It is confessed that there seems to be nothing to warrant the giving of an affirmative reply to this query. It is, perhaps, sentimentally speaking a very beautiful thing to contemplate death as a painless, unconscious involvement into a glorious one-ness with all life, and birth, as the reverse of all this. But where is the utility of such a dream if it be merely a dream and impossible of realization?
Simon Newcomb,[23] at one time one of the outstanding figures in the early development of the fourth dimensional hypothesis, openly declared that "there is no proof that the molecule may not vibrate in a fourth dimension. There are facts which seem to indicate at least the possibility of molecular motion or change of some sort not expressible in terms of time and the three coördinates in space."
Of course, there is no proof that a molecule may not at times be ensconced in a four-space neither is there proof nor probability that it is so hidden. Indeed, there is no proof that there is such a thing as a molecule for that matter.
In all of the foregoing proposals it is assumed that the fourth dimension really exists and that it lies just beneath the surface of the visible, palpable limits of the material universe; that lying in close juxtaposition to all that we are able to see, to hear or sense in any way is this mysterious, eternally prolific, all-powerful something, hyperspace, ever-ready to nourish and sustain the forms which have the nether parts firmly encysted in one or the other of her n-dimensional berths. Thus it would seem that while yet functioning in a strictly tridimensional atmosphere, some one, more reckless than the rest, should at last stumble upon some up-lying portion of it and be instantly transformed into a mathetic fay of etherealized four-dimensional stuff.
PART TWO
SPATIALITY
AN INQUIRY INTO THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF SPACE AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE MATHEMATICAL INTERPRETATION