Chapter IX (part 6)

Probably it feels heat, cold, light, darkness, hunger—and it instinctively (i.e., urged by pleasure-pain guidance) strives to reach the uneaten edge of the leaf on which it rests, and instinctively avoids the dead leaf. Its movements are guided by pleasure-pain : it constantly strives toward the one, and away from the other. It always moves upon a single line , from the unpleasant to the pleasant, and in all probability except for this line it is not conscious of anything and does not sense anything. This line is its entire world. All sensations, entering from the outside, the snail senses upon this p. 107 line of its motion, and these come to it out of time —from the potential they become the present. For the snail our entire universe exists in the future and in the past—i.e., in time . In space only one line exists; all the rest is time. It is more than probable that the snail is not conscious of its movements. Making efforts with its entire body it moves forward to the fresh edge of the leaf, but it seems as if the leaf were coming to it, appearing at that moment, coming out of time as the morning comes to us. The snail is a one-dimensional being. The higher animals—the dog, cat, the horse—are two-dimensional beings. To the higher animal all space appears as a surface, as a plane. Everything out of this plane lives for it in time. Thus we see that the higher animal—the two-dimensional being compared with the one-dimensional—extracts or captures from time one more dimension . The world of a snail has one dimension; our second and third dimensions are for it in time. The world of a dog is two-dimensional; our third dimension is for it in time. An animal can remember all "phenomena" which it has observed, i.e., all properties of three-dimensional solids with which it has come in contact, but it cannot know that the (for it) recurring phenomenon is a constant property of the three-dimensional solid—an angle, curvature, or convexity. Such is the psychology of the receptivity of the world by a two-dimensional being. For such a being a new sun will rise every day. Yesterday's sun is gone, and will not appear again; tomorrow's does not as yet exist. Rostand did not understand the psychology of " Chantecler ." The cock could not think that he woke up the sun by his crowing. To him the sun does not go to sleep, it goes into the past, disappears, suffers annihilation, ceases to be . If it comes on the morrow it will be a new sun, just as for us with every new year comes a new spring . In order to be the sun shall not wake up, but arise , be born. The cock (if it could think without losing its characteristic psychology) could not believe in the appearance today of the same sun which was yesterday . This is purely human reasoning. For the animal a new sun rises every morning, just as for us a p. 108 new morning comes with every day and a new spring with every year. The animal is not in a position to understand that the sun is the same yesterday and today, EXACTLY IN THE SAME WAY THAT WE PROBABLY CANNOT UNDERSTAND THAT THE MORNING IS THE SAME AND THE SPRING IS THE SAME. The motion of objects which is not illusory, even for us, but a real motion, like that of a revolving wheel, a passing carriage, and so on, will differ for the animal very much from that motion which it sees in all objects which are for us immobile—i.e., from that motion in which the third dimension of solids is as it were revealed to it. The first mentioned motion (real for us) will seem to the animal arbitrary, alive .