“Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional gulf. He is himself his own world, his own universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not length, nor breadth, nor height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen.”

He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words, “Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It.”

“What,” said I, “does the puny creature mean by ‘It’?”