Chapter X (part 2)

______ The "infinite sphere" by which we represent the universe to ourselves is constantly and continuously changing: in every consecutive moment it is not that which it was before. A constant change of pictures, images, relations, is going on therein. It is for us as it were the screen of a cinematograph upon which the swiftly running images of pictures appear and disappear. But where are the pictures themselves? Where is the light throwing the image upon the screen? Whence do the pictures come, and whither do they go? p. 114 If the "infinite sphere" is the screen of the cinematograph so our consciousness is the light , penetrating through our psyche: i.e., through the stores of our impressions (pictures) it (the light) throws upon the screen their images which we call life . But where do the impressions come from to us? From the same screen . And herein dwells the most incomprehensible mystery of life as we see it. We are creating it and we are receiving everything from it. Imagine a man sitting in the ordinary moving-picture theatre. Imagine that he knows nothing of the construction of the cinematograph, nothing of the existence of the lantern behind his back , nor of the small transparent picture on the moving film. Let us imagine that he wants to study the cinematograph, and begins to study that which proceeds on the screen, to make notes, to take pictures, to observe the order, to calculate, to construct hypotheses, and so forth. At what will he arrive? Evidently at nothing at all, unless he will turn his back to the screen, and will begin to study the cause of the appearance of the pictures upon the screen . The cause is confined in the lantern (i.e., in consciousness), and in the moving films of pictures (in the psyche). These it is necessary to study, desiring to understand the "cinematograph." Positive philosophy studies only the screen and the pictures passing upon it. For this reason the eternal enigma remains for it: wherefrom are the pictures coming and where are they going, and why are they coming and going instead of remaining eternally the same? But it is necessary to study the cinematograph beginning with the source of light , i.e., with consciousness , then to pass on to the pictures on the moving film, and only after that to study the projected image . ______ We have established that the animal (the horse, the cat, the dog) must perceive the immobile angles and curves of the third dimension as motion, i.e., as temporal phenomena. The question arises: do not we perceive as motion, i.e., as temporal p. 115 phenomena, the immobile angles and curves of the fourth dimension? We ordinarily say that our sensations are the moments of the apprehension of certain changes proceeding outside of us; such are sound, light, etc., all "vibrations of the ether." But what are these "changes?" Perhaps in reality there are no changes at all. Perhaps the immobile sides and angles of certain things which exist outside of us—of certain things which we know nothing about—only appear to us as motions, i.e., as changes. It may be that our consciousness, not being able to embrace these things with the aid of the organs of sense , and to represent them to itself in their entirety, just as they are , and grasping only the separate moments of its contact with them, is constructing the illusion of motion, and conceives that something is moving outside of it (of consciousness), i.e., that the "things" are themselves moving. If such is the case, then "motion" must be in reality something only "derived," arising in our intellect during its contact with things which it does not grasp in their totality. Let us imagine that we are approaching an unknown city, and that it is slowly "growing up" before us as we approach.