FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS by Claude Bragdon [Illustration] New York "_Perception has a destiny_." _Emerson_. INTRODUCTION There are two notable emancipations of the mind from the tyranny of mere appearances that have received scant attention save from mathematicians and theoretical physicists. In 1823 Bolyai declared with regard to Euclid's so-called axiom of parallels, "I will draw two lines through a given point, both of which will be parallel to a given line." The drawing of these lines led to the concept of the curvature of space, and this to the idea of _higher_ space. The recently developed Theory of Relativity has compelled the revision of the time concept as used in classical physics. One result of this has been to introduce the notion of _curved_ time. These two ideas, of curved time and higher space, by their very nature are bound to profoundly modify human thought. They loosen the bonds within which advancing knowledge has increasingly labored, they lighten the dark abysses of consciousness, they reconcile the discoveries of Western workers with the inspirations of Eastern dreamers; but best of all, they open vistas, they offer "glimpses that may make us less forlorn." CONTENTS I. THE QUEST OF FREEDOM The Undiscovered Country--Miracles--The Failure of Common Sense--The Function of Science--Mathematics--Intuition--Our Sense of Space--The Subjectivity of Space--The Need of an Enlarged Space-Concept. II. THE DIMENSIONAL LADDER Learning to Think in Terms of Spaces--From the Cosmos to the Corpuscle--And Beyond--Evolution as Space-Conquest--Dimensional Sequences--Man the Geometer--Higher, and Highest, Space. III. PHYSICAL PHENOMENA Looking for the Greater in the Less--Symmetry--Other Allied Phenomena--Isomerism--The Orbital Motion of Spheres: Cell-Subdivision-- The Electric Current--The Greater Universe--A Hint from Astronomy-- Gravitation--The Ether of Space. IV. TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS Zöllner--Apparitions--Possession--Clairvoyance in Space--Clairvoyance in Time--Pisgah Sights of Life's Pageant. V. CURVED TIME Time from the Standpoint of Experiment and of Conscious Experience-- Relativity--The Spoon-Man--The Orbital Movement of Time--Materiality the Mirror of Consciousness--Periodicity. VI. SLEEP AND DREAMS Sleep--Dreams--Time in Dreams--The Eastern Teaching in regard to Sleep and Dreams--Space in Dreams--The Phenomenon of Pause. VII. THE NIGHT SIDE OF CONSCIOUSNESS The Field of Psychic Research--Modifying the Past--Karma and Reincarnation--Colonel De Rochas' Experiments. VIII. THE EASTERN TEACHING Oriental Physics and Metaphysics--The Self-Recovered Memory of past Births--Release. IX. THE MYSTICS Hermes Trismegistus--The Page and the Press--The Ship and its Captain--Direct Vision--Plato's Shadow-Watchers--Swedenborg--Man, the Space-Eater--The Within and Without--Intuition and Reason--The Coil of Life. X. GENIUS