The fact is that we have to recognise that, if there is another
dimension of space, our present idea of a solid body, as one which
has three dimensions only, does not correspond to anything real,
but is the abstract idea of a three-dimensional boundary limiting a
four-dimensional solid, which a four-dimensional being would form. The
plane being’s thought of a square is not the thought of what we should
call a possibly existing real square, but the thought of an abstract
boundary, the face of a cube.
Let us now take our eight coloured cubes, which form a cube in
space, and ask what additions we must make to them to represent
the simplest collection of four-dimensional bodies—namely, a group
of them of the same extent in every direction. In plane space we
have four squares. In solid space we have eight cubes. So we should
expect in four-dimensional space to have sixteen four-dimensional
bodies-bodies which in four-dimensional space correspond to cubes in
three-dimensional space, and these bodies we call tesseracts.
Given then the null, white, red, yellow cubes, and those which make up
the block, we notice that we represent perfectly well the extension
in three directions (fig. 98). From the null point of the null cube,
travelling one inch, we come to the white cube; travelling one inch
away we come to the yellow cube; travelling one inch up we come to the
red cube. Now, if there is a fourth dimension, then travelling from the
same null point for one inch in that direction, we must come to the
body lying beyond the null region.
[Illustration: Fig. 98.]
I say null region, not cube; for with the introduction of the fourth
dimension each of our cubes must become something different from cubes.
If they are to have existence in the fourth dimension, they must be
“filled up from” in this fourth dimension.
Now we will assume that as we get a transference from null to white
going in one way, from null to yellow going in another, so going
from null in the fourth direction we have a transference from null
to blue, using thus the colours white, yellow, red, blue, to denote
transferences in each of the four directions—right, away, up, unknown
or fourth dimension.
[Illustration: Fig. 99.
A plane being’s representation of a block of eight cubes by two sets of
four squares.]
Hence, as the plane being must represent the solid regions, he would
come to by going right, as four squares lying in some position in his
plane, arbitrarily chosen, side by side with his original four squares,
so we must represent those eight four-dimensional regions, which we
should come to by going in the fourth dimension from each of our eight
cubes, by eight cubes placed in some arbitrary position relative to our
first eight cubes.
[Illustration: Fig. 100.]
Our representation of a block of sixteen tesseracts by two blocks of
eight cubes.[3]
[3] The eight cubes used here in 2 can be found in the second of the
model blocks. They can be taken out and used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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