Let him suppose the cube, in the position of the drawing, fig. 124,
turned so that the pink face lies against his plane. He can see the
line from the null _r_ point to the null _wh_ point, and can see
(compare fig. 119) that it cuts AB a parallel to his red axis, drawn
at a point half way along the white line, in a point B, half way up. I
shall speak of the axis as having the length of an edge of the cube.
Similarly, by letting the cube turn so that the light yellow square
swings against his plane, he can see (compare fig. 119) that a parallel
to his yellow axis drawn from a point half-way along the white axis, is
cut at half its length by the trace of the section plane in the light
yellow face.
Hence when the cube had passed half-way through he would have—instead
of the orange line with null points, which he had at first—an ochre
line of half its length, with pink and light yellow points. Thus, as
the cube passed slowly through his plane, he would have a succession
of lines gradually diminishing in length and forming an equilateral
triangle. The whole interior would be ochre, the line from which it
started would be orange. The succession of points at the ends of
the succeeding lines would form pink and light yellow lines and the
final point would be null. Thus looking at the successive lines in
the section plane as it and the cube passed across his plane he would
determine the figure cut out bit by bit.
Coming now to the section of the tesseract, let us imagine that the
tesseract and its cutting _space_ pass slowly across our space; we can
examine portions of it, and their relation to portions of the cutting
space. Take the section space which passes through the four points,
null _r_, _wh_, _y_, _b_; we can see in the ochre cube (fig. 119) the
plane belonging to this section space, which passes through the three
extremities of the red, white, yellow axes.
Now let the tesseract pass half way through our space. Instead of our
original axes we have parallels to them, purple, light blue, and green,
each of the same length as the first axes, for the section of the
tesseract is of exactly the same shape as its ochre cube.
But the sectional space seen at this stage of the transference would
not cut the section of the tesseract in a plane disposed as at first.
To see where the sectional space would cut these parallels to the
original axes let the tesseract swing so that, the orange face
remaining stationary, the blue line comes in to the left.
Here (fig. 125) we have the null _r_, _y_, _b_ points, and of the
sectional space all we see is the plane through these three points in
it.
[Illustration: Fig. 125.]
In this figure we can draw the parallels to the red and yellow axes and
see that, if they started at a point half way along the blue axis, they
would each be cut at a point so as to be half of their previous length.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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