Any one who wishes to make them should go carefully over the sections of
a cube, not looking at them as he himself can see them, or determining
them as he, with his three-dimensional conceptions, can; but he must
limit his imagination to two dimensions, and work through the problems
which a plane-being would have to work through, although to his higher
mind they may be self-evident. Thus a three-dimensional being can see at
a glance, that if a sectional plane passes through a cube at one unit
each way from Corvus, the resulting figure is an equilateral triangle.
If he wished to prove it, he would show that the three bounding lines
are the diagonals of equal squares. This is all a two-dimensional being
would have to do; but it is not so evident to him that two of the lines
are the diagonals of squares.
Moreover, when the figure is drawn, we can look at it from a point
outside the plane of the figure, and can thus see it all at once; but
he who has to look at it from a point in the plane can only see an edge
at a time, or he might see two edges in perspective together.
Then there are certain suppositions he has to make. For instance, he
knows that two points determine a line, and he assumes that three points
determine a plane, although he cannot conceive any other plane than the
one in which he exists. We assume that four points determine a solid
space. Or rather, we say that _if_ this supposition, together with
certain others of a like nature, are true, we can find all the sections
of a tessaract, and of other four-dimensional figures by an infinite
solid.
When any difficulty arises in taking the sections of a tessaract, the
surest way of overcoming it is to suppose a similar difficulty occurring
to a two-dimensional being in taking the sections of a cube, and, step
by step, to follow the solution he might obtain, and then to apply the
same or similar principles to the case in point.
A few figures are given, which, if cut out and folded along the lines,
will show some of the sections of a tessaract. But the reader is
earnestly begged not to be content with _looking_ at the shapes only.
That will teach him nothing about a tessaract, or four-dimensional
space, and will only tend to produce in his mind a feeling that “the
fourth dimension” is an unknown and unthinkable region, in which any
shapes may be right, as given sections of its figures, and of which any
statement may be true. While, in fact, if it is the case that the laws
of spaces of two and three dimensions may, with truth, be carried on
into space of four dimensions; then the little our solidity (like the
flatness of a plane-being) will allow us to learn of these shapes and
relations, is no more a matter of doubt to us than what we learn of two-
and three-dimensional shapes and relations.
There are given also sections of an octa-tessaract, and of a
tetra-tessaract, the equivalents in four-space of an octahedron and
tetrahedron.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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