Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. All other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE FOURTH DIMENSION

SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

“Mr. C. H. Hinton discusses the subject of the higher dimensionality of space, his aim being to avoid mathematical subtleties and technicalities, and thus enable his argument to be followed by readers who are not sufficiently conversant with mathematics to follow these processes of reasoning.”—Notts Guardian.

“The fourth dimension is a subject which has had a great fascination for many teachers, and though one cannot pretend to have quite grasped Mr. Hinton’s conceptions and arguments, yet it must be admitted that he reveals the elusive idea in quite a fascinating light. Quite apart from the main thesis of the book many chapters are of great independent interest. Altogether an interesting, clever and ingenious book.”—Dundee Courier.

“The book will well repay the study of men who like to exercise their wits upon the problems of abstract thought.”—Scotsman.

“Professor Hinton has done well to attempt a treatise of moderate size, which shall at once be clear in method and free from technicalities of the schools.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“A very interesting book he has made of it.”—Publishers’ Circular.

“Mr. Hinton tries to explain the theory of the fourth dimension so that the ordinary reasoning mind can get a grasp of what metaphysical mathematicians mean by it. If he is not altogether successful it is not from want of clearness on his part, but because the whole theory comes as such an absolute shock to all one’s preconceived ideas.”—Bristol Times.

“Mr. Hinton’s enthusiasm is only the result of an exhaustive study, which has enabled him to set his subject before the reader with far more than the amount of lucidity to which it is accustomed.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“The book throughout is a very solid piece of reasoning in the domain of higher mathematics.”—Glasgow Herald.

“Those who wish to grasp the meaning of this somewhat difficult subject would do well to read The Fourth Dimension. No mathematical knowledge is demanded of the reader, and any one, who is not afraid of a little hard thinking, should be able to follow the argument.”—Light.

“A splendidly clear re-statement of the old problem of the fourth dimension. All who are interested in this subject will find the work not only fascinating, but lucid, it being written in a style easily understandable. The illustrations make still more clear the letterpress, and the whole is most admirably adapted to the requirements of the novice or the student.”—Two Worlds.

“Those in search of mental gymnastics will find abundance of exercise in Mr. C. H. Hinton’s Fourth Dimension.”—Westminster Review.

First Edition, April 1904; Second Edition, May 1906.

Views of the Tessaract.

THE
FOURTH DIMENSION

BY

C. HOWARD HINTON, M.A.
AUTHOR OF “SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES”
“A NEW ERA OF THOUGHT,” ETC., ETC.

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED
25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY
1906

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

PREFACE

I have endeavoured to present the subject of the higher dimensionality of space in a clear manner, devoid of mathematical subtleties and technicalities. In order to engage the interest of the reader, I have in the earlier chapters dwelt on the perspective the hypothesis of a fourth dimension opens, and have treated of the many connections there are between this hypothesis and the ordinary topics of our thoughts.

A lack of mathematical knowledge will prove of no disadvantage to the reader, for I have used no mathematical processes of reasoning. I have taken the view that the space which we ordinarily think of, the space of real things (which I would call permeable matter), is different from the space treated of by mathematics. Mathematics will tell us a great deal about space, just as the atomic theory will tell us a great deal about the chemical combinations of bodies. But after all, a theory is not precisely equivalent to the subject with regard to which it is held. There is an opening, therefore, from the side of our ordinary space perceptions for a simple, altogether rational, mechanical, and observational way of treating this subject of higher space, and of this opportunity I have availed myself.

The details introduced in the earlier chapters, especially in Chapters VIII., IX., X., may perhaps be found wearisome. They are of no essential importance in the main line of argument, and if left till Chapters XI. and XII. have been read, will be found to afford interesting and obvious illustrations of the properties discussed in the later chapters.

My thanks are due to the friends who have assisted me in designing and preparing the modifications of my previous models, and in no small degree to the publisher of this volume, Mr. Sonnenschein, to whose unique appreciation of the line of thought of this, as of my former essays, their publication is owing. By the provision of a coloured plate, in addition to the other illustrations, he has added greatly to the convenience of the reader.

C. Howard Hinton.

CONTENTS

THE FOURTH DIMENSION

CHAPTER I
FOUR-DIMENSIONAL SPACE

There is nothing more indefinite, and at the same time more real, than that which we indicate when we speak of the “higher.” In our social life we see it evidenced in a greater complexity of relations. But this complexity is not all. There is, at the same time, a contact with, an apprehension of, something more fundamental, more real.

With the greater development of man there comes a consciousness of something more than all the forms in which it shows itself. There is a readiness to give up all the visible and tangible for the sake of those principles and values of which the visible and tangible are the representation. The physical life of civilised man and of a mere savage are practically the same, but the civilised man has discovered a depth in his existence, which makes him feel that that which appears all to the savage is a mere externality and appurtenage to his true being.

Now, this higher—how shall we apprehend it? It is generally embraced by our religious faculties, by our idealising tendency. But the higher existence has two sides. It has a being as well as qualities. And in trying to realise it through our emotions we are always taking the subjective view. Our attention is always fixed on what we feel, what we think. Is there any way of apprehending the higher after the purely objective method of a natural science? I think that there is.

Plato, in a wonderful allegory, speaks of some men living in such a condition that they were practically reduced to be the denizens of a shadow world. They were chained, and perceived but the shadows of themselves and all real objects projected on a wall, towards which their faces were turned. All movements to them were but movements on the surface, all shapes but the shapes of outlines with no substantiality.

Plato uses this illustration to portray the relation between true being and the illusions of the sense world. He says that just as a man liberated from his chains could learn and discover that the world was solid and real, and could go back and tell his bound companions of this greater higher reality, so the philosopher who has been liberated, who has gone into the thought of the ideal world, into the world of ideas greater and more real than the things of sense, can come and tell his fellow men of that which is more true than the visible sun—more noble than Athens, the visible state.

Now, I take Plato’s suggestion; but literally, not metaphorically. He imagines a world which is lower than this world, in that shadow figures and shadow motions are its constituents; and to it he contrasts the real world. As the real world is to this shadow world, so is the higher world to our world. I accept his analogy. As our world in three dimensions is to a shadow or plane world, so is the higher world to our three-dimensional world. That is, the higher world is four-dimensional; the higher being is, so far as its existence is concerned apart from its qualities, to be sought through the conception of an actual existence spatially higher than that which we realise with our senses.

Here you will observe I necessarily leave out all that gives its charm and interest to Plato’s writings. All those conceptions of the beautiful and good which live immortally in his pages.

All that I keep from his great storehouse of wealth is this one thing simply—a world spatially higher than this world, a world which can only be approached through the stocks and stones of it, a world which must be apprehended laboriously, patiently, through the material things of it, the shapes, the movements, the figures of it.

We must learn to realise the shapes of objects in this world of the higher man; we must become familiar with the movements that objects make in his world, so that we can learn something about his daily experience, his thoughts of material objects, his machinery.

The means for the prosecution of this enquiry are given in the conception of space itself.

It often happens that that which we consider to be unique and unrelated gives us, within itself, those relations by means of which we are able to see it as related to others, determining and determined by them.

Thus, on the earth is given that phenomenon of weight by means of which Newton brought the earth into its true relation to the sun and other planets. Our terrestrial globe was determined in regard to other bodies of the solar system by means of a relation which subsisted on the earth itself.

And so space itself bears within it relations of which we can determine it as related to other space. For within space are given the conceptions of point and line, line and plane, which really involve the relation of space to a higher space.

Where one segment of a straight line leaves off and another begins is a point, and the straight line itself can be generated by the motion of the point.

