THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

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we are conscious of a gradual change of shape and position of all the parts, and yet, at the same time, we are conscious of a continuing identity throughout all these changes. Our past experiences are as real as the experiences we are now undergoing. Those past experiences, or phases of our existence, are as much a part of us as the present ones, and yet owing to the limitations of our three-dimensional consciousness we can reproduce past conditions only in memory. Nevertheless our lives in their completeness are made up of the sum of all our experiences and if our whole lives are considered as units, and each period of which we are conscious requires a three-dimensional space, then each individual may be considered as a fourdimensional solid. Let us, however, take a more simple illustration. A biologist wishes to present to his class a concrete
Page 107 means of studying the jellyfish. He orders his patternmaker to model perhaps fifty copies of the animal in question, showing the changes from the egg to the perfect adult. These are molded in glass, and are brought into the classroom for study.

Now, although every particle of the living jellyfish is constantly changing, either in size, or position, or in its relation to neighboring particles, we say it is the same jellyfish; there is a something that persists through all the changes; an individuality which differentiates this animal from all others, although to-day it is as different from what it was previously as any two models. These models may be considered copies of mere phases of the jellyfish, just as photographs may be said to represent phases of the fermenting yeast, and two separate lines may be said to represent corresponding phases of the mercury length in the thermometer. But no matter how small the interval which elapses between the making of two successive models, if there be any change at all, that change must have involved many, nay an infinite number, of smaller changes, and these changes in the case of each atom of the living organism must have been continuous; that is, they must be represented by a line, and not by a succession of separated points, if we would preserve the individuality of the animal in question. Now this line cannot be represented in our three-dimensional space without interfering with other atoms which surround it in three directions. We are compelled, therefore, as in the previous illustrations, to go outside the space in which the change takes place, in order to represent completely the continuous change in anything which preserves its individuality while
Page 108 changing. Hence, to represent graphically a gradual change or growth in a three-dimensional object, a fourdimensional space is necessary; and the representation in such space of a fixed and permanent object which combines all the phases of a three-dimensional solid would constitute a four-dimensional figure.

Mind you, I do not say that a growing jellyfish is necessarily a fixed four-dimensional object, passing through three-dimensional space, but I do say it could be so represented; and that then a four-dimensional mentality could see any or all of its three-dimensional phases simultaneously, just as we can in a two-dimensional chart perceive simultaneously all the lengths of a varying line. To get a vague conception of such a four-dimensional figure, it is necessary for us to group

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