earth. They cannot hurt us more than we can be hurt--an
obvious truism but one which is often overlooked. And this brings us
to the consideration of the second fallacy w