One portion of a plane is bounded from another by a straight line, and the plane itself can be generated by the straight line moving in a direction not contained in itself.

Again, two portions of solid space are limited with regard to each other by a plane; and the plane, moving in a direction not contained in itself, can generate solid space.

Thus, going on, we may say that space is that which limits two portions of higher space from each other, and that our space will generate the higher space by moving in a direction not contained in itself.

Another indication of the nature of four-dimensional space can be gained by considering the problem of the arrangement of objects.

If I have a number of swords of varying degrees of brightness, I can represent them in respect of this quality by points arranged along a straight line.

Fig. 1.

If I place a sword at A, [fig. 1], and regard it as having a certain brightness, then the other swords can be arranged in a series along the line, as at A, B, C, etc., according to their degrees of brightness.

Fig. 2.

If now I take account of another quality, say length, they can be arranged in a plane. Starting from A, B, C, I can find points to represent different degrees of length along such lines as AF, BD, CE, drawn from A and B and C. Points on these lines represent different degrees of length with the same degree of brightness. Thus the whole plane is occupied by points representing all conceivable varieties of brightness and length.

Fig. 3.

Bringing in a third quality, say sharpness, I can draw, as in [fig. 3], any number of upright lines. Let distances along these upright lines represent degrees of sharpness, thus the points F and G will represent swords of certain definite degrees of the three qualities mentioned, and the whole of space will serve to represent all conceivable degrees of these three qualities.

If now I bring in a fourth quality, such as weight, and try to find a means of representing it as I did the other three qualities, I find a difficulty. Every point in space is taken up by some conceivable combination of the three qualities already taken.

To represent four qualities in the same way as that in which I have represented three, I should need another dimension of space.

Thus we may indicate the nature of four-dimensional space by saying that it is a kind of space which would give positions representative of four qualities, as three-dimensional space gives positions representative of three qualities.

CHAPTER II
THE ANALOGY OF A PLANE WORLD

At the risk of some prolixity I will go fully into the experience of a hypothetical creature confined to motion on a plane surface. By so doing I shall obtain an analogy which will serve in our subsequent enquiries, because the change in our conception, which we make in passing from the shapes and motions in two dimensions to those in three, affords a pattern by which we can pass on still further to the conception of an existence in four-dimensional space.

A piece of paper on a smooth table affords a ready image of a two-dimensional existence. If we suppose the being represented by the piece of paper to have no knowledge of the thickness by which he projects above the surface of the table, it is obvious that he can have no knowledge of objects of a similar description, except by the contact with their edges. His body and the objects in his world have a thickness of which however, he has no consciousness. Since the direction stretching up from the table is unknown to him he will think of the objects of his world as extending in two dimensions only. Figures are to him completely bounded by their lines, just as solid objects are to us by their surfaces. He cannot conceive of approaching the centre of a circle, except by breaking through the circumference, for the circumference encloses the centre in the directions in which motion is possible to him. The plane surface over which he slips and with which he is always in contact will be unknown to him; there are no differences by which he can recognise its existence.

But for the purposes of our analogy this representation is deficient.

A being as thus described has nothing about him to push off from, the surface over which he slips affords no means by which he can move in one direction rather than another. Placed on a surface over which he slips freely, he is in a condition analogous to that in which we should be if we were suspended free in space. There is nothing which he can push off from in any direction known to him.

Let us therefore modify our representation. Let us suppose a vertical plane against which particles of thin matter slip, never leaving the surface. Let these particles possess an attractive force and cohere together into a disk; this disk will represent the globe of a plane being. He must be conceived as existing on the rim.

Fig. 4.

Let 1 represent this vertical disk of flat matter and 2 the plane being on it, standing upon its rim as we stand on the surface of our earth. The direction of the attractive force of his matter will give the creature a knowledge of up and down, determining for him one direction in his plane space. Also, since he can move along the surface of his earth, he will have the sense of a direction parallel to its surface, which we may call forwards and backwards.

He will have no sense of right and left—that is, of the direction which we recognise as extending out from the plane to our right and left.

The distinction of right and left is the one that we must suppose to be absent, in order to project ourselves into the condition of a plane being.

Let the reader imagine himself, as he looks along the plane, [fig. 4], to become more and more identified with the thin body on it, till he finally looks along parallel to the surface of the plane earth, and up and down, losing the sense of the direction which stretches right and left. This direction will be an unknown dimension to him.

Our space conceptions are so intimately connected with those which we derive from the existence of gravitation that it is difficult to realise the condition of a plane being, without picturing him as in material surroundings with a definite direction of up and down. Hence the necessity of our somewhat elaborate scheme of representation, which, when its import has been grasped, can be dispensed with for the simpler one of a thin object slipping over a smooth surface, which lies in front of us.

It is obvious that we must suppose some means by which the plane being is kept in contact with the surface on which he slips. The simplest supposition to make is that there is a transverse gravity, which keeps him to the plane. This gravity must be thought of as different to the attraction exercised by his matter, and as unperceived by him.

At this stage of our enquiry I do not wish to enter into the question of how a plane being could arrive at a knowledge of the third dimension, but simply to investigate his plane consciousness.

It is obvious that the existence of a plane being must be very limited. A straight line standing up from the surface of his earth affords a bar to his progress. An object like a wheel which rotates round an axis would be unknown to him, for there is no conceivable way in which he can get to the centre without going through the circumference. He would have spinning disks, but could not get to the centre of them. The plane being can represent the motion from any one point of his space to any other, by means of two straight lines drawn at right angles to each other.

Fig. 5.

Let AX and AY be two such axes. He can accomplish the translation from A to B by going along AX to C, and then from C along CB parallel to AY.

The same result can of course be obtained by moving to D along AY and then parallel to AX from D to B, or of course by any diagonal movement compounded by these axial movements.

By means of movements parallel to these two axes he can proceed (except for material obstacles) from any one point of his space to any other.

Fig. 6.

If now we suppose a third line drawn out from A at right angles to the plane it is evident that no motion in either of the two dimensions he knows will carry him in the least degree in the direction represented by AZ.

The lines AZ and AX determine a plane. If he could be taken off his plane, and transferred to the plane AXZ, he would be in a world exactly like his own. From every line in his world there goes off a space world exactly like his own.

Fig. 7.

From every point in his world a line can be drawn parallel to AZ in the direction unknown to him. If we suppose the square in [fig. 7] to be a geometrical square from every point of it, inside as well as on the contour, a straight line can be drawn parallel to AZ. The assemblage of these lines constitute a solid figure, of which the square in the plane is the base. If we consider the square to represent an object in the plane being’s world then we must attribute to it a very small thickness, for every real thing must possess all three dimensions. This thickness he does not perceive, but thinks of this real object as a geometrical square. He thinks of it as possessing area only, and no degree of solidity. The edges which project from the plane to a very small extent he thinks of as having merely length and no breadth—as being, in fact, geometrical lines.

With the first step in the apprehension of a third dimension there would come to a plane being the conviction that he had previously formed a wrong conception of the nature of his material objects. He had conceived them as geometrical figures of two dimensions only. If a third dimension exists, such figures are incapable of real existence. Thus he would admit that all his real objects had a certain, though very small thickness in the unknown dimension, and that the conditions of his existence demanded the supposition of an extended sheet of matter, from contact with which in their motion his objects never diverge.

Analogous conceptions must be formed by us on the supposition of a four-dimensional existence. We must suppose a direction in which we can never point extending from every point of our space. We must draw a distinction between a geometrical cube and a cube of real matter. The cube of real matter we must suppose to have an extension in an unknown direction, real, but so small as to be imperceptible by us. From every point of a cube, interior as well as exterior, we must imagine that it is possible to draw a line in the unknown direction. The assemblage of these lines would constitute a higher solid. The lines going off in the unknown direction from the face of a cube would constitute a cube starting from that face. Of this cube all that we should see in our space would be the face.

