Note 89 — Introductory material

But the possibility of an inaccuracy so slight, that our finest instruments and our most distant parallaxes show no trace of it, would trouble men's minds no more than the analogous chance of inaccuracy in the law of gravitation, were it not for the philosophical import of even the slenderest possibility in this sphere. And it is the philosophical bearing of Metageometry alone, I think, which constitutes its real importance. Even if, as we will suppose for the moment, observation had established, beyond the possibility of doubt, that our space might be safely regarded as Euclidean, still Metageometry would have shown a philosophical possibility, and on this ground alone it could claim, I think, very nearly all the attention which it at present deserves.