As each set of slabs in the case of the plane being might be considered as a sort of tray from which the solid contents of the cubes came out, so our three blocks of cubes may be considered as three-space trays, each of which is the beginning of an inch of the solid contents of the four-dimensional solids starting from them.
We want now to use the names null, red, white, etc., for tesseracts. The cubes we use are only tesseract faces. Let us denote that fact by calling the cube of null colour, null face; or, shortly, null f., meaning that it is the face of a tesseract.
To determine which face it is let us look at the catalogue cube 1 or the first of the views of the tesseract, which can be used instead of the models. It has three axes, red, white, yellow, in our space. Hence the cube determined by these axes is the face of the tesseract which we now have before us. It is the ochre face. It is enough, however, simply to say null f., red f. for the cubes which we use.
To impress this in your mind, imagine that tesseracts do actually run from each cube. Then, when you move the cubes about, you move the tesseracts about with them. You move the face but the tesseract follows with it, as the cube follows when its face is shifted in a plane.
The cube null in the normal position is the cube which has in it the red, yellow, white axes. It is the face having these, but wanting the blue. In this way you can define which face it is you are handling. I will write an “f.” after the name of each tesseract just as the plane being might call each of his slabs null slab, yellow slab, etc., to denote that they were representations.
We have then in the first block of twenty-seven cubes, the following—null f., red f., null f., going up; white f., null f., lying to the right, and so on. Starting from the null point and travelling up one inch we are in the null region, the same for the away and the right-hand directions. And if we were to travel in the fourth dimension for an inch we should still be in a null region. The tesseract stretches equally all four ways. Hence the appearance we have in this first block would do equally well if the tesseract block were to move across our space for a certain distance. For anything less than an inch of their transverse motion we should still have the same appearance. You must notice, however, that we should not have null face after the motion had begun.
When the tesseract, null for instance, had moved ever so little we should not have a face of null but a section of null in our space. Hence, when we think of the motion across our space we must call our cubes tesseract sections. Thus on null passing across we should see first null f., then null s., and then, finally, null f. again.
Imagine now the whole first block of twenty-seven tesseracts to have moved tranverse to our space a distance of one inch. Then the second set of tesseracts, which originally were an inch distant from our space, would be ready to come in.
Their colours are shown in the second block of twenty-seven cubes which you have before you. These represent the tesseract faces of the set of tesseracts that lay before an inch away from our space. They are ready now to come in, and we can observe their colours. In the place which null f. occupied before we have blue f., in place of red f. we have purple f., and so on. Each tesseract is coloured like the one whose place it takes in this motion with the addition of blue.
Now if the tesseract block goes on moving at the rate of an inch a minute, this next set of tesseracts will occupy a minute in passing across. We shall see, to take the null one for instance, first of all null face, then null section, then null face again.