Again, just as the plane being can represent any motion in his space by two axes, so we can represent any motion in our three-dimensional space by means of three axes. There is no point in our space to which we cannot move by some combination of movements on the directions marked out by these axes.

On the assumption of a fourth dimension we have to suppose a fourth axis, which we will call AW. It must be supposed to be at right angles to each and every one of the three axes AX, AY, AZ. Just as the two axes, AX, AZ, determine a plane which is similar to the original plane on which we supposed the plane being to exist, but which runs off from it, and only meets it in a line; so in our space if we take any three axes such as AX, AY, and AW, they determine a space like our space world. This space runs off from our space, and if we were transferred to it we should find ourselves in a space exactly similar to our own.

We must give up any attempt to picture this space in its relation to ours, just as a plane being would have to give up any attempt to picture a plane at right angles to his plane.

Such a space and ours run in different directions from the plane of AX and AY. They meet in this plane but have nothing else in common, just as the plane space of AX and AY and that of AX and AZ run in different directions and have but the line AX in common.

Omitting all discussion of the manner on which a plane being might be conceived to form a theory of a three-dimensional existence, let us examine how, with the means at his disposal, he could represent the properties of three-dimensional objects.

Fig. 8.

There are two ways in which the plane being can think of one of our solid bodies. He can think of the cube, [fig. 8], as composed of a number of sections parallel to his plane, each lying in the third dimension a little further off from his plane than the preceding one. These sections he can represent as a series of plane figures lying in his plane, but in so representing them he destroys the coherence of them in the higher figure. The set of squares, A, B, C, D, represents the section parallel to the plane of the cube shown in figure, but they are not in their proper relative positions.

The plane being can trace out a movement in the third dimension by assuming discontinuous leaps from one section to another. Thus, a motion along the edge of the cube from left to right would be represented in the set of sections in the plane as the succession of the corners of the sections A, B, C, D. A point moving from A through BCD in our space must be represented in the plane as appearing in A, then in B, and so on, without passing through the intervening plane space.

In these sections the plane being leaves out, of course, the extension in the third dimension; the distance between any two sections is not represented. In order to realise this distance the conception of motion can be employed.

Fig. 9.

Let [fig. 9] represent a cube passing transverse to the plane. It will appear to the plane being as a square object, but the matter of which this object is composed will be continually altering. One material particle takes the place of another, but it does not come from anywhere or go anywhere in the space which the plane being knows.

The analogous manner of representing a higher solid in our case, is to conceive it as composed of a number of sections, each lying a little further off in the unknown direction than the preceding.

Fig. 10.

We can represent these sections as a number of solids. Thus the cubes A, B, C, D, may be considered as the sections at different intervals in the unknown dimension of a higher cube. Arranged thus their coherence in the higher figure is destroyed, they are mere representations.

A motion in the fourth dimension from A through B, C, etc., would be continuous, but we can only represent it as the occupation of the positions A, B, C, etc., in succession. We can exhibit the results of the motion at different stages, but no more.

In this representation we have left out the distance between one section and another; we have considered the higher body merely as a series of sections, and so left out its contents. The only way to exhibit its contents is to call in the aid of the conception of motion.

Fig. 11.

If a higher cube passes transverse to our space, it will appear as a cube isolated in space, the part that has not come into our space and the part that has passed through will not be visible. The gradual passing through our space would appear as the change of the matter of the cube before us. One material particle in it is succeeded by another, neither coming nor going in any direction we can point to. In this manner, by the duration of the figure, we can exhibit the higher dimensionality of it; a cube of our matter, under the circumstances supposed, namely, that it has a motion transverse to our space, would instantly disappear. A higher cube would last till it had passed transverse to our space by its whole distance of extension in the fourth dimension.

As the plane being can think of the cube as consisting of sections, each like a figure he knows, extending away from his plane, so we can think of a higher solid as composed of sections, each like a solid which we know, but extending away from our space.

Thus, taking a higher cube, we can look on it as starting from a cube in our space and extending in the unknown dimension.

Fig. 12.

Take the face A and conceive it to exist as simply a face, a square with no thickness. From this face the cube in our space extends by the occupation of space which we can see.

But from this face there extends equally a cube in the unknown dimension. We can think of the higher cube, then, by taking the set of sections A, B, C, D, etc., and considering that from each of them there runs a cube. These cubes have nothing in common with each other, and of each of them in its actual position all that we can have in our space is an isolated square. It is obvious that we can take our series of sections in any manner we please. We can take them parallel, for instance, to any one of the three isolated faces shown in the figure. Corresponding to the three series of sections at right angles to each other, which we can make of the cube in space, we must conceive of the higher cube, as composed of cubes starting from squares parallel to the faces of the cube, and of these cubes all that exist in our space are the isolated squares from which they start.

CHAPTER III
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL EXISTENCE

Having now obtained the conception of a four-dimensional space, and having formed the analogy which, without any further geometrical difficulties, enables us to enquire into its properties, I will refer the reader, whose interest is principally in the mechanical aspect, to Chapters VI. and VII. In the present chapter I will deal with the general significance of the enquiry, and in the next with the historical origin of the idea.

First, with regard to the question of whether there is any evidence that we are really in four-dimensional space, I will go back to the analogy of the plane world.

A being in a plane world could not have any experience of three-dimensional shapes, but he could have an experience of three-dimensional movements.

We have seen that his matter must be supposed to have an extension, though a very small one, in the third dimension. And thus, in the small particles of his matter, three-dimensional movements may well be conceived to take place. Of these movements he would only perceive the resultants. Since all movements of an observable size in the plane world are two-dimensional, he would only perceive the resultants in two dimensions of the small three-dimensional movements. Thus, there would be phenomena which he could not explain by his theory of mechanics—motions would take place which he could not explain by his theory of motion. Hence, to determine if we are in a four-dimensional world, we must examine the phenomena of motion in our space. If movements occur which are not explicable on the suppositions of our three-dimensional mechanics, we should have an indication of a possible four-dimensional motion, and if, moreover, it could be shown that such movements would be a consequence of a four-dimensional motion in the minute particles of bodies or of the ether, we should have a strong presumption in favour of the reality of the fourth dimension.

By proceeding in the direction of finer and finer subdivision, we come to forms of matter possessing properties different to those of the larger masses. It is probable that at some stage in this process we should come to a form of matter of such minute subdivision that its particles possess a freedom of movement in four dimensions. This form of matter I speak of as four-dimensional ether, and attribute to it properties approximating to those of a perfect liquid.

Deferring the detailed discussion of this form of matter to Chapter VI., we will now examine the means by which a plane being would come to the conclusion that three-dimensional movements existed in his world, and point out the analogy by which we can conclude the existence of four-dimensional movements in our world. Since the dimensions of the matter in his world are small in the third direction, the phenomena in which he would detect the motion would be those of the small particles of matter.

Suppose that there is a ring in his plane. We can imagine currents flowing round the ring in either of two opposite directions. These would produce unlike effects, and give rise to two different fields of influence. If the ring with a current in it in one direction be taken up and turned over, and put down again on the plane, it would be identical with the ring having a current in the opposite direction. An operation of this kind would be impossible to the plane being. Hence he would have in his space two irreconcilable objects, namely, the two fields of influence due to the two rings with currents in them in opposite directions. By irreconcilable objects in the plane I mean objects which cannot be thought of as transformed one into the other by any movement in the plane.

