Four-Dimensional Vistas by Claude Fayette Bragdon
page 17 of 116 (14%)
page 17 of 116 (14%)
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of the earth is wholly dependent upon his power of three-dimensional
movement. Observe that with each transfer of our attention from greater units to smaller, we appear to be dealing with a power of movement in an additional dimension. Looking now in thought not _at_ the body of man, but _within_ it, we apprehend an ordered universe immensely vast in proportion to that physical ultimate we name the electron, as is the firmament immensely vast in proportion to a single star. It has been suggested that in the infinitely minute of organic bodies there is a power of movement in a _fourth_ dimension. If so, such four-dimensional movement may be the proximate cause of the phenomenon of _growth_--of those chemical changes and renewals whereby an organism is enabled to expand in three-dimensional space, just as by a three-dimensional power of movement (the act of walking) man is able to traverse his two-dimensional space--the surface of the earth. --AND BEYOND Proceed still further. Behind such organic change--assumed to be four-dimensional--there is the determination of some _will-to-live_, which manifests itself to consciousness as thought and as desire. Into these the idea of space does not enter: we think of them as in _time_. But if there are developments of other dimensions of space, thought and emotion may themselves be discovered to have space relations; that is, they may find expression in the forms of _higher_ spaces. Thus is opened up one of those rich vistas in which the subject of the fourth dimension abounds, but into which we can only glance in passing. If there are such higher-dimensional |
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