"If you look at the back of a watch etherically you see all the wheels through it, and the face _through them_, but backwards; if you look at it astrally, you see the face right way up and all the wheels lying separately, but nothing on the top of anything else." Here we have at once the keynote, the principal factor of the change; the man is looking at everything from an absolutely new point of view, entirely outside of anything that he has ever imagined before. He has no longer the slightest difficulty in reading any page in a closed book, because he is not now looking at it through all the other pages before it or behind it, but is looking straight down upon it as though it were the only page to be seen. The depth at which a vein of metal or of coal may lie is no longer a barrier to his sight of it, because he is not now looking through the intervening depth of earth at all. The thickness of a wall, or the number of walls intervening between the observer and the object, would make a great deal of difference to the clearness of the etheric sight; they would make no difference whatever to the astral sight, because on the astral plane they would _not_ intervene between the observer and the object. Of course that sounds paradoxical and impossible, and it _is_ quite inexplicable to a mind not specially trained to grasp the idea; yet it is none the less absolutely true. This carries us straight into the middle of the much-vexed question of the fourth dimension--a question of the deepest interest, though one that we cannot pretend to discuss in the space at our disposal. Those who wish to study it as it deserves are recommended to begin with Mr. C. H. Hinton's _Scientific Romances_ or Dr. A. T. Schofield's _Another World_, and then follow on with the former author's larger work, _A New Era of Thought_. Mr. Hinton not only claims to be able himself to grasp mentally some of the simpler fourth-dimensional figures, but also states that anyone who will take the trouble to follow out his directions may with perseverance acquire that mental grasp likewise. I am not certain that the power to do this is within the reach of everyone, as he thinks, for it appears to me to require considerable mathematical ability; but I can at any rate bear witness that the tesseract or fourth-dimensional cube which he describes is a reality, for it is quite a familiar figure upon the astral plane. He has now perfected a new method of representing the several dimensions by colours instead of by arbitrary written symbols. He states that this will very much simplify the study, as the reader will be able to distinguish instantly by sight any part or feature of the tesseract. A full description of this new method, with plates, is said to be ready for the press, and is expected to appear within a year, so that intending students of this fascinating subject might do well to await its publication.