Instead of currents flowing in the rings we can imagine a different kind of current. Imagine a number of small rings strung on the original ring. A current round these secondary rings would give two varieties of effect, or two different fields of influence, according to its direction. These two varieties of current could be turned one into the other by taking one of the rings up, turning it over, and putting it down again in the plane. This operation is impossible to the plane being, hence in this case also there would be two irreconcilable fields in the plane. Now, if the plane being found two such irreconcilable fields and could prove that they could not be accounted for by currents in the rings, he would have to admit the existence of currents round the rings—that is, in rings strung on the primary ring. Thus he would come to admit the existence of a three-dimensional motion, for such a disposition of currents is in three dimensions.

Now in our space there are two fields of different properties, which can be produced by an electric current flowing in a closed circuit or ring. These two fields can be changed one into the other by reversing the currents, but they cannot be changed one into the other by any turning about of the rings in our space; for the disposition of the field with regard to the ring itself is different when we turn the ring, over and when we reverse the direction of the current in the ring.

As hypotheses to explain the differences of these two fields and their effects we can suppose the following kinds of space motions:—First, a current along the conductor; second, a current round the conductor—that is, of rings of currents strung on the conductor as an axis. Neither of these suppositions accounts for facts of observation.

Hence we have to make the supposition of a four-dimensional motion. We find that a four-dimensional rotation of the nature explained in a subsequent chapter, has the following characteristics:—First, it would give us two fields of influence, the one of which could be turned into the other by taking the circuit up into the fourth dimension, turning it over, and putting it down in our space again, precisely as the two kinds of fields in the plane could be turned one into the other by a reversal of the current in our space. Second, it involves a phenomenon precisely identical with that most remarkable and mysterious feature of an electric current, namely that it is a field of action, the rim of which necessarily abuts on a continuous boundary formed by a conductor. Hence, on the assumption of a four-dimensional movement in the region of the minute particles of matter, we should expect to find a motion analogous to electricity.

Now, a phenomenon of such universal occurrence as electricity cannot be due to matter and motion in any very complex relation, but ought to be seen as a simple and natural consequence of their properties. I infer that the difficulty in its theory is due to the attempt to explain a four-dimensional phenomenon by a three-dimensional geometry.

In view of this piece of evidence we cannot disregard that afforded by the existence of symmetry. In this connection I will allude to the simple way of producing the images of insects, sometimes practised by children. They put a few blots of ink in a straight line on a piece of paper, fold the paper along the blots, and on opening it the lifelike presentment of an insect is obtained. If we were to find a multitude of these figures, we should conclude that they had originated from a process of folding over; the chances against this kind of reduplication of parts is too great to admit of the assumption that they had been formed in any other way.

The production of the symmetrical forms of organised beings, though not of course due to a turning over of bodies of any appreciable size in four-dimensional space, can well be imagined as due to a disposition in that manner of the smallest living particles from which they are built up. Thus, not only electricity, but life, and the processes by which we think and feel, must be attributed to that region of magnitude in which four-dimensional movements take place.

I do not mean, however, that life can be explained as a four-dimensional movement. It seems to me that the whole bias of thought, which tends to explain the phenomena of life and volition, as due to matter and motion in some peculiar relation, is adopted rather in the interests of the explicability of things than with any regard to probability.

Of course, if we could show that life were a phenomenon of motion, we should be able to explain a great deal that is at present obscure. But there are two great difficulties in the way. It would be necessary to show that in a germ capable of developing into a living being, there were modifications of structure capable of determining in the developed germ all the characteristics of its form, and not only this, but of determining those of all the descendants of such a form in an infinite series. Such a complexity of mechanical relations, undeniable though it be, cannot surely be the best way of grouping the phenomena and giving a practical account of them. And another difficulty is this, that no amount of mechanical adaptation would give that element of consciousness which we possess, and which is shared in to a modified degree by the animal world.

In those complex structures which men build up and direct, such as a ship or a railway train (and which, if seen by an observer of such a size that the men guiding them were invisible, would seem to present some of the phenomena of life) the appearance of animation is not due to any diffusion of life in the material parts of the structure, but to the presence of a living being.

The old hypothesis of a soul, a living organism within the visible one, appears to me much more rational than the attempt to explain life as a form of motion. And when we consider the region of extreme minuteness characterised by four-dimensional motion the difficulty of conceiving such an organism alongside the bodily one disappears. Lord Kelvin supposes that matter is formed from the ether. We may very well suppose that the living organisms directing the material ones are co-ordinate with them, not composed of matter, but consisting of etherial bodies, and as such capable of motion through the ether, and able to originate material living bodies throughout the mineral.

Hypotheses such as these find no immediate ground for proof or disproof in the physical world. Let us, therefore, turn to a different field, and, assuming that the human soul is a four-dimensional being, capable in itself of four dimensional movements, but in its experiences through the senses limited to three dimensions, ask if the history of thought, of these productivities which characterise man, correspond to our assumption. Let us pass in review those steps by which man, presumably a four-dimensional being, despite his bodily environment, has come to recognise the fact of four-dimensional existence.

Deferring this enquiry to another chapter, I will here recapitulate the argument in order to show that our purpose is entirely practical and independent of any philosophical or metaphysical considerations.

If two shots are fired at a target, and the second bullet hits it at a different place to the first, we suppose that there was some difference in the conditions under which the second shot was fired from those affecting the first shot. The force of the powder, the direction of aim, the strength of the wind, or some condition must have been different in the second case, if the course of the bullet was not exactly the same as in the first case. Corresponding to every difference in a result there must be some difference in the antecedent material conditions. By tracing out this chain of relations we explain nature.

But there is also another mode of explanation which we apply. If we ask what was the cause that a certain ship was built, or that a certain structure was erected, we might proceed to investigate the changes in the brain cells of the men who designed the works. Every variation in one ship or building from another ship or building is accompanied by a variation in the processes that go on in the brain matter of the designers. But practically this would be a very long task.

A more effective mode of explaining the production of the ship or building would be to enquire into the motives, plans, and aims of the men who constructed them. We obtain a cumulative and consistent body of knowledge much more easily and effectively in the latter way.

Sometimes we apply the one, sometimes the other mode of explanation.

But it must be observed that the method of explanation founded on aim, purpose, volition, always presupposes a mechanical system on which the volition and aim works. The conception of man as willing and acting from motives involves that of a number of uniform processes of nature which he can modify, and of which he can make application. In the mechanical conditions of the three-dimensional world, the only volitional agency which we can demonstrate is the human agency. But when we consider the four-dimensional world the conclusion remains perfectly open.

The method of explanation founded on purpose and aim does not, surely, suddenly begin with man and end with him. There is as much behind the exhibition of will and motive which we see in man as there is behind the phenomena of movement; they are co-ordinate, neither to be resolved into the other. And the commencement of the investigation of that will and motive which lies behind the will and motive manifested in the three-dimensional mechanical field is in the conception of a soul—a four-dimensional organism, which expresses its higher physical being in the symmetry of the body, and gives the aims and motives of human existence.

Our primary task is to form a systematic knowledge of the phenomena of a four-dimensional world and find those points in which this knowledge must be called in to complete our mechanical explanation of the universe. But a subsidiary contribution towards the verification of the hypothesis may be made by passing in review the history of human thought, and enquiring if it presents such features as would be naturally expected on this assumption.

CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF FOUR SPACE

Parmenides, and the Asiatic thinkers with whom he is in close affinity, propound a theory of existence which is in close accord with a conception of a possible relation between a higher and a lower dimensional space. This theory, prior and in marked contrast to the main stream of thought, which we shall afterwards describe, forms a closed circle by itself. It is one which in all ages has had a strong attraction for pure intellect, and is the natural mode of thought for those who refrain from projecting their own volition into nature under the guise of causality.

