Curiosities of the Poles.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13490, 11 January 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

Curiosities of the Poles.

A writer in the Contributors' Club of the " Atlantic Monthly" suggests some father amusing facts that would encompass a mail who stood on the North Pole: "So confusing to human 1 bought, are the ontological conditions which must prevail at the Poles, that it seems ao if Ihe human mind would surely give way in trying to cope with them. "Should any of our Arctic adventurers reach the. Pole, wo would come into such relations with time and space as 110 other man was ever-in. It is well known by all who have read philosophical treatises that time and space are very treacherous tilings. Indeed we are assured that- they are not: things at- all. One philosopher, whose luminous treatise lies before me as I write, favours his reader with the following remark : ' Space and time are not actual realities, but subjective function.; which synthesize the manifold sensational content' with which 110 will undoubtedly be burdened there, will not ' syntliesise' in the old familiar way at all. " Consider his situation. It is uncertain whether the Pole has: 110 longitude whatsoever, or has- all the longitude there is. I have examined a. geographical globe, and cannot, decide. On the one hand, all the meridians of longitude, come in there; hut 011 the other hand, they reduce- to a mere point al- the Pole; and <1 point is nothing. Suppose you were standing 011 t.'ie North .I'oje; either you would have a great deal too much longiLude, or else you would have none at all. Whichever way it was, it would be extremely confusing to a rational being brought up as we have been. It would jar his notions of space. Even if there is longitude there, it is not good for anything, for it is solely a matter of east and west-, and there is on east or -west, at the North Pole—all is poutb. 'Standing 011 that Pole, look which way you might, all, all would be south. That iceberg at your light and that one at your left- would be both south of you; both would be in the same direction.

"We may wll believe that our adventurer would slop off the Pole as quickly as he could. Suppose he should take a few steps south in any direction. He would thus acquire a little bit of east and w<rst and north: but his natural joy at this recovery would be brief. Looking back toward the Pole, where, of course, he had planted the American flag, he would see, let lis say. an iceberg beyond the flag, on i lie other side of the Pole. North, beyond question. But which way. would tlie iceberg be from him ? Can you tell? His line of vision would extend straight north until it reached the flag, and then continuing on in exactly the same direction, it would be going south. The same direction would be the same as the opposite direction.