Is the
world of science aware of the real cause of Zollner's premature death?
When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the
fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful
posterity. But this will neither recall him to life, nor will it
obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of
this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death
to receive the donkey's kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly
charged with lunacy.
Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the
help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to
fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the
heavenly bodies, and--no more. So far, it has been unable to discover
with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun,
stars, or even cometary matter. Of the latter, it seems to know no more
than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old
Chaldea and Egypt--namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the
rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction.
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