I realize that the illustration is inadequate, but it is the best
I can give to show that all appreciation of the experience
of other persons comes through reducing it to the common
basis from which they and we alike spring. We interpret
other lives in terms of our own, that is, in terms of the
universal element in our own.
So all appreciation of literature, all reading of history

* Compare C. H. Hinton, The RecogniHon of the Fourth Dimen-
sum. Bulletin number XIV, pp. 179-204, of the Washington
Philosophical Society, published by the Society, Washington, 1002.
Mr. Hinton's pa{)er shows the impossibility of imagining and the
difficulty of conceiving a fourth dimension of space.
Compare also £. Jouffret, TraiU ilhnentavre de G^onUtne &
Qtuiire Dimenaions et Introduction h la GionUtrie d. n Dimeneions.
Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1903.
An interesting little book called FlaUand; A Romance of Many
Dimeneiona, By a Smtare, Little, Brown A Co., Boston, 1899,
attempts to imagine lite in space of two dimensions and incidentally
oontams much bright satire on human life.
THE UNITY OP HUMAN LIFE 23

depends upon this unity of human life. This is Emerson'c
constant thought, expressed in hb greatest essays, as those
on the Over-Soul and History.^

"I am the owner of the sphere.
Of the seven stars and the solar year.
