The Life of Space

Abstract

SINCE the publication of work on the theory of relativity during the War made this subject one of popular interest, there have been many attempts to interpret the significance of the theory in its relation to everyday life. The problem of the fourth dimension is one which occasionally is transformed from the symbolical language of mathematics to the imaginative fancy of popular writing. It is therefore with added interest that one turns to a book of this description by Maurice Maeterlinck. The work is divided into five sections, but the first one, namely, that of “he Fourth Dimension”, is the longest and gives various references to writers who, like Hinton and Ouspensky, have devoted considerable thought to the implications of the fourth dimension. Maeterlinck then deals with “The Cultivation of Dreams” and makes particular reference to dreams as premonitory phenomena. The following section is headed “The Isolation of Man” and raises the question of whether the mind may acquire the sense of the fourth dimension, thus being liberated from our present human environment. The book concludes with two short articles on “Marvels of Space and Time” and “God”. The subject dealt with is, of course, a very wide one and lends itself to much speculation, and among the great number of names to which reference is made we find those of Eddington and Whitehead.

The Life of Space.

By Maurice Maeterlinck. Translated by Bernard Miall. Pp. 171. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1928.) 6s. net.