and the coloured blocks for practical experiment, and I followed the
instructions carefully till I had arrived at a working conception of
four-dimensional space. The tessaract, the figure whose boundaries are
cubes, I knew by heart. That is to say, I knew it and saw it mentally,
for my eye, of course, could never take in a new measurement, or my
hands and feet handle it.

"So, at least, I thought," he added, making a wry face. "I had reached
the stage, you see, when I could imagine in a new dimension. I was able
to conceive the shape of that new figure which is intrinsically
different to all we know--the shape of the tessaract. I could perceive
in four dimensions. When, therefore, I looked at a cube I could see all
its sides at once. Its top was not foreshortened, nor its farther side
and base invisible. I saw the whole thing out flat, so to speak. And
this tessaract was bounded by cubes! Moreover, I also saw its
content--its insides."

"You were not yourself able to enter this new world," interrupted Dr.
Silence.

"Not then. I was only able to conceive intuitively what it was like and
how exactly it must look. Later, when I slipped in there and saw objects
in their entirety, unlimited by the paucity of our poor three
measurements, I very nearly lost my life. For, you see, space does not
stop at a single new dimension, a fourth. It extends in all possible new
ones, and we must conceive it as containing any number of new
dimensions. In other words, there is no space at all, but only a
spiritual condition. But, meanwhile, I had come to grasp the strange
fact that the objects in our normal world appear to us only partially."

Mr. Mudge moved farther forward till he was balanced dangerously on the
very edge of the chair. "From this starting point," he resumed, "I began
my studies and experiments, and continued them for years. I had money,
and I was without friends. I lived in solitude and experimented. My
intellect, of course, had little part in the work, for intellectually it
was all unthinkable. Never was the limitation of mere reason more
plainly demonstrated. It was mystically, intuitively, spiritually that I
began to advance. And what I learnt, and knew, and did is all impossible
to put into language, since it all describes experiences transcending
the experiences of men. It is only some of the results--what you would
call the symptoms of my disease--that I can give you, and even these
must often appear absurd con