Einstein and the Universe: A Popular Exposition of the Famous Theory

This book is not a romance. Nevertheless.... If love is, as Plato says, a soaring toward the infinite, where shall we find more love than in the impassioned curiosity which impels us, with bowed heads and beating hearts, against the wall of mystery that environs our material world? Behind that wall, we feel, there is something sublime. What is it? Science is the outcome of the search for that mysterious something.

A giant blow has recently been struck, by a man of consummate ability, Albert Einstein, upon this wall which conceals reality from us. A little of the light from beyond now comes to us through the breach he has made, and our eyes are enchanted, almost dazzled, by the rays. I propose here to give, as simply and clearly as is possible, some faint reflex of the impression it has made upon us.

Einstein’s theories have brought about a profound revolution in science. In their light the world seems simpler, more co-ordinated, more in unison. We shall henceforward realise better how grandiose and coherent it is, how it is ruled by an inflexible harmony. A little of the ineffable will become clearer to us.

Men, as they pass through the universe, are like those specks of dust which dance for a moment in the golden rays of the sun, then sink into the darkness. Is there a finer or nobler way of spending this life than to fill one’s eyes, one’s mind, one’s heart with the immortal, yet so elusive, rays? What higher pleasure can there be than to contemplate, to seek, to understand, the magnificent and astounding spectacle of the universe?

There is in reality more of the marvellous and the romantic than there is in all our poor dreams. In the thirst for knowledge, in the mystic impulse which urges us toward the deep heart of the Unknown, there is more passion and more sweetness than in all the trivialities which sustain so many literatures. I may be wrong, after all, in saying that this book is not a romance.

I will endeavour in these pages to make the reader understand, accurately, yet without the aid of the esoteric apparatus of the technical writer, the revolution brought about by Einstein. I will try also to fix its limits; to state precisely what, at the most, we can really know to-day about the external world when we regard it through the translucent screen of science.

Every revolution is followed by a reaction, in virtue of the rhythm which seems to be an inherent and eternal law of the mind of man. Einstein is at once the Sieyès, the Mirabeau, and the Danton of the new revolution. But the revolution has already produced its fanatical Marats, who would say to science: “Thus far and no farther.”

Hence we find some resistance to the pretensions of over-zealous apostles of the new scientific gospel. In the Academy of Sciences M. Paul Painlevé takes his place, with all the strength of a vigorous mathematical genius, between Newton, who was supposed to be overthrown, and Einstein. In my final pages I will examine the penetrating criticisms of the great French geometrician. They will help me to fix the precise position, in the evolution of our ideas, of Einstein’s magnificent synthesis. But I would first expound the synthesis itself with all the affection which one must bestow upon things that one would understand.

Science has not completed its task with the work of Einstein. There remains many a depth that is for us unfathomable, waiting for some genius of to-morrow to throw light into it. It is the very essence of the august and lofty grandeur of science that it is perpetually advancing. It is like a torch in the sombre forest of mystery. Man enlarges every day the circle of light which spreads round him, but at the same time, and in virtue of his very advance, he finds himself confronting, at an increasing number of points, the darkness of the Unknown. Few men have borne the shaft of light so deeply into the forest as has Einstein. In spite of the sordid cares which harass us to-day, amid so many grave contingencies, his system reveals to us an element of grandeur.