#bragdon

The expression, the fourth dimension, offers a shock to the mind accustomed to practical handling of matter, because all our experiences of measurement or dimensionality are ultimately founded upon matter possessing but three dimensions, so that we have great difficulty in accepting the reality of a direction not contained in our space or our matter but definitely at right angles to every line that can be drawn within the matter and space which contain all our ordinary experiences. Our idea of space is partial, and like many another of our ideas needs modification to accommodate it to fuller knowledge. What we think of as space is more probably only some part of space made perceptible. It may be that our space bears a relation to space in its totality analogous to that which the images cast by a magic lantern bear to the wall on which these images are made to appear—a wall with solidity, thickness, extension in other and more directions than those embraced within the wavering circle of light which would correspond to our sense of the cosmos. In other words, perhaps that which we think of as space is only so much of it as our limited sensuous mechanism is able to apprehend.

Research leads always into the profound. The light of things known serves but to reveal a greater abysm of mystery beyond the threshold of consciousness. The higher space hypothesis makes man in his present estate appear but as an earthworm in power and knowledge, nevertheless it holds out the promise of eternal progress.

Adventure with me down a precipice of thought, sustained only by the rope of an analogy, slender but strong. This rope, anchored in the firm ground of sensuous perception, extends three paces in the direction of the great abyss, then vanishes at the giddy brink. Let us examine this sustaining simile foot by foot and strand by strand. Familiar both to the mind and eye are the space systems of one, two, and three dimensions; that is, lines, planes, solids. Lines are bounded by points, and themselves bound planes; line-bound planes in turn bound solids. What, then, do solids bound? Here is where the analogical rope vanishes from sight. If you answer that a solid cannot be a boundary we part company. No argument of mine can convince you to the contrary. But if you are interested, “Well, what do solids bound?” logic compels the answer, “Higher solids: four-dimensional forms (invisible to sight) related to the solids we know as these are related to their bounding planes; as planes to their bounding lines.”

Bragdon, as new director of LGC, engages in war of words with Gardner over settlement talks