The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition | Page 2

watch whilst that
they slept and call them if the head spake. 'Fear not (good master), I
will harken and attend, upon the head and if it do chance to speak, I
will call you; therefore, I pray take you both your rest and let me alone
for watching this head.'
* * * *

At last, after some noise, the Head spake these two words: 'Time is.'
Miles, hearing it to speak no more, thought his master would be angry
if he waked him for that, and therefore he let them both sleep and began
to mock the Head in this manner: 'Thou Brazen-faced Head, hath my
master took all this pains about thee and now dost thou requite him
with two words, "Time is"?'
* * * *
After half an hour had past, the Head did speak again two words which
were these: 'Time was.' Miles respected these words as little as he did
the former and would not wake his master, but still scoffed at the
Brazen Head, that it had learned no better words, and have had such a
tutor as his master; * * * * '"Time was!" I knew that, Brazen-face,
without your telling. I knew Time was and I know what things there
was when Time was, and if you speak no wiser, no master shall be
waked for me.'
* * * *
* * * * The Brazen Head spake again these words: 'Time is past'; and
therewith fell down and presently followed a terrible noise, with
strange flashes of fire, so that Miles was half dead with fear. At this
noise the two Friars waked and wondered to see the whole room so full
of smoke, but that being vanished, they might perceive the Brazen
Head broken and lying on the ground. At this sight they grieved, and
called Miles to know how this came. Miles, half dead with fear, said
that it fell down of itself and that with the noise and fire that followed
he was almost frightened out of his wits. Friar Bacon asked him if it did
not speak.
'Yes,' quoth Miles, 'it spake, but to no purpose.'

General Status of the Fourth-Dimensional Theory
The human mind has so long followed its early cow-paths through the
wilderness of sense that great hardihood is required even to suggest that
there may be other and better ways of traversing the empirical common.
So it is that the fear of being proclaimed a Brazenhead has restrained
me until this eleventh hour from telling of my discoveries concerning
the fourth-dimensional reaches of our Exposition. That I have the
courage now is due to my desire to help in its preservation; not to the
end of enclosing it in a brass wall, but to lift it out of the realm of

things temporal and give it permanent meaning for our thought and
aspiration. Would we save our Exposition from the ravages of Time we
have to exorcise that monster with the enigmatical utterances of the
aforesaid Brazen Head. The philosophers are telling us that Time is the
fourth dimension in the process of evolving for our consciousness. I
take it that there are three stages in this evolution; the first, that of
immediate experience, is subsumed by the phrase 'Time is'; the second
is a passing from the concrete to the abstract through the fact that 'Time
was'; and the glory of the last is visioned only when we can say 'Time
is past.'
While many books have been written descriptive of the Exposition,
none has succeeded in accounting completely for the joy we have in
yonder miracle of beauty. And this through no fault of the writers.
When all has been said concerning plan and execution there is still a
subtle something not spatialized for consciousness. Length, breadth,
and height do not suffice to set forth the ways of our delight in it. What
of this perceptual residue? Obviously to give it extension we shall have
to ascribe to reality other dimensions than those of our present sense
realm. Some disciple of Bergson interrupts: 'Ah, this whereof you
speak is a spiritual thing and as such is given by the intuition. Why,
then, do you seek to spatialize it?' And the layman out of his mental
repugnance to things mathematical echoes, 'Why?' We have to answer
that the process of creative evolution makes imperative the transfixion
by the intellect of these so-called spiritual perceptions. Although the
intuition transcends the intelligence in its grasp of beauty and truth, we
may attain to the higher insight it has to offer only if the things of the
spirit become known to the intellect - a point in Bergson's philosophy
which the majority of his readers overlook. 'We have,' he says, 'to
engender the