THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

The essays in this book are all non-mathematical or popular in their treatment. It will assist us, therefore, if we understand the limitations of this form of presentation. From a comparison of the lower dimensional geometries we derive analogies for the Geometry of Four Dimensions and the analogies are so complete that the subject can be very fully explained in a non-mathematical way. The analogies are a guide, even to the mathematician, but the geometry does not depend on these analogies. As a system of theorems and proofs it is built up from its axioms by a process of logical reasoning just as the lower geometries are built up. If we wish to be convinced of the consistency of this geometry, of its truth as a mathematical system, we should study it mathematically. A non-mathematical exposition should be received solely as an explanation of the geometry itself, and the reader should understand clearly that it is designed not to convince him even of the possibility of such a geometry, but only to show him what it is. The adoption of such an attitude on the part of the reader will be a long step toward accomplishing all that can be achieved through a non-mathematical treatment of the subject. If, however, the analogies are viewed as arguments, a person of skeptical mind will be apt to suspect that there is some fatal defect beneath their plausible exterior. Even if a philosophical writer wishes to use the analogies as well as the consistency of this geometry as an argument for the actual existence of four-dimensional space, such a consideration of
Page 17 the subject had better be postponed by the reader until after he has become familiar with the geometry itself. As regards some of these essays it is proper to caution the reader that they seek to advocate certain views rather than merely to give aclear description of the fourth dimension.

There is another way in which the principle of analogy may be used. By imagining twodimensional beings living in a plane and unable to perceive anything of a third dimension we get a vivid idea of our own relation to four-dimensional space. A consideration of what ought to be their attitude toward any conceptions of a space of three dimensions makes clearer what should be our attitude toward conceptions of a higher space. This point of view is made more interesting by presentation in story form of a picture of life as it might be supposed to exist in a twodimensional world. It is not necessary for such a presentation to go into all the details of the twodimensional existence. A too minute description of such an existence would overburden the narrative with tedious explanations that would cause us to lose sight of its main purpose. But a story written so as to bring out skillfully a few of these relations does very much to help us in understanding what should be our attitude toward the higher geometry.6 The Geometry of Four Dimensions based on a suitable
Page 19 set of axioms and applied in the ordinary way to points, lines, etc., forms a definite system. But there is much that is arbitrary when we come to clothe our ideas in physical form and undertake to present a material world eithr of two or four dimensions, filled with two-dimensional or four-dimensional matter. Even to the physicist matter is a mystery and we can develop different theories of it very much as we build up geometries from different sets of axioms. Some writers of these essays have made quite unwarranted statements as to what must be the nature of matter. We cannot say that we have perceived all the properties of matter as it exists, and we cannot call it absurd to put matter with other properties into an imagined space. Thus in order to throw light upon our relations to a supposed space of four dimensions we might suppose the existence of two-dimensional beings even if such an existence were impossible, just as we might imagine the moon inhabited by intelligent beings in order to give a more

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