Scientific Romances (First Series)Hinton, Charles Howard
Philosophy
Scientific Romances (First Series)
Hinton, Charles Howard
Fourth dimension
If the reader will cut out the triangles in the corners of the two next
pages he will obtain four plane beings, two of which are men, two of
which are women. The lines down which the cutting is to be made are
marked with a black line. Now having cut out two men, whom we will call
Homo and Vir, draw a line on a piece of paper to represent the rim of
the world on which they stand, and, remembering that they cannot slide
over each other, move them about. It must be remembered that the figures
cannot leave the plane on which they are put. They must not be turned
over. The only way in which they can pass each other is by one climbing
over the other’s head. They can go forwards or backwards. Much can be
noticed from an inspection of these figures. Of course it is only
symbolical in the rudest way, but in their whole life the facts which
can be noticed in these simple figures are built up and organized into
complicated arrangements.
[Illustration: Diagram VI.]
[Illustration: Diagram VII.]
It is evident that the sharp point of one man is always running into
another man’s sensitive or soft edge. Each man is in continual
apprehension of every other man: not only does each fear each, but their
sensitive edges—those on which they are receptive of all except the
roughest impressions—are turned away from each other.
On the sensitive edge is the face and all the means of expression of
feeling. The other edge is covered with a horny thickening of the skin,
which at the sharp point becomes very dense and as hard as iron. It will
be evident, on moving the figures about that no two men could naturally
come face to face with each other.
In this land no such thing as friendship or familiar intercourse between
man and man is possible. The very name of it is ridiculous to them. For
the only way in which one man can turn his sensitive edge to another man
is if one of them will consent to stand on his head. Fathers hold their
male children in this way when little, but the first symptom of manhood
is connected with a resentment against this treatment.
If now two women, Mulier and Femina, be looked at, the same relation
will be seen to hold good between them. By their nature they are
predisposed, by accident, to injure one another, and their
impressionable sides are, by the very conditions of their being, turned
away from each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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