strands of a skein of flax. Now if, _at the present moment_, this
skein were cut with a straight knife at right angles to its length,
the cut end would represent the _time plane_--that is, the present
moment of all--and it would be the same for all providing that the
time plane were flat _But is it really flat_? Isn't the straightness
of the knife a mere poverty of human imagination? Existence is always
richer and more dramatic than any diagram.

"Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round.
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless and ice will burn."

Undoubtedly the flat time-plane represents with fair accuracy the
temporal conditions that obtain in the human aggregate in this world
under normal conditions of consciousness, but if we consider our
relation to intelligent beings upon distant worlds of the visible
universe the conditions might be widely different The time section
corresponding to what our straight knife made flat in the case of
the flax may be--nay, probably is--strongly curved.


RELATIVITY

This crude analogy haltingly conveys what is meant by curved time.
It is an idea which is implicit in the Theory of Relativity. This
theory has profoundly modified many of our basic conceptions about
the universe in which we are immersed. It is outside the province of
this book and beyond the power of its author even so much as to
sketch the main outlines of this theory, but certain of its