Chapter X (part 1)

p. 112 CHAPTER X The spatial understanding of time. The angles and curves of the fourth dimension in our life. Does motion exist in the world or not? Mechanical motion and "life." Biological phenomena as the manifestation of motions going on in the higher dimension. Evolution of the space-sense. The growth of the space-sense and the diminution of the time-sense. The transformation of the time-sense into the space-sense. The difficulties of our language and of our concepts. The necessity for seeking a method of spatial expression for temporal concepts. Science in relation to the fourth dimension. The solid of four dimensions. The four-dimensional sphere. NOW from the basis of those conclusions already made, let us seek to define how we may discover the real four-dimensional world obscured from us by the illusory three-dimensional world. "See" it we may by two methods: either by sensing it directly, by developing the "space-sense" and other higher faculties, which will be discussed later; or by understanding it mentally by a perception of its possible properties through the exercise of the reason. By abstract reasoning, we have already come to the conclusion that the fourth dimension of space must lie in time, i.e., that time is the fourth dimension of space. We have already discovered psychological proofs of this thesis. Comparing the receptivity of the world by living beings of different grades of consciousness—snail, dog and man—we have seen how different for them are the properties of one and the same world ; namely, those properties which are expressed for us in the concepts of time and space. We have seen that time and space are sensed by each in a different manner: that what for the lower being (the snail) is time , for the being standing one degree higher (the dog) becomes space , and that the time of this being becomes space to a being standing still higher—man. This is a confirmation of the supposition previously expressed, that our idea of time is complex in its nature, and that in it are properly included two ideas —that of a certain space and that of motion p. 113 upon this space. Or to put the matter more exactly, the contact with a certain space of which we are not clearly conscious calls forth in us the sensation of motion upon that space; and all this taken together, i.e., the unclear consciousness of a certain space and the sensation of motion upon that space, we call time. This last confirms the conception that the idea of time has not arisen from the observation of motion existing in nature, but that the very sensation and idea of motion has arisen from a "time-sense" existing in ourselves, which is an imperfect sense of space : the fringe, or limit of our space-sense. The snail feels the line as space, i.e., as something constant. It feels the rest of the world as time, i.e., as something eternally moving. The horse feels the plane as space. It feels the rest of the world as time. We feel an infinite sphere as space; the rest of the world, that which was yesterday and that which will be tomorrow, we feel as time. In other words, every being feels as space that which is grasped by his space-sense: the rest he refers to time; i.e., the imperfectly felt is referred to time . Or it is possible to formulate the matter thus: every being feels as space that which, by the aid of his space-sense he is able to represent to himself in form, outside of himself; and that which he is not able thus to represent he feels as time, i.e., eternally moving, impermanent, so unstable that it is impossible to imagine it in terms of form. THE SENSE OF SPACE (SPACE-SENSE) IS THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION BY MEANS OF FORM.