THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

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Nor does the expression "entering the fourth dimension" seem to be "manifestly unintelligible," even if some slightly different phrase were better. If there were a "new direction" which we could not perceive, then our perceptions would not be unrestricted in direction. A body moving off in this direction would indeed "retain its length, breadth, and thickness," but would not remain within the range of our perceptions. There is no question of the possibility in space of four dimensions of entering or passing out of what we call a tightly shut box or room, or of removing the contents of an egg without disturbing the shell (see foot-note p. 23). It is in this new direction that the walls of the room and the shell of the egg are supposed not to extend, and if such a direction did exist these movements would be possible without any modification of physical laws. The space of our sensations and perceptions is only three-dimensional but there is nowhere any contradiction in the Geometry of Four Dimensions nor anything that is impossible, -- H. P. M.
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IV. THE BOUNDARY OF THE FOUR-DIMENSIONAL UNIT AND OTHER FEATURES OF FOUR-DIMENSIONAL SPACE. 1 BY "PLATONIDES."
The schoolboy early becomes familiar with linear measure, square measure, and solid or cubic measure. He understands them respectively as "the measurement of lengths," "the measurement of surface which depends on length and breadth taken conjointly," and "the measurement of volume which depends on length, breadth, and height all taken together." The first involves one dimension, length; the second, two mutually

Figure 1
perpendicular dimensions, length and breadth, multiplied together; and the third, three dimensions, each perpendicular to the other two -- length, breadth and height, all multiplied together. Let the units of these three kinds of measure (e. g., foot, square foot, and cubic foot) be represented by a line AB, a square AB CD with that line as side, and a cube ABCD-G with that line as edge and that square as base (Fig. 1).
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