According to Parmenides of the school of Elea the all is one, unmoving and unchanging. The permanent amid the transient—that foothold for thought, that solid ground for feeling on the discovery of which depends all our life—is no phantom; it is the image amidst deception of true being, the eternal, the unmoved, the one. Thus says Parmenides.

But how explain the shifting scene, these mutations of things!

“Illusion,” answers Parmenides. Distinguishing between truth and error, he tells of the true doctrine of the one—the false opinion of a changing world. He is no less memorable for the manner of his advocacy than for the cause he advocates. It is as if from his firm foothold of being he could play with the thoughts under the burden of which others laboured, for from him springs that fluency of supposition and hypothesis which forms the texture of Plato’s dialectic.

Can the mind conceive a more delightful intellectual picture than that of Parmenides, pointing to the one, the true, the unchanging, and yet on the other hand ready to discuss all manner of false opinion, forming a cosmogony too, false “but mine own” after the fashion of the time?

In support of the true opinion he proceeded by the negative way of showing the self-contradictions in the ideas of change and motion. It is doubtful if his criticism, save in minor points, has ever been successfully refuted. To express his doctrine in the ponderous modern way we must make the statement that motion is phenomenal, not real.

Let us represent his doctrine.

Fig. 13.

Imagine a sheet of still water into which a slanting stick is being lowered with a motion vertically downwards. Let 1, 2, 3 (Fig. 13), be three consecutive positions of the stick. A, B, C, will be three consecutive positions of the meeting of the stick, with the surface of the water. As the stick passes down, the meeting will move from A on to B and C.

Suppose now all the water to be removed except a film. At the meeting of the film and the stick there will be an interruption of the film. If we suppose the film to have a property, like that of a soap bubble, of closing up round any penetrating object, then as the stick goes vertically downwards the interruption in the film will move on.

Fig. 14.

If we pass a spiral through the film the intersection will give a point moving in a circle shown by the dotted lines in the figure. Suppose now the spiral to be still and the film to move vertically upwards, the whole spiral will be represented in the film of the consecutive positions of the point of intersection. In the film the permanent existence of the spiral is experienced as a time series—the record of traversing the spiral is a point moving in a circle. If now we suppose a consciousness connected with the film in such a way that the intersection of the spiral with the film gives rise to a conscious experience, we see that we shall have in the film a point moving in a circle, conscious of its motion, knowing nothing of that real spiral the record of the successive intersections of which by the film is the motion of the point.

It is easy to imagine complicated structures of the nature of the spiral, structures consisting of filaments, and to suppose also that these structures are distinguishable from each other at every section. If we consider the intersections of these filaments with the film as it passes to be the atoms constituting a filmar universe, we shall have in the film a world of apparent motion; we shall have bodies corresponding to the filamentary structure, and the positions of these structures with regard to one another will give rise to bodies in the film moving amongst one another. This mutual motion is apparent merely. The reality is of permanent structures stationary, and all the relative motions accounted for by one steady movement of the film as a whole.

Thus we can imagine a plane world, in which all the variety of motion is the phenomenon of structures consisting of filamentary atoms traversed by a plane of consciousness. Passing to four dimensions and our space, we can conceive that all things and movements in our world are the reading off of a permanent reality by a space of consciousness. Each atom at every moment is not what it was, but a new part of that endless line which is itself. And all this system successively revealed in the time which is but the succession of consciousness, separate as it is in parts, in its entirety is one vast unity. Representing Parmenides’ doctrine thus, we gain a firmer hold on it than if we merely let his words rest, grand and massive, in our minds. And we have gained the means also of representing phases of that Eastern thought to which Parmenides was no stranger. Modifying his uncompromising doctrine, let us suppose, to go back to the plane of consciousness and the structure of filamentary atoms, that these structures are themselves moving—are acting, living. Then, in the transverse motion of the film, there would be two phenomena of motion, one due to the reading off in the film of the permanent existences as they are in themselves, and another phenomenon of motion due to the modification of the record of the things themselves, by their proper motion during the process of traversing them.

Thus a conscious being in the plane would have, as it were, a two-fold experience. In the complete traversing of the structure, the intersection of which with the film gives his conscious all, the main and principal movements and actions which he went through would be the record of his higher self as it existed unmoved and unacting. Slight modifications and deviations from these movements and actions would represent the activity and self-determination of the complete being, of his higher self.

It is admissible to suppose that the consciousness in the plane has a share in that volition by which the complete existence determines itself. Thus the motive and will, the initiative and life, of the higher being, would be represented in the case of the being in the film by an initiative and a will capable, not of determining any great things or important movements in his existence, but only of small and relatively insignificant activities. In all the main features of his life his experience would be representative of one state of the higher being whose existence determines his as the film passes on. But in his minute and apparently unimportant actions he would share in that will and determination by which the whole of the being he really is acts and lives.

An alteration of the higher being would correspond to a different life history for him. Let us now make the supposition that film after film traverses these higher structures, that the life of the real being is read off again and again in successive waves of consciousness. There would be a succession of lives in the different advancing planes of consciousness, each differing from the preceding, and differing in virtue of that will and activity which in the preceding had not been devoted to the greater and apparently most significant things in life, but the minute and apparently unimportant. In all great things the being of the film shares in the existence of his higher self as it is at any one time. In the small things he shares in that volition by which the higher being alters and changes, acts and lives.

Thus we gain the conception of a life changing and developing as a whole, a life in which our separation and cessation and fugitiveness are merely apparent, but which in its events and course alters, changes, develops; and the power of altering and changing this whole lies in the will and power the limited being has of directing, guiding, altering himself in the minute things of his existence.

Transferring our conceptions to those of an existence in a higher dimensionality traversed by a space of consciousness, we have an illustration of a thought which has found frequent and varied expression. When, however, we ask ourselves what degree of truth there lies in it, we must admit that, as far as we can see, it is merely symbolical. The true path in the investigation of a higher dimensionality lies in another direction.

The significance of the Parmenidean doctrine lies in this that here, as again and again, we find that those conceptions which man introduces of himself, which he does not derive from the mere record of his outward experience, have a striking and significant correspondence to the conception of a physical existence in a world of a higher space. How close we come to Parmenides’ thought by this manner of representation it is impossible to say. What I want to point out is the adequateness of the illustration, not only to give a static model of his doctrine, but one capable as it were, of a plastic modification into a correspondence into kindred forms of thought. Either one of two things must be true—that four-dimensional conceptions give a wonderful power of representing the thought of the East, or that the thinkers of the East must have been looking at and regarding four-dimensional existence.

Coming now to the main stream of thought we must dwell in some detail on Pythagoras, not because of his direct relation to the subject, but because of his relation to investigators who came later.

Pythagoras invented the two-way counting. Let us represent the single-way counting by the posits aa, ab, ac, ad, using these pairs of letters instead of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4. I put an a in each case first for a reason which will immediately appear.

We have a sequence and order. There is no conception of distance necessarily involved. The difference between the posits is one of order not of distance—only when identified with a number of equal material things in juxtaposition does the notion of distance arise.

Now, besides the simple series I can have, starting from aa, ba, ca, da, from ab, bb, cb, db, and so on, and forming a scheme:

This complex or manifold gives a two-way order. I can represent it by a set of points, if I am on my guard against assuming any relation of distance.

Fig. 15.

Pythagoras studied this two-fold way of counting in reference to material bodies, and discovered that most remarkable property of the combination of number and matter that bears his name.

The Pythagorean property of an extended material system can be exhibited in a manner which will be of use to us afterwards, and which therefore I will employ now instead of using the kind of figure which he himself employed.

