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Four-Dimensional Vistas by Claude Fayette Bragdon
page 50 of 116 (43%)
your room which is distorted, for he can show that in spite of all
its nightmare aspects his world is governed by the same orderly
geometry that governs yours.

The above illustration deals purely with space relations, for such
relations are easily grasped; but certain distortions in time
relations are no less absolutely imperceptible and unprovable. So
far from having any advantage over the spoon-man, our plight is his.
The Principle of Relativity discovers us in the predicament of the
Mikado's "prisoner pent," condemned to play with crooked cues and
elliptical billiard balls, and of the opium victim, for whom
"space swells" and time moves sometimes swift and sometimes slow.


THE ORBITAL MOVEMENT OF TIME

Now if our space is curved in higher space, since such curvature is
at present undetectable by us, we must assume, as Hinton chose to
assume, that it curves in the minute, or, as some astronomers assume,
that its curve is vast. These assumptions are not mutually exclusive:
they are quite in analogy with the general curvature of the earth's
surface which is in no wise interfered with by the lesser curvatures
represented by mountains and valleys. It is easiest to think of our
space as completely curved in higher space in analogy with the
surface of a sphere.

Similarly, if time is curved, the idea of the cyclic return of time
naturally (though not inevitably) follows, and the division of the
greater cycles into lesser loops; for it is easier to assign this
elliptical movement to time than any other, by reason of the orbital
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