THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

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It may be difficult for us to form a conception of a world of more than three dimensions. Yet it is no more difficult than to imagine a world confined to only two dimensions, or than, for beings of such a world, to form a conception of our space. For simplicity, let the two-dimensional world be a plane, though equally well it might be the surface of a sphere. We may picture to ourselves the mode of life of the inhabitants of this flat land. They could
Page 234 move in any direction along the plane, but they could not move perpendicularly to it, and would have no consciousness that such a motion was possible. They would not be able to turn their heads up or down. Things about them could be pulled or pushed in any direction, but they could not be lifted up. People and things could pass around each other, but they could not step over anything. Their plane geometry, however, would be exactly like ours.

In this supposed land, let us draw two straight lines perpendicular to one another, that is, two straight lines intersecting at right angles at A. The drawing (Fig. 1) would be as perfectly conceivable to our plane beings as it is to us. But suppose we asked them to draw a third line perpendicular to the other two lines at the same point of intersection A.

Figure 1
That would seem absurd and impossible to them, just as it would be to us if we had to draw the required third line on the paper. But with this condition removed, we can leave the plane surface of the paper and draw the third line through the paper perpendicular to the surface at A, just as we might stick a pin at A vertical to this page. So, too, with us, when we have a cube after drawing three mutually perpendicular lines, and are required to draw a fourth line passing through the same point, perpendicular to all of the three lines already there. In our space the problem is absurd and impossible. Our conceptions do not admit of more than three dimensions. But for a being that could conceive of a fourth dimension the problem would be easy. He would simply draw the line through that space.
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Our conscious life is in three dimensions, and naturally the idea occurs whether there may not be a fourth dimension. No inhabitant of flatland could realize what life in a world of three dimensions would mean. Yet, if he were intellectual, he might be able to extend the analytical geometry that applied to his world, so as to obtain results true for a world in three dimensions, a world that would be unknown and inconceivable to him. Similarly, we cannot realize what life in

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