Four-Dimensional Vistas | Page 5

endeavor to arouse
in himself a new power of perception. This he will best accomplish by
learning to discern dimensional sequences, not alone in geometry, but
in the cosmos and in the natural world. By so doing he may erect for
himself a veritable Jacob's ladder,
"Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross."
He should accustom himself to ascend it, step by step, dimension by
dimension. Then he will learn to trust Emerson's dictum, "Nature
geometrizes," even in regions where the senses fail him, and the mind
alone leads on. Much profitable amusement is to be gained by such
exercises as follow. They are in the nature of a running up and down
the scales in order to give strength and flexibility to a new set of mental
fingers. Learning to think in terms of spaces contributes to our
emancipation from the tyranny of space.
FROM THE COSMOS TO THE CORPUSCLE
By way of a beginning, proceed, by successive stages, from the
contemplation of the greatest thing conceivable to the contemplation of
the most minute, and note the space sequences revealed by this shifting
of the point of view.
The greatest thing we can form any conception of is the starry
firmament made familiar to the mind through the study of astronomy.
No limit to this vastitude has ever been assigned. Since the beginning
of recorded time, the earth, together with the other planets and the sun,
has been speeding through interstellar space at the rate of 300,000,000
miles a year, without meeting or passing a single star. A ray of light,

travelling with a velocity so great as to be scarcely measurable within
the diameter of the earth's orbit, takes years to reach even the nearest
star, centuries to reach those more distant. Viewed in relation to this
universe of suns, our particular sun and all its satellites--of which the
earth is one--shrinks to a point (a physical point, so to speak--not
geometrical one).
The mind recoils from these immensities: let us forsake them, then, for
more familiar spaces, and consider the earth in its relation to the sun.
Our planet appears as a moving point, tracing out a _line_--a
_one-space_--its path around the sun. Now let us remove ourselves in
imagination only far enough from the earth for human beings thereon
to appear as minute moving things, in the semblance, let us say, of
insects infesting an apple. It is clear that from this point of view these
beings have a freedom of movement in their "space" (the surface of the
earth), of which the larger unit is not possessed; for while the earth
itself can follow only a line, its inhabitants are free to move in the two
dimensions of the surface of the earth.
Abandoning our last coign of vantage, let us descend in imagination
and mingle familiarly among men. We now perceive that these
creatures which from a distance appeared as though flat upon the
earth's surface, are in reality erect at right angles to its plane, and that
they are endowed with the power to move their members in three
dimensions. Indeed, man's ability to traverse the surface of the earth is
wholly dependent upon his power of three-dimensional movement.
Observe that with each transfer of our attention from greater units to
smaller, we appear to be dealing with a power of movement in an
additional dimension.
Looking now in thought not at the body of man, but within it, we
apprehend an ordered universe immensely vast in proportion to that
physical ultimate we name the electron, as is the firmament immensely
vast in proportion to a single star. It has been suggested that in the
infinitely minute of organic bodies there is a power of movement in a
fourth dimension. If so, such four-dimensional movement may be the
proximate cause of the phenomenon of _growth_--of those chemical
changes and renewals whereby an organism is enabled to expand in
three-dimensional space, just as by a three-dimensional power of
movement (the act of walking) man is able to traverse his

two-dimensional space--the surface of the earth.
--AND BEYOND
Proceed still further. Behind such organic change--assumed to be
four-dimensional--there is the determination of some _will-to-live_,
which manifests itself to consciousness as thought and as desire. Into
these the idea of space does not enter: we think of them as in time. But
if there are developments of other dimensions of space, thought and
emotion may themselves be discovered to have space relations; that is,
they may find expression in the forms of higher spaces. Thus is opened
up one of those rich vistas in which the subject of the fourth dimension
abounds, but into which we can only glance in passing. If there are such
higher-dimensional _thought-forms_, our normal consciousness,
limited to a world of three dimensions, can apprehend