
The Einstein position is that because motion, uniform or accelerated, has no
actuality, the appearances must be due to some condition of their medium.
The real things in nature are energies, activities.  They manifest themselves
to consciousness in forms differing according to the point of view.  The
space form is not real; neither is the time form.  The real form of the
medium containing these activities is as yet inconceivable mixture of space
and time created by them.

Before attempting a picture of the results of the special theory, it will be
useful first briefly to summarize them.

When two bodies move in relation to each other, if the observer is on the
one, it is the other that is moving, while if he is on the other, it is the
first that is moving.  The time units will be longer and lengths will be
shorter and mass will be greater on the relatively moving body as viewed from
the relatively stationary one; and precisely the same results will be
obtained VICE VERSA.  Nevertheless the differences are actual.  Each body has
its own length and time measurements and mass according to some condition of
energy within it which corresponds to its state of motion.  The motion
however, is not absolute or actual, but only relative to that of some other
body.  The shortening of lengths on the relatively moving body occurs in the
direction of travel only.  Across the direction of travel, there is no such
affect, so that is your system be traveling rapidly enough, all bodies will
be flattened in the direction of travel, but will recover again, if the
shortened length be pointed perpendicularly to its previous direction.

But these changes cannot be detected by an observer traveling with them.  His
measuring rods, including the retinas of his eyes, will suffer corresponding
changes.  By no device, accidental or experimental, according to the
mathematicians, can these changes be discovered.  For all we know the earth,
in the multitude of its motions as a part of the moving solar system,, may be
traveling relative to some unknown body, at some velocity approaching that of
light, say at 161,000 MPS, a velocity which would double the length of its
time units and halve the lengths of all bodies on it, in the direction of
travel, as compared with what they would be if the earth were relatively at
rest.  Turn these bodies at right angles and their length will immediately
double.  We could not perceive it, any more than we could perceive our
motion, whatever the velocity.  To us everything on earth would be the same
whether we were traveling at 161,000 MPS or 18 MPS.

If two human beings were alone in space, moving toward each other at uniform
velocity, neither would be conscious of his own motion, but each would
conceive of the other as moving toward him.  When they came into violent
collision, they would certainly each be conscious that a force existed
somewhere, whether in one or the other or both of their bodies, or in the
intervening medium.

In the case supposed, according to Einstein, it exists in neither body in the
form of actual motion, but its effects are actually to change time and
measurements units and mass on both, and to make both move for an outside,
relatively stationary observer, the only apparent solution is that the motion
producing cause LIES IN THE STRAIN OR TWIST OR CURVATURE OF THE INTERVENING
SPACE PRODUCED BY THE BODIES OR BY THAT ENERGY IN THEM WHICH EXPRESSES ITSELF
TO US IN THE MOTION THUS INDIRECTLY CAUSED BY IT.

Now space, like time, like sensation, is a mental form, a condition of
consciousness.  Mind cannot perceive or know that which is the conditioning
of its functioning, even though it expresses a noumenal reality.  (Noumenon
is the opposite of phenomenon.  That which is apprehended as an object solely
by the understanding, apart from any mediation through sense.  The unknowable
real object, substance, or thing-in-itself which the mind posits as the
basis, ground, or cause of phenomenon.) I think that the definition is more
complicated than the statement.

Speculation as to the inherent nature of space has hitherto been deemed
non-scientific.  Here is apparently an attempt to pierce the veil, not only
by positing space or the substituted medium, 'space-time', in its essence,
but apparently attributing to it as a quality, susceptibility to curvature, a
quality or mode, moreover, not only admittedly inconceivable, but
inconsistent with the space form which is the universal condition of all
present conception of an external world.  But perhaps a better interpretation
of the Einstein meaning is that, as we only know space and time in connection
with bodies, their extension and motion, the confusion arises from the mental
separation and abstraction of space and time.  They do not exist apart from
the totality of phenomena and their action.  Their appearance to us is due to
our special condition.  With different faculties and when dealing with high
energies, we should be able to perceive a new space-time reality, not
nomeneal, to which we are able, even now, to pierce by logical processes, and
which we are able to demonstrate by empiric proof.

