...  “And then comes the thought of this universal matrix itself, anteceding alike creation or evolution, whichever be assumed, and infinitely transcending both, alike in extent and duration; since both, if conceived at all, must be conceived as having had beginnings, while Space had no beginning.  The thought of this blank form of existence which, explored in all directions as far as imagination can reach, has, beyond that, an unexplored region compared with which the part which imagination has traversed is but infinitesimal,—­the thought of a Space compared with which our immeasurable sidereal system dwindles to a point is a thought too overwhelming to be dwelt upon.  Of late years the consciousness that without origin or cause infinite Space has ever existed and must ever exist, produces in me a feeling from which I shrink.”

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How the idea of infinite Space may affect a mind incomparably more powerful than my own, I cannot know;—­neither can I divine the nature of certain problems which the laws of space-relation present to the geometrician.  But when I try to determine the cause of the horror which that idea evokes within my own feeble imagination, I am able to distinguish different elements of the emotion,—­particular forms of terror responding to particular ideas (rational and irrational) suggested by the revelations of science.  One feeling—­perhaps the main element of the horror—­is made by the thought of being prisoned forever and ever within that unutterable Viewlessness which occupies infinite Space.

Behind this feeling there is more than the thought of eternal circumscription;—­there is also the idea of being perpetually penetrated, traversed, thrilled by the Nameless;—­there is likewise the certainty that no least particle of innermost secret Self could shun the eternal touch of It;—­there is furthermore the tremendous conviction that could the Self of me rush with the swiftness of light,—­with more than the swiftness of light,—­beyond all galaxies, beyond durations of time so vast that Science knows no sign by which their magnitudes might be indicated,—­and still flee onward, onward, downward, upward,—­always, always,—­never could that Self of me reach nearer to any verge, never speed farther from any centre.  For, in that Silence, all vastitude and height and depth and time and direction are swallowed up:  relation therein could have no meaning but for the speck of my fleeting consciousness,—­atom of terror pulsating alone through atomless, soundless, nameless, illimitable potentiality.