The peopled sea

Hath coral castles through whose lurid aisles
White mermaids flash and hippocamps disport
Amid the sunken argosies of Time,

Patined with gold and crusted o'er with gems-
All these are thine, thou unborn Edipus,
Who canst unveil the riddle of this Sphinx!

Yet, shall we say the rich, ripe fruit of Time Fell from the womb of Chance? The dreams, freshdrawn

From lustral fountains by a naiad troop,

And borne like dew in lily chalices

To my lone couch, are witnesses that still
A spark survives of what the race hath been.
See yonder shadow cross the sun; observe
The stoop of Atlas; note the line of care
Which mars the brow of kings; or hear the shriek
Of the mad mænad War-can Glory be
Attained save by the thorny track of Woe?

The universe proclaims there is a God!
From tongueless chaos, lutulent and foul,
He culled the vying wonders that we view;
Scatters the violets upon the heath,
And paints the silken petals of the rose;

He bids the planets sing-aye, and he feeds
The adder's tooth with venom; strews the rocks
Upon the pathway of the mariner;

His whirlwinds filch what his beneficence
Hath lavished on the orchard and the farm;
Anguished we cry for light, and see the forked
Tongue of the tempest lick the midnight's brow.

Lo, now, what festering horrors feed our grief:

Beauty decays, Nobility is slain,

Sin sheds his larve, and curst Hypocrisy
Barters his whine and rheum for place and gold.
'T may be, if there's a Providence all-wise,
The far untraversed forest tracts were grown
That on the Judgment Day there might not be
Dearth of good gallows-timber on this globe.

Tiptoe, the twilight muses on the hill;-
Should it descend into the slumbering town
To gild the misery of the driven mob,
Or, fleeing to primeval solitudes,
Hold discourse with the laughing deities
Of hort and vale, caress the airy fern,
And court the sylvan calm upon the sward's
Pied flocculence, where, mean solicitude

Being banished, all the elder gods again
Resume their interrupted reign, to bid

Sorrow and Sin and Shame begone from earth.

Man must approach to God by purity,

E'en as the highest mountains, undefiled

By human footfall, where the virgin snow
Lies chaste and spotless 'neath the amorous sun,
Are nearest heaven.

Let us, too, be brave!

Canst thou bribe thunderstorms with honeyed words,

Or curb with sandhills the choleric sea?

Where Sorrow strikes, let honorable scars

Remain, the blazon of our fortitude.

Be not of such slight, puny courage as
To drink nepenthes, or that slumbrous juice
Of dream-compelling poppy; can there be
Virtue more potent in a wayside weed

Than in the trodden heart's tear-wine of hope?
What laurel for the soul if Vice be shorn

Of her allurement, or the sword of Sin
Be dulled by sorcery? Could a coward hear
The prating trump of Triumph, and become
Not brave? 'T may be there is no God; whence then
Proceed the whisperings that abjure ourselves?
Could the chill alchemy of atheism

Transmute one earthy atom of this race
To the rich metal of divinity?

Yea, there is One that walks in human hearts,
Sandaled with rose-leaves, and with gentle touch
Weeds out all malice; balm upon her lips,

She stoops to kiss the humblest flowering thing;
The sculptured lily she awakes to life,
Paints irised poems on the sterile rock,
And strows the sod with immortality.
She leads the orchestra of brook and breeze,
Of bird and bee, in symphonies that swell,
Dulcet adagios of a seraph choir,
Across the sobbing solitude. She smiles,
And Sorrow is no more-sojourning Grief
Shoulders his wallet and forsakes thy roof.
Her robes of gossamer in cirrous twills
Bear health and happiness upon their seam;
Touch this, and thou art whole! In her tranced eyes
The gorgeous gonfalon of Day unfolds;

And Peace, sweet child of life's lorn Enna, sleeps
Upon her bosom.

Have ye heard her name;

Knelt in her temples; walked among her groves?
Love that doth thrill the molecule to dance,
And string the cosmic lyre with golden stars-

Love that doth kiss the lids of Death ajar,
Enchantress of the demiurgic word,

Mother of men and genetrix of time

At once the Law, the King, the Throne; at once
Doer and Deed, the Singer and the Song;

Breath of the gods that fills the lungs of space,
In which the suns are sparks of dust immerst;
The earliest Element and latest Form,
Orbit and Orb alike-immortal Love,
The promise and the potency of Life;
The gladness and the glory of the world!

GEORGE SEIBEL.

PITTSBURGH, PA.

CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.

TIME AND SPACE.1

The conceptions of time and space which I wish to develop here have arisen on the basis of experimental physics. Therein lies their strength. Their tendency is radical. From now on spacein-itself and time-in-itself are destined to be reduced to shadows, and only a sort of union of the two will retain an independent existence.

I.

I wish first to show how from the mechanics now generally accepted we might arrive by purely mathematical considerations at a change in our ideas of space and time. The equations of Newton's mechanics show a double invariance. Their form is maintained, first, if we subject our system of original coordinates in space to any change of position; second, if we change its state of motion, that is to say, impart to it any uniform translation; neither does the zero-point of time play any part. We are accustomed to considering the axioms of geometry as settled before we approach the axioms of mechanics, and therefore these two invariances are seldom mentioned together. Each of them represents a certain group of transformations, which transform the differential equations of mechanics back into themselves. The existence of the first group is regarded as a fundamental property of space. It is usually preferred to treat the second group with contempt in order to

1 Lecture delivered at the eightieth Congress of Naturalists at Cologne, September 21, 1908. Published in Physikalische Zeitschrift, X (1909, pp. 104111, and Jahresbericht der deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, Vol. XVIII, pp. 75-88; Gesammelte Abhandlungen, edited by D. Hilbert, pp. 431-444; also separately, Leipsic, B. G. Teubner, 1909. Translated from the German by Edward H. Carus who herewith expresses his gratitude to Prof. W. B. Smith of Tulane University for many suggestive criticisms.