G.'s lecture on cosmoses and the talk following it greatly aroused my curiosity. This was a direct transition from the "three-dimensional universe" with which we had begun, to the problems which I had elaborated in the New Model of the Universe, that is, to the problems of space and time and higher dimensions, on which I had been working for several years.
For over a year G. added nothing to what he had said about cosmoses.
Several of us tried to approach these problems from many different sides and, although all of us felt a great deal of potential energy in the idea of cosmoses, for a long time we got no results. We were especially confused by the "Microcosmos."
"If it were possible to take man as the Microcosmos and the Tritocosmos as the human race, or rather as organic life, it would be much easier to establish the relation of man to other cosmoses," one of us, Z., said in this connection, who with me had attempted to understand and to develop further the idea of the cosmoses.
But on the one or two occasions that we began to speak to G. about it he persisted in his definitions.
I remember once when he was leaving Petersburg, it was possibly even his final departure in 1917, one of us asked him at the station something relating to cosmoses.
"Try to understand what the Microcosmos means," answered G. "If you succeed in understanding this, then all the rest about which you ask now will become clear to you."
I remember that when we talked about it later the question was quite easy to solve when we took the "Microcosmos" as man.
It was certainly conditional, but nevertheless it was in complete accord with the whole system which studied the world and man. Every individual living being—a dog, a cat, a tree—could be taken as a Microcosmos; the combination of all living beings constituted the Tritocosmos or organic life on earth. These definitions seemed to me the only ones that were logically possible. And I could not understand why G. objected to them.
At any rate, some time later when I returned again to the problem of cosmoses I decided to take man as the Microcosmos, and to take the Tritocosmos as organic life on earth.
With such a construction a great number of things began to be much more connected. And once, looking through a manuscript of "Glimpses of Truth" given me by G., that is, the beginning of the story that was read at the Moscow group the first time I went there, I found in it the expressions "Macrocosmos" and "Microcosmos"; moreover "Microcosmos" meant man.
Now you have some idea of the laws governing the life of the Macrocosmos and have returned to the Earth. Recall to yourself: "As above, so below." I think that already, without any further explanation, you will not dispute the statement that the life of individual man—the Microcosmos—is governed by the same laws.
—"Glimpses of Truth"
This still further strengthened us in our decision to understand "Microcosmos" as applying to man. Later it became clear to us why G. wished to make us apply the concept "Microcosmos" to small magnitudes as compared with man, and to what he wished to direct our thought by this.
I remember one conversation on this subject.
"If we want to represent graphically the interrelation of the cosmoses," I said, "we must take the Microcosmos, that is, man, as a point, that is to say, we must take him on a very small scale and, as it were, at a very great distance from ourselves. Then his life in the Tritocosmos, that is, among other people and in the midst of nature, will be the line which he traces on the surface of the earthly globe in moving from place to place. In the Mesocosmos, that is, taken in connection with the twenty-four hours' motion of the earth around its axis, this line will become a plane, whereas taken in relation to the sun, that is, taking into consideration the motion of the earth around the sun, it will become a three-
dimensional body, or, in other words, it will be something really existing, something realized. But as the fundamental point, that is, the man or the Microcosmos, was also a three-dimensional body, we have consequently two three-dimensionalities.
"In this case all the possibilities of man are actualized in the sun. This corresponds to what has been said before, namely, that man number seven becomes immortal within the limits of the solar system.
"Beyond the sun, that is, beyond the solar system, he has not and cannot have any existence, or in other words, from the point of view of the next cosmos he does not exist at all. A man does not exist at all in the Macrocosmos. The Macrocosmos is the cosmos in which the possibilities of the Tritocosmos are realized and man can exist in the Macrocosmos only as an atom of the Tritocosmos. The possibilities of the earth are actualized in the Megalocosmos and the possibilities of the sun are actualized in the Protocosmos.
"If the Microcosmos, or man, is a three-dimensional body, then the Tritocosmos— organic life on earth—is a four-dimensional body. The earth has five dimensions and the sun—six.
"The usual scientific view takes man as a three-dimensional body; it takes organic life on earth as a whole, more as a phenomenon than a three-dimensional body; it takes the earth as a three-dimensional body;
the sun as a three-dimensional body; the solar system as a three-dimensional body; and the Milky Way as a three-dimensional body.
"The inexactitude of this view becomes evident if we try to conceive the existence of one cosmos within the other, that is, of a lower cosmos in a higher, of a smaller cosmos in a greater, such as, for instance, the existence of man in organic life or in relation to organic life. In this case organic life must inevitably be taken in time. Existence in time is an extension along the fourth dimension.
"Neither can the earth be regarded as a three-dimensional body. It would be three- dimensional if it were stationary. Its motion around its axis makes man a five- dimensional being, whereas its motion around the sun makes the earth itself four- dimensional. The earth is not a sphere but a spiral encircling the sun, and the sun is not a sphere but a kind of spindle inside this spiral. The spiral and the spindle, taken together, must have a lateral motion in the next cosmos, but what results from this motion we cannot know, for we know neither the nature nor the direction of the motion.
"Further, seven cosmoses represent a 'period of dimensions,' but this does not mean that the chain of cosmoses comes to an end with the Microcosmos. If man is a Microcosmos, that is, a cosmos in himself, then the microscopic cells composing his body will stand towards him in about the same relation as he himself stands to organic life on earth. A microscopic cell which is on the boundary line of microscopic vision is composed of milliards of molecules comprising the next step, the next cosmos. Going still further, we can say that the next cosmos will be the electron. Thus we have obtained a second Microcosmos—the cell; a third Microcosmos—the molecule; and a fourth Microcosmos—the electron. These divisions and definitions, namely 'cells,' 'molecules,' and 'electrons,' are possibly very imperfect; it may be that with time science will establish others, but the principle will remain always the same and lower cosmoses will always be in precisely such relation to the Microcosmos."
It is difficult to reconstruct all the conversations which we had at that time about cosmoses.
I returned particularly often to G.'s words about the difference of time in different cosmoses. I felt that here was a riddle which I could and must solve.
Finally having decided to try to put together everything I thought on the subject, I took man as the Microcosmos. The next cosmos in relation to man I took as "organic life on earth," which I called "Tritocosmos" although I did not understand this name, because I would have been unable to answer the question why organic life on earth was the "third" cosmos. But the name is immaterial. After that everything was in accordance with G.'s system. Below man, that is, as the next smaller cosmos, was the "cell." Not any cell and not a cell under any conditions, but a fairly large cell, such as for instance the embryo-cell of the human organism. As the next cosmos one could take a small, ultramicroscopic cell. The idea of two cosmoses in the microscopic world, that is, the idea of two microscopic individuals differing one from the other as much as does "man" from a "large cell," is perfectly clear in bacteriology.