Consider a two-fold field of points arranged in regular rows. Such a field will be presupposed in the following argument.

Fig. 16.

It is evident that in [fig. 16] four of the points determine a square, which square we may take as the unit of measurement for areas. But we can also measure areas in another way.

Fig. 16 (1) shows four points determining a square.

But four squares also meet in a point, [fig. 16] (2).

Hence a point at the corner of a square belongs equally to four squares.

Thus we may say that the point value of the square shown is one point, for if we take the square in [fig. 16] (1) it has four points, but each of these belong equally to four other squares. Hence one fourth of each of them belongs to the square (1) in [fig. 16]. Thus the point value of the square is one point.

The result of counting the points is the same as that arrived at by reckoning the square units enclosed.

Hence, if we wish to measure the area of any square we can take the number of points it encloses, count these as one each, and take one-fourth of the number of points at its corners.

Fig. 17.

Now draw a diagonal square as shown in [fig. 17]. It contains one point and the four corners count for one point more; hence its point value is 2. The value is the measure of its area—the size of this square is two of the unit squares.

Looking now at the sides of this figure we see that there is a unit square on each of them—the two squares contain no points, but have four corner points each, which gives the point value of each as one point.

Hence we see that the square on the diagonal is equal to the squares on the two sides; or as it is generally expressed, the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides.

Fig. 18.

Noticing this fact we can proceed to ask if it is always true. Drawing the square shown in [fig. 18], we can count the number of its points. There are five altogether. There are four points inside the square on the diagonal, and hence, with the four points at its corners the point value is 5—that is, the area is 5. Now the squares on the sides are respectively of the area 4 and 1. Hence in this case also the square on the diagonal is equal to the sum of the square on the sides. This property of matter is one of the first great discoveries of applied mathematics. We shall prove afterwards that it is not a property of space. For the present it is enough to remark that the positions in which the points are arranged is entirely experimental. It is by means of equal pieces of some material, or the same piece of material moved from one place to another, that the points are arranged.

Pythagoras next enquired what the relation must be so that a square drawn slanting-wise should be equal to one straight-wise. He found that a square whose side is five can be placed either rectangularly along the lines of points, or in a slanting position. And this square is equivalent to two squares of sides 4 and 3.

Here he came upon a numerical relation embodied in a property of matter. Numbers immanent in the objects produced the equality so satisfactory for intellectual apprehension. And he found that numbers when immanent in sound—when the strings of a musical instrument were given certain definite proportions of length—were no less captivating to the ear than the equality of squares was to the reason. What wonder then that he ascribed an active power to number!

We must remember that, sharing like ourselves the search for the permanent in changing phenomena, the Greeks had not that conception of the permanent in matter that we have. To them material things were not permanent. In fire solid things would vanish; absolutely disappear. Rock and earth had a more stable existence, but they too grew and decayed. The permanence of matter, the conservation of energy, were unknown to them. And that distinction which we draw so readily between the fleeting and permanent causes of sensation, between a sound and a material object, for instance, had not the same meaning to them which it has for us. Let us but imagine for a moment that material things are fleeting, disappearing, and we shall enter with a far better appreciation into that search for the permanent which, with the Greeks, as with us, is the primary intellectual demand.

What is that which amid a thousand forms is ever the same, which we can recognise under all its vicissitudes, of which the diverse phenomena are the appearances?

To think that this is number is not so very wide of the mark. With an intellectual apprehension which far outran the evidences for its application, the atomists asserted that there were everlasting material particles, which, by their union, produced all the varying forms and states of bodies. But in view of the observed facts of nature as then known, Aristotle, with perfect reason, refused to accept this hypothesis.

He expressly states that there is a change of quality, and that the change due to motion is only one of the possible modes of change.

With no permanent material world about us, with the fleeting, the unpermanent, all around we should, I think, be ready to follow Pythagoras in his identification of number with that principle which subsists amidst all changes, which in multitudinous forms we apprehend immanent in the changing and disappearing substance of things.

And from the numerical idealism of Pythagoras there is but a step to the more rich and full idealism of Plato. That which is apprehended by the sense of touch we put as primary and real, and the other senses we say are merely concerned with appearances. But Plato took them all as valid, as giving qualities of existence. That the qualities were not permanent in the world as given to the senses forced him to attribute to them a different kind of permanence. He formed the conception of a world of ideas, in which all that really is, all that affects us and gives the rich and wonderful wealth of our experience, is not fleeting and transitory, but eternal. And of this real and eternal we see in the things about us the fleeting and transient images.

And this world of ideas was no exclusive one, wherein was no place for the innermost convictions of the soul and its most authoritative assertions. Therein existed justice, beauty—the one, the good, all that the soul demanded to be. The world of ideas, Plato’s wonderful creation preserved for man, for his deliberate investigation and their sure development, all that the rude incomprehensible changes of a harsh experience scatters and destroys.

Plato believed in the reality of ideas. He meets us fairly and squarely. Divide a line into two parts, he says; one to represent the real objects in the world, the other to represent the transitory appearances, such as the image in still water, the glitter of the sun on a bright surface, the shadows on the clouds.

Take another line and divide it into two parts, one representing our ideas, the ordinary occupants of our minds, such as whiteness, equality, and the other representing our true knowledge, which is of eternal principles, such as beauty, goodness.

Then as A is to B, so is A¹ to B¹

That is, the soul can proceed, going away from real things to a region of perfect certainty, where it beholds what is, not the scattered reflections; beholds the sun, not the glitter on the sands; true being, not chance opinion.

Now, this is to us, as it was to Aristotle, absolutely inconceivable from a scientific point of view. We can understand that a being is known in the fulness of his relations; it is in his relations to his circumstances that a man’s character is known; it is in his acts under his conditions that his character exists. We cannot grasp or conceive any principle of individuation apart from the fulness of the relations to the surroundings.

But suppose now that Plato is talking about the higher man—the four-dimensional being that is limited in our external experience to a three-dimensional world. Do not his words begin to have a meaning? Such a being would have a consciousness of motion which is not as the motion he can see with the eyes of the body. He, in his own being, knows a reality to which the outward matter of this too solid earth is flimsy superficiality. He too knows a mode of being, the fulness of relations, in which can only be represented in the limited world of sense, as the painter unsubstantially portrays the depths of woodland, plains, and air. Thinking of such a being in man, was not Plato’s line well divided?

It is noteworthy that, if Plato omitted his doctrine of the independent origin of ideas, he would present exactly the four-dimensional argument; a real thing as we think it is an idea. A plane being’s idea of a square object is the idea of an abstraction, namely, a geometrical square. Similarly our idea of a solid thing is an abstraction, for in our idea there is not the four-dimensional thickness which is necessary, however slight, to give reality. The argument would then run, as a shadow is to a solid object, so is the solid object to the reality. Thus A and B´ would be identified.

In the allegory which I have already alluded to, Plato in almost as many words shows forth the relation between existence in a superficies and in solid space. And he uses this relation to point to the conditions of a higher being.

He imagines a number of men prisoners, chained so that they look at the wall of a cavern in which they are confined, with their backs to the road and the light. Over the road pass men and women, figures and processions, but of all this pageant all that the prisoners behold is the shadow of it on the wall whereon they gaze. Their own shadows and the shadows of the things in the world are all that they see, and identifying themselves with their shadows related as shadows to a world of shadows, they live in a kind of dream.

Plato imagines one of their number to pass out from amongst them into the real space world, and then returning to tell them of their condition.

Here he presents most plainly the relation between existence in a plane world and existence in a three-dimensional world. And he uses this illustration as a type of the manner in which we are to proceed to a higher state from the three-dimensional life we know.

