nsciousness--volition, emotion,
intellection--may be in some way correlated with the higher powers
of numbers, and with the corresponding higher developments of space.
Thus would the difference between physics and metaphysics become a
difference of degree and not of kind. Evolution is to be conceived
of as a continuous pushing back of the boundary between
representation and reality, or as a conquest of space. We may
conceive of space as of an infinite number of dimensions, and of
consciousness as a moving--or rather as an expanding--point,
embracing this infinity, involving worlds, powers, knowledges,
felicities, within itself in everlasting progression.
III PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
LOOKING FOR THE GREATER IN THE LESS
After the assured way in which the author has conducted the reader
repeatedly up and down the dimensional ladder, it may be a surprise
to learn that physical phenomena offer no irrefragable evidences of
hyper-dimensionality. We could not think in higher space if
consciousness were limited to three dimensions. The mathematical
reality of higher space is never in question: the higher dimensions
are as valid as the lower, but the hyper-dimensionality of matter is
still unproven. Man's ant-like efforts to establish this as a truth
have thus far been vain.
Lest this statement discourage the reader at the very outset, he
should understand the reason for such failure. We are _embedded_ in
our own space, and if that space be embedded in higher space, how are
we going to discover it? If space is curved, how are we going to
measure its curvature? Our efforts to do so may be compared to
measuring the distance between the tips of a bent bow by measuring
along the bow instead of along the string.
Imagine a scientifically-minded threadworm to inhabit a page of
Euclid's solid geometry: the evidences of three-dimensionality are
there, in the very diagrams underneath his eyes; but you could not
_show_ him a solid--the flat page could not contain it, any more
than our space can contain a form of four dimensions. You could only
say to him, "These lines _represent_ a solid." He would have to
depend on his _faith_ for belief and not on that "knowledge gained
by exact observation and correct thinking" in which alone the
scientist finds a sure ground for understanding.
It is an axiom of science never to look outside three-space horizons
for an understanding of phenomena when these can logically be
accounted for
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