ABSTRACT
Human beings cannot get along without perspective, that property both of the senses and of our images of fact and of value which makes the near look larger, demand our attention more insistently and be more highly valued than the far. The near seems big and imminent, and impresses itself on our attention; it is therefore not surprising that the near is dear and is more highly valued than the far. As we expand our intellectual capacity to develop realistic images of the universe--that is, the totality of reality--we come to recognize that perspective is in some sense an illusion of perception. We understand that the person right next to us whose image covers a large part of our retina, is in fact no larger than the person a mile away whom we can barely see.
