ng of the next one, and he will
have lost none of the sequence of the narrative.

For those who bravely stay with me here, I must explain that from the
heritage of millions of our ancestors, and from our own consciousness
of Time, we have been forced to think wrongly. Not that the thing is
abstruse. It is not. If we had no consciousness of Time at all, any of
us could grasp it readily. But our consciousness works against us, and
so we must wrench away.

This analogy occurs to me: There are two ants of human intelligence
to whom we are trying to explain the nature of Space. One ant is
blind, and one can see, and always has seen, its limited, tiny,
Spatial world. Neither ant has ever been more than a few feet across a
little patch of sand and leaves. I think we could explain the
immensity of North and South America, Europe, Asia and the rest more
easily to the blind ant!

So if you will make allowances for your heritage, and the hindrance of
your consciousness of Time, I would like to set before you the real
nature of things as they have been, are, and will be.

Throughout the years from 1935 to 2930, man learned many things. And
these things--theory or fact, as you will--were told to Larry and me
by Tina and Harl. They seem even to my limited intelligence singularly
beautiful conceptions of the Great Cosmos. I feel, too, that
inevitably they must be included in my narrative for its best
understanding.

* * * * *

By 2930, A. D., the keenest minds of philosophical, metaphysical,
religious and scientific thought had reached the realization that all
channels lead but to the same goal--Understanding. The many divergent
factors, the ancient differing schools of philosophy and metaphysics,
the supposedly irreconcilable viewpoints of religion and science--all
this was recognized merely to be man's limitation of intellect. These
were gropings along different paths, all leading to the same
destination; divergent paths at the start, but coming together as the
goal of Understanding was approached; so that the travelers upon each
path were near enough together to laugh and hail each other with: "But
I thought that you were very far away and going wrongly!"

And so, in 2930, the conception of Space and Time and the Great Cosmos
was this:

In the Beginning there was a void of Nothingness. A Timeless,
Spaceless Nothingness. And in it came a Thought. A purposeful
Thought--all pervading, all wise