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.

And the idea of that potentiality awakens another quality of
horror,--the horror of infinite Possibility. For this Inscrutable that
pulses through substance as if substance were not at all,--so subtly
that none can feel the flowing of its tides, yet so swiftly that no
life-time would suffice to count the number of the oscillations which