The Fourth Dimension

by Charles Howard Hinton

If now, on presenting these sequences, I find a power in me of intuitively passing from one of these sets of sequences to another, of, being given one, intuitively constructing another, not using a rule, but directly apprehending it, then I have found a new fact about my soul, that it has a four-dimensional experience; I have observed it by a function it has.

I do not like to speak positively, for I might occasion a loss of time on the part of others, if, as may very well be, I am mistaken. But for my own part, I think there are indications of such an intuition; from the results of my experiments, I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of four-dimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we are engaged in intellectually is the reading the obscure signals of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions derived from the inner experience.

The image I form is as follows. Imagine the captain of a modern battle-ship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is in communication with his associates and subordinates; can convey his messages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive information from the conning-tower and the engine-room. Now suppose the captain immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship over the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the direction of his craft over the plane surface of the sea that he forgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of movement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement is produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness, his own actions, by which he pushes the buttons, gives the orders, are so familiar as to be automatic, his mind is on the motion of the ship as a whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies himself with his ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the direction of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.

Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft. As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the directing the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the soul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion, which is not used in its task of directing the body in the three-dimensional region in which the body’s activity lies. If for any reason it became necessary for the captain to consider three-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be difficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such motions; all he has to do is to call his own intimate experience into play. As far as the navigation of the ship, however, is concerned, he is not obliged to call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a surface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not ordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves all those movements and activities which characterise our bodily organs are three-dimensional; we never need to consider the ampler movements. But we do more than use the movements of our body to effect our aims by direct means; we have now come to the pass when we act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which lie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of thought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft as a whole. When we come to the problem of what goes on in the minute, and apply ourselves to the mechanism of the minute, we find our habitual conceptions inadequate.

The captain in us must wake up to his own intimate nature, realise those functions of movement which are his own, and in virtue of his knowledge of them apprehend how to deal with the problems he has come to.

Think of the history of man. When has there been a time, in which his thoughts of form and movement were not exclusively of such varieties as were adapted for his bodily performance? We have never had a demand to conceive what our own most intimate powers are. But, just as little as by immersing himself in the steering of his ship over the plane surface of the ocean, a captain can lose the faculty of thinking about what he actually does, so little can the soul lose its own nature. It can be roused to an intuition that is not derived from the experience which the senses give. All that is necessary is to present some few of those appearances which, while inconsistent with three-dimensional matter, are yet consistent with our formal knowledge of four-dimensional matter, in order for the soul to wake up and not begin to learn, but of its own intimate feeling fill up the gaps in the presentiment, grasp the full orb of possibilities from the isolated points presented to it. In relation to this question of our perceptions, let me suggest another illustration, not taking it too seriously, only propounding it to exhibit the possibilities in a broad and general way.

In the heavens, amongst the multitude of stars, there are some which, when the telescope is directed on them, seem not to be single stars, but to be split up into two. Regarding these twin stars through a spectroscope, an astronomer sees in each a spectrum of bands of colour and black lines. Comparing these spectrums with one another, he finds that there is a slight relative shifting of the dark lines, and from that shifting he knows that the stars are rotating round one another, and can tell their relative velocity with regard to the earth. By means of his terrestrial physics he reads this signal of the skies. This shifting of lines, the mere slight variation of a black line in a spectrum, is very unlike that which the astronomer knows it means. But it is probably much more like what it means than the signals which the nerves deliver are like the phenomena of the outer world.

No picture of an object is conveyed through the nerves. No picture of motion, in the sense in which we postulate its existence, is conveyed through the nerves. The actual deliverances of which our consciousness takes account are probably identical for eye and ear, sight and touch.

If for a moment I take the whole earth together and regard it as a sentient being, I find that the problem of its apprehension is a very complex one, and involves a long series of personal and physical events. Similarly the problem of our apprehension is a very complex one. I only use this illustration to exhibit my meaning. It has this especial merit, that, as the process of conscious apprehension takes place in our case in the minute, so, with regard to this earth being, the corresponding process takes place in what is relatively to it very minute.

Now, Plato’s view of a soul leads us to the hypothesis that that which we designate as an act of apprehension may be a very complex event, both physically and personally. He does not seek to explain what an intuition is; he makes it a basis from whence he sets out on a voyage of discovery. Knowledge means knowledge; he puts conscious being to account for conscious being. He makes an hypothesis of the kind that is so fertile in physical science—an hypothesis making no claim to finality, which marks out a vista of possible determination behind determination, like the hypothesis of space itself, the type of serviceable hypotheses.