The cube null in the normal position is the cube which has in it the
red, yellow, white axes. It is the face having these, but wanting the
blue. In this way you can define which face it is you are handling. I
will write an “f.” after the name of each tesseract just as the plane
being might call each of his slabs null slab, yellow slab, etc., to
denote that they were representations.
We have then in the first block of twenty-seven cubes, the
following—null f., red f., null f., going up; white f., null f., lying
to the right, and so on. Starting from the null point and travelling
up one inch we are in the null region, the same for the away and the
right-hand directions. And if we were to travel in the fourth dimension
for an inch we should still be in a null region. The tesseract
stretches equally all four ways. Hence the appearance we have in this
first block would do equally well if the tesseract block were to move
across our space for a certain distance. For anything less than an inch
of their transverse motion we should still have the same appearance.
You must notice, however, that we should not have null face after the
motion had begun.
When the tesseract, null for instance, had moved ever so little we
should not have a face of null but a section of null in our space.
Hence, when we think of the motion across our space we must call our
cubes tesseract sections. Thus on null passing across we should see
first null f., then null s., and then, finally, null f. again.
Imagine now the whole first block of twenty-seven tesseracts to have
moved tranverse to our space a distance of one inch. Then the second
set of tesseracts, which originally were an inch distant from our
space, would be ready to come in.
Their colours are shown in the second block of twenty-seven cubes which
you have before you. These represent the tesseract faces of the set of
tesseracts that lay before an inch away from our space. They are ready
now to come in, and we can observe their colours. In the place which
null f. occupied before we have blue f., in place of red f. we have
purple f., and so on. Each tesseract is coloured like the one whose
place it takes in this motion with the addition of blue.
Now if the tesseract block goes on moving at the rate of an inch a
minute, this next set of tesseracts will occupy a minute in passing
across. We shall see, to take the null one for instance, first of all
null face, then null section, then null face again.
At the end of the second minute the second set of tesseracts has gone
through, and the third set comes in. This, as you see, is coloured just
like the first. Altogether, these three sets extend three inches in the
fourth dimension, making the tesseract block of equal magnitude in all
dimensions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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