It must have hung upon the weight of a shadow which path he took!—whether the one we shall follow toward the higher solid and the four-dimensional existence, or the one which makes ideas the higher realities, and the direct perception of them the contact with the truer world.

Passing on to Aristotle, we will touch on the points which most immediately concern our enquiry.

Just as a scientific man of the present day in reviewing the speculations of the ancient world would treat them with a curiosity half amused but wholly respectful, asking of each and all wherein lay their relation to fact, so Aristotle, in discussing the philosophy of Greece as he found it, asks, above all other things: “Does this represent the world? In this system is there an adequate presentation of what is?”

He finds them all defective, some for the very reasons which we esteem them most highly, as when he criticises the Atomic theory for its reduction of all change to motion. But in the lofty march of his reason he never loses sight of the whole; and that wherein our views differ from his lies not so much in a superiority of our point of view, as in the fact which he himself enunciates—that it is impossible for one principle to be valid in all branches of enquiry. The conceptions of one method of investigation are not those of another; and our divergence lies in our exclusive attention to the conceptions useful in one way of apprehending nature rather than in any possibility we find in our theories of giving a view of the whole transcending that of Aristotle.

He takes account of everything; he does not separate matter and the manifestation of matter; he fires all together in a conception of a vast world process in which everything takes part—the motion of a grain of dust, the unfolding of a leaf, the ordered motion of the spheres in heaven—all are parts of one whole which he will not separate into dead matter and adventitious modifications.

And just as our theories, as representative of actuality, fall before his unequalled grasp of fact, so the doctrine of ideas fell. It is not an adequate account of existence, as Plato himself shows in his “Parmenides”; it only explains things by putting their doubles beside them.

For his own part Aristotle invented a great marching definition which, with a kind of power of its own, cleaves its way through phenomena to limiting conceptions on either hand, towards whose existence all experience points.

In Aristotle’s definition of matter and form as the constituent of reality, as in Plato’s mystical vision of the kingdom of ideas, the existence of the higher dimensionality is implicitly involved.

Substance according to Aristotle is relative, not absolute. In everything that is there is the matter of which it is composed, the form which it exhibits; but these are indissolubly connected, and neither can be thought without the other.

The blocks of stone out of which a house is built are the material for the builder; but, as regards the quarrymen, they are the matter of the rocks with the form he has imposed on them. Words are the final product of the grammarian, but the mere matter of the orator or poet. The atom is, with us, that out of which chemical substances are built up, but looked at from another point of view is the result of complex processes.

Nowhere do we find finality. The matter in one sphere is the matter, plus form, of another sphere of thought. Making an obvious application to geometry, plane figures exist as the limitation of different portions of the plane by one another. In the bounding lines the separated matter of the plane shows its determination into form. And as the plane is the matter relatively to determinations in the plane, so the plane itself exists in virtue of the determination of space. A plane is that wherein formless space has form superimposed on it, and gives an actuality of real relations. We cannot refuse to carry this process of reasoning a step farther back, and say that space itself is that which gives form to higher space. As a line is the determination of a plane, and a plane of a solid, so solid space itself is the determination of a higher space.

As a line by itself is inconceivable without that plane which it separates, so the plane is inconceivable without the solids which it limits on either hand. And so space itself cannot be positively defined. It is the negation of the possibility of movement in more than three dimensions. The conception of space demands that of a higher space. As a surface is thin and unsubstantial without the substance of which it is the surface, so matter itself is thin without the higher matter.

Just as Aristotle invented that algebraical method of representing unknown quantities by mere symbols, not by lines necessarily determinate in length as was the habit of the Greek geometers, and so struck out the path towards those objectifications of thought which, like independent machines for reasoning, supply the mathematician with his analytical weapons, so in the formulation of the doctrine of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality, of the relativity of substance, he produced another kind of objectification of mind—a definition which had a vital force and an activity of its own.

In none of his writings, as far as we know, did he carry it to its legitimate conclusion on the side of matter, but in the direction of the formal qualities he was led to his limiting conception of that existence of pure form which lies beyond all known determination of matter. The unmoved mover of all things is Aristotle’s highest principle. Towards it, to partake of its perfection all things move. The universe, according to Aristotle, is an active process—he does not adopt the illogical conception that it was once set in motion and has kept on ever since. There is room for activity, will, self-determination, in Aristotle’s system, and for the contingent and accidental as well. We do not follow him, because we are accustomed to find in nature infinite series, and do not feel obliged to pass on to a belief in the ultimate limits to which they seem to point.

But apart from the pushing to the limit, as a relative principle this doctrine of Aristotle’s as to the relativity of substance is irrefragible in its logic. He was the first to show the necessity of that path of thought which when followed leads to a belief in a four-dimensional space.

Antagonistic as he was to Plato in his conception of the practical relation of reason to the world of phenomena, yet in one point he coincided with him. And in this he showed the candour of his intellect. He was more anxious to lose nothing than to explain everything. And that wherein so many have detected an inconsistency, an inability to free himself from the school of Plato, appears to us in connection with our enquiry as an instance of the acuteness of his observation. For beyond all knowledge given by the senses Aristotle held that there is an active intelligence, a mind not the passive recipient of impressions from without, but an active and originative being, capable of grasping knowledge at first hand. In the active soul Aristotle recognised something in man not produced by his physical surroundings, something which creates, whose activity is a knowledge underived from sense. This, he says, is the immortal and undying being in man.

Thus we see that Aristotle was not far from the recognition of the four-dimensional existence, both without and within man, and the process of adequately realising the higher dimensional figures to which we shall come subsequently is a simple reduction to practice of his hypothesis of a soul.

The next step in the unfolding of the drama of the recognition of the soul as connected with our scientific conception of the world, and, at the same time, the recognition of that higher of which a three-dimensional world presents the superficial appearance, took place many centuries later. If we pass over the intervening time without a word it is because the soul was occupied with the assertion of itself in other ways than that of knowledge. When it took up the task in earnest of knowing this material world in which it found itself, and of directing the course of inanimate nature, from that most objective aim came, reflected back as from a mirror, its knowledge of itself.

CHAPTER V
THE SECOND CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF FOUR SPACE

Lobatchewsky, Bolyai, and Gauss Before entering on a description of the work of Lobatchewsky and Bolyai it will not be out of place to give a brief account of them, the materials for which are to be found in an article by Franz Schmidt in the forty-second volume of the Mathematische Annalen, and in Engel’s edition of Lobatchewsky.

Lobatchewsky was a man of the most complete and wonderful talents. As a youth he was full of vivacity, carrying his exuberance so far as to fall into serious trouble for hazing a professor, and other freaks. Saved by the good offices of the mathematician Bartels, who appreciated his ability, he managed to restrain himself within the bounds of prudence. Appointed professor at his own University, Kasan, he entered on his duties under the regime of a pietistic reactionary, who surrounded himself with sycophants and hypocrites. Esteeming probably the interests of his pupils as higher than any attempt at a vain resistance, he made himself the tyrant’s right-hand man, doing an incredible amount of teaching and performing the most varied official duties. Amidst all his activities he found time to make important contributions to science. His theory of parallels is most closely connected with his name, but a study of his writings shows that he was a man capable of carrying on mathematics in its main lines of advance, and of a judgment equal to discerning what these lines were. Appointed rector of his University, he died at an advanced age, surrounded by friends, honoured, with the results of his beneficent activity all around him. To him no subject came amiss, from the foundations of geometry to the improvement of the stoves by which the peasants warmed their houses.

He was born in 1793. His scientific work was unnoticed till, in 1867, Houel, the French mathematician, drew attention to its importance.

