In another of his “Thirty Strange Stories” Wells tells “The Story of Davidson’s Eyes.” While Davidson was working in his London laboratory a lightning shock so affected his eyesight that he could not see the familiar objects about him which he could feel but looked instead at a South Sea island on the opposite side of the globe. This might be possible in a curved space of four dimensions although Wells professes to pooh-pooh such an absurd suggestion while he ingeniously insinuates it. George Macdonald in his fantastic romance “Lilith” also introduces the fourth dimension. Points that are far apart if measured in three dimensions may be close together in the fourth. We can readily understand this if time is the fourth dimension, for events can happen at the same instant though thousands of miles apart. But it is not impossible to conceive of the fourth dimension as spatial instead of temporal if we approach the problem from a simpler standpoint. Let us think of ourselves as living in a “Flatland” of two dimensions with no thought of a third. There yet survive in enlightened America individuals who believe that “the sun do move” and who deny that the earth is “round like a ball.” That is, they do not recognize the curvature of the earth in the third dimension. But if such an individual were to travel in a “straight” line westward over the “level” land and water he would, much to his surprise, come back to his starting point which he had left 25,000 miles behind him. [Illustration: By movement in one dimension we cannot make the lines _AB_ and _B′A′_ coincide for if we drag _B′A′_ straight on to _AB_ the ends will not match. But if we swing _B′A′_ around through the second dimension we bring it on _AB_ so the letters correspond.] [Illustration: In space of two dimensions, such as a table top, we cannot bring these two triangles into the same position. If we drag one straight over on to the other (movement in one dimension) they will not fit together. If we swing one triangle around (movement in two dimensions) they still do not fit. But if we take one triangle off the table and turn it over (movement in the third dimension) we can then lay it by the side of the other and they will match perfectly.] A WORM’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD [Illustration]