We observe the solar systems, and the atomic systems, as worlds or specks of matter connected internally, and to us, by forces to which we have given names such as gravity, attraction-and-repulsion, magnetic fields, but the fact simply is that the limitation of our senses only enables us to perceive the 'worlds' and 'specks' as what we call matter, and the links between them as invisible forces known to us by inference or through instruments more sensitive than ourselves. If our senses were other than they are we might perceive the linking forces as solid whereas the material objects themselves might be invisible.
We can scarcely doubt that neither matter nor forces of attraction-and-repulsion are in themselves more or less 'solid' or 'imponderable' the one than the others, for such are merely evaluations, and that with still more adequate sensorial apparatus we should perceive the whole cosmic set-up as one homogenous and continuous structure.
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Jack and Jill, Georges and Marie are sitting round a table, with Jumbo beside them, hoping for a biscuit, and Minouche asleep in an armchair nearby. No doubt they think of themselves as totally isolated individuals (the four who are cursed with thought), communicating noisily by means of a system nearly as cumbersome as the system of flags which ships used to use to communicate at sea.
But are they? If our senses, the senses of you and me who are looking through the window, were more adequate than they are, might we not see all six 'material' objects and the magnetic fields surrounding them, with the attractions-and-repulsions connecting them, as one continuous whole? Or might we not perceive the attractions and repulsions as visible, and the 'material' objects as merely inferential, so that the communications between them were real and continual and immediate, and their clamorous interchange of verbal reaction totally inexistent?
Has the picture less verisimilitude than the one we first saw?
Note: Ouspensky suggested that points far apart in tridimensional space can touch one another in a further dimension, and that what we know as proximity and separation may appear as affinity and repulsion, sympathy and antipathy.
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