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                          SCIENTIFIC ROMANCES.


                                   BY
                           C. H. HINTON, B.A.

  What is the Fourth Dimension?
  The Persian King.
  A Plane World.
  A Picture of Our Universe.
  Casting Out the Self.

  [Illustration: _FIRST SERIES._]

                               _London._
                     SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM.,
                          Paternoster Square.
                                 1886.




                     What is the Fourth Dimension?


                               CHAPTER I.

At the present time our actions are largely influenced by our theories.
We have abandoned the simple and instinctive mode of life of the earlier
civilisations for one regulated by the assumptions of our knowledge and
supplemented by all the devices of intelligence. In such a state it is
possible to conceive that a danger may arise, not only from a want of
knowledge and practical skill, but even from the very presence and
possession of them in any one department, if there is a lack of
information in other departments. If, for instance, with our present
knowledge of physical laws and mechanical skill, we were to build houses
without regard to the conditions laid down by physiology, we should
probably—to suit an apparent convenience—make them perfectly
draught-tight, and the best-constructed mansions would be full of
suffocating chambers. The knowledge of the construction of the body and
the conditions of its health prevent it from suffering injury by the
development of our powers over nature.

In no dissimilar way the mental balance is saved from the dangers
attending an attention concentrated on the laws of mechanical science by
a just consideration of the constitution of the knowing faculty, and the
conditions of knowledge. Whatever pursuit we are engaged in, we are
acting consciously or unconsciously upon some theory, some view of
things. And when the limits of daily routine are continually narrowed by
the ever-increasing complication of our civilisation, it becomes doubly
important that not one only but every kind of thought should be shared
in.

There are two ways of passing beyond the domain of practical certainty,
and of looking into the vast range of possibility. One is by asking,
“What is knowledge? What constitutes experience?” If we adopt this
course we are plunged into a sea of speculation. Were it not that the
highest faculties of the mind find therein so ample a range, we should
return to the solid ground of facts, with simply a feeling of relief at
escaping from so great a confusion and contradictoriness.

The other path which leads us beyond the horizon of actual experience is
that of questioning whatever seems arbitrary and irrationally limited in
the domain of knowledge. Such a questioning has often been successfully
applied in the search for new facts. For a long time four gases were
considered incapable of being reduced to the liquid state. It is but
lately that a physicist has succeeded in showing that there is no such
arbitrary distinction among gases. Recently again the question has been
raised, “Is there not a fourth state of matter?” Solid, liquid, and
gaseous states are known. Mr. Crookes attempts to demonstrate the
existence of a state differing from all of these. It is the object of
these pages to show that, by supposing away certain limitations of the
fundamental conditions of existence as we know it, a state of being can
be conceived with powers far transcending our own. When this is made
clear it will not be out of place to investigate what relations would
subsist between our mode of existence and that which will be seen to be
a possible one.

In the first place, what is the limitation that we must suppose away?

An observer standing in the corner of a room has three directions
naturally marked out for him; one is upwards along the line of meeting
of the two walls; another is forwards where the floor meets one of the
walls; a third is sideways where the floor meets the other wall. He can
proceed to any part of the floor of the room by moving first the right
distance along one wall, and then by turning at right angles and walking
parallel to the other wall. He walks in this case first of all in the
direction of one of the straight lines that meet in the corner of the
floor, afterwards in the direction of the other. By going more or less
in one direction or the other, he can reach any point on the floor, and
any movement, however circuitous, can be resolved into simple movements
in these two directions.

But by moving in these two directions he is unable to raise himself in
the room. If he wished to touch a point in the ceiling, he would have to
move in the direction of the line in which the two walls meet. There are
three directions then, each at right angles to both the other, and
entirely independent of one another. By moving in these three directions
or combinations of them, it is possible to arrive at any point in a
room. And if we suppose the straight lines which meet in the corner of
the room to be prolonged indefinitely, it would be possible by moving in
the direction of those three lines, to arrive at any point in space.
Thus in space there are three independent directions, and only three;
every other direction is compounded of these three. The question that
comes before us then is this. “Why should there be three and only three
directions?” Space, as we know it, is subject to a limitation.

In order to obtain an adequate conception of what this limitation is, it
is necessary to first imagine beings existing in a space more limited
than that in which we move. Thus we may conceive a being who has been
throughout all the range of his experience confined to a single straight
line. Such a being would know what it was to move to and fro, but no
more. The whole of space would be to him but the extension in both
directions of the straight line to an infinite distance. It is evident
that two such creatures could never pass one another. We