Johann Bolyai de Bolyai was born in Klausenburg, a town in Transylvania, December 15th, 1802.

His father, Wolfgang Bolyai, a professor in the Reformed College of Maros Vasarhely, retained the ardour in mathematical studies which had made him a chosen companion of Gauss in their early student days at Göttingen.

He found an eager pupil in Johann. He relates that the boy sprang before him like a devil. As soon as he had enunciated a problem the child would give the solution and command him to go on further. As a thirteen-year-old boy his father sometimes sent him to fill his place when incapacitated from taking his classes. The pupils listened to him with more attention than to his father for they found him clearer to understand.

In a letter to Gauss Wolfgang Bolyai writes:—

“My boy is strongly built. He has learned to recognise many constellations, and the ordinary figures of geometry. He makes apt applications of his notions, drawing for instance the positions of the stars with their constellations. Last winter in the country, seeing Jupiter he asked: ‘How is it that we can see him from here as well as from the town? He must be far off.’ And as to three different places to which he had been he asked me to tell him about them in one word. I did not know what he meant, and then he asked me if one was in a line with the other and all in a row, or if they were in a triangle.

“He enjoys cutting paper figures with a pair of scissors, and without my ever having told him about triangles remarked that a right-angled triangle which he had cut out was half of an oblong. I exercise his body with care, he can dig well in the earth with his little hands. The blossom can fall and no fruit left. When he is fifteen I want to send him to you to be your pupil.”

In Johann’s autobiography he says:—

“My father called my attention to the imperfections and gaps in the theory of parallels. He told me he had gained more satisfactory results than his predecessors, but had obtained no perfect and satisfying conclusion. None of his assumptions had the necessary degree of geometrical certainty, although they sufficed to prove the eleventh axiom and appeared acceptable on first sight.

“He begged of me, anxious not without a reason, to hold myself aloof and to shun all investigation on this subject, if I did not wish to live all my life in vain.”

Johann, in the failure of his father to obtain any response from Gauss, in answer to a letter in which he asked the great mathematician to make of his son “an apostle of truth in a far land,” entered the Engineering School at Vienna. He writes from Temesvar, where he was appointed sub-lieutenant September, 1823:—

“Temesvar, November 3rd, 1823.

“Dear Good Father,

“I have so overwhelmingly much to write about my discovery that I know no other way of checking myself than taking a quarter of a sheet only to write on. I want an answer to my four-sheet letter.

“I am unbroken in my determination to publish a work on Parallels, as soon as I have put my material in order and have the means.

“At present I have not made any discovery, but the way I have followed almost certainly promises me the attainment of my object if any possibility of it exists.

“I have not got my object yet, but I have produced such stupendous things that I was overwhelmed myself, and it would be an eternal shame if they were lost. When you see them you will find that it is so. Now I can only say that I have made a new world out of nothing. Everything that I have sent you before is a house of cards in comparison with a tower. I am convinced that it will be no less to my honour than if I had already discovered it.”

The discovery of which Johann here speaks was published as an appendix to Wolfgang Bolyai’s Tentamen.

Sending the book to Gauss, Wolfgang writes, after an interruption of eighteen years in his correspondence:—

“My son is first lieutenant of Engineers and will soon be captain. He is a fine youth, a good violin player, a skilful fencer, and brave, but has had many duels, and is wild even for a soldier. Yet he is distinguished—light in darkness and darkness in light. He is an impassioned mathematician with extraordinary capacities.... He will think more of your judgment on his work than that of all Europe.”

Wolfgang received no answer from Gauss to this letter, but sending a second copy of the book received the following reply:—

“You have rejoiced me, my unforgotten friend, by your letters. I delayed answering the first because I wanted to wait for the arrival of the promised little book.

“Now something about your son’s work.

“If I begin with saying that ‘I ought not to praise it,’ you will be staggered for a moment. But I cannot say anything else. To praise it is to praise myself, for the path your son has broken in upon and the results to which he has been led are almost exactly the same as my own reflections, some of which date from thirty to thirty-five years ago.

“In fact I am astonished to the uttermost. My intention was to let nothing be known in my lifetime about my own work, of which, for the rest, but little is committed to writing. Most people have but little perception of the problem, and I have found very few who took any interest in the views I expressed to them. To be able to do that one must first of all have had a real live feeling of what is wanting, and as to that most men are completely in the dark.

“Still it was my intention to commit everything to writing in the course of time, so that at least it should not perish with me.

“I am deeply surprised that this task can be spared me, and I am most of all pleased in this that it is the son of my old friend who has in so remarkable a manner preceded me.”

The impression which we receive from Gauss’s inexplicable silence towards his old friend is swept away by this letter. Hence we breathe the clear air of the mountain tops. Gauss would not have failed to perceive the vast significance of his thoughts, sure to be all the greater in their effect on future ages from the want of comprehension of the present. Yet there is not a word or a sign in his writing to claim the thought for himself. He published no single line on the subject. By the measure of what he thus silently relinquishes, by such a measure of a world-transforming thought, we can appreciate his greatness.

It is a long step from Gauss’s serenity to the disturbed and passionate life of Johann Bolyai—he and Galois, the two most interesting figures in the history of mathematics. For Bolyai, the wild soldier, the duellist, fell at odds with the world. It is related of him that he was challenged by thirteen officers of his garrison, a thing not unlikely to happen considering how differently he thought from every one else. He fought them all in succession—making it his only condition that he should be allowed to play on his violin for an interval between meeting each opponent. He disarmed or wounded all his antagonists. It can be easily imagined that a temperament such as his was one not congenial to his military superiors. He was retired in 1833.

His epoch-making discovery awoke no attention. He seems to have conceived the idea that his father had betrayed him in some inexplicable way by his communications with Gauss, and he challenged the excellent Wolfgang to a duel. He passed his life in poverty, many a time, says his biographer, seeking to snatch himself from dissipation and apply himself again to mathematics. But his efforts had no result. He died January 27th, 1860, fallen out with the world and with himself.

Metageometry

The theories which are generally connected with the names of Lobatchewsky and Bolyai bear a singular and curious relation to the subject of higher space.

In order to show what this relation is, I must ask the reader to be at the pains to count carefully the sets of points by which I shall estimate the volumes of certain figures.

No mathematical processes beyond this simple one of counting will be necessary.

Fig. 19.

Let us suppose we have before us in [fig. 19] a plane covered with points at regular intervals, so placed that every four determine a square.

Now it is evident that as four points determine a square, so four squares meet in a point.

Fig. 20.

Thus, considering a point inside a square as belonging to it, we may say that a point on the corner of a square belongs to it and to three others equally: belongs a quarter of it to each square.

Thus the square ACDE ([fig. 21]) contains one point, and has four points at the four corners. Since one-fourth of each of these four belongs to the square, the four together count as one point, and the point value of the square is two points—the one inside and the four at the corner make two points belonging to it exclusively.

Fig. 21.

Fig. 22.

Now the area of this square is two unit squares, as can be seen by drawing two diagonals in [fig. 22].

We also notice that the square in question is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides AB, BC, of the right-angled triangle ABC. Thus we recognise the proposition that the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the two sides of a right-angled triangle.

Now suppose we set ourselves the question of determining the whereabouts in the ordered system of points, the end of a line would come when it turned about a point keeping one extremity fixed at the point.

We can solve this problem in a particular case. If we can find a square lying slantwise amongst the dots which is equal to one which goes regularly, we shall know that the two sides are equal, and that the slanting side is equal to the straight-way side. Thus the volume and shape of a figure remaining unchanged will be the test of its having rotated about the point, so that we can say that its side in its first position would turn into its side in the second position.