A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension)

ticular “space” or dimensional order apprehended by consciousness must bear an exact relation to the amplitude of motion in space of which the vehicle is capable. As this amplitude of motion varies widely in different departments of nature, there naturally arises the idea of spaces of different dimensionalities, each added dimension corresponding to a power of motion in a new direction. The grub, working its way upward out of the earth in which it is buried, may be said to inhabit a linear, or one-dimensional space; the caterpillar’s space, the surface of a leaf, is two-dimensional; while the winged butterfly attains the freedom of all three dimensions. Understood in this way—as new powers of movement in new media—the expression the fourth dimension of space is sufficiently descriptive of an unfamiliar power of movement in an unknown medium, but related to the movements and the media known to us by an orderly sequence of evolution.

THE DESIGNATION OF THINGS IN TERMS OF THEIR DIMENSIONALITY

One other apparent contradiction in the use of terms, involving the possibility of misconception, should also be mentioned. In any discussion of the higher space hypothesis such expressions as a “one-dimensional” body, or a “two-dimensional” body, are apt to occur. Such terms, though convenient, are not accurate, because there can be no such thing as a one-dimensional or a two-dimensional body in our three-dimensional space. Its three dimensions must exist always and everywhere, and everything must have some extension, however slight, in every one of