Scientific Romances (First Series)Hinton, Charles Howard
Philosophy
Scientific Romances (First Series)
Hinton, Charles Howard
Fourth dimension
But the king did not choose to make the fundamental actions of this
limited and finishing kind. As the type of the fundamental activity, he
chose an action, and made the being go through it again and again. Thus
the being would go through the act A, then the act B. When the action AB
was complete it would go through an act of the kind A again, then
through an act of the kind B. Thus the creature would be engaged in a
routine of this kind, AB, AB, AB, and so on.
And if the creature had been alone, and this had been the sole activity
in which it was concerned, the king would have gone on bearing 2 of pain
in each of these actions. The king would have kept the routine going on
steadily, the creature bearing 1000 of pleasure in each A, and 998 of
pain in each B.
At this point it may be asked that an example should be given of one of
these elementary routines which the king set going. And this seems a
reasonable request, and yet it is somewhat too peremptory. For in the
world we may know of what nature the movements of the atoms are without
being able to say exactly what the motion of any one is. In such a case
a type is the only possible presentation. Again, take the example of a
crystal. We know that a crystal has a definite law of shape, and however
much we divide it we find that its parts present the same conformation.
We cannot isolate the ultimate crystalline elements, but we infer that
they must be such as to produce the crystal by their combination.
Now life on the valley was such in its main features as would be
produced by a combination of routines of the kind explained. There were
changes and abrupt transitions, but the general and prevailing plan of
life was that of a routine of alternating acts of a pleasurable and a
painful kind. It was just such as would be built up out of elementary
routines, on which the king could count, and which, unless he modified
their combinations, tended to produce rhythmic processes of a larger
kind. And even the changes and abruptnesses had a recurrent nature about
them, for if any routine in the valley altered suddenly, it was found
that there were cases of other routines altering in like manner, when
the conditions under which they came were similar. Thus the fundamental
type of the action which the king instituted was that of a routine AB,
AB, as described above. But there were two circumstances which caused a
variation, so that this simple routine was modified.
Firstly, there was not one being only but many.
Secondly, the king wished to have some of his pain-bearing power set
free from time to time. He did not wish to have to be continually
spending it all in maintaining the routines he had started at first, and
those immediately connected with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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