THE FOURTH DIMENSION SIMPLY EXPLAINED

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Applying this conception to space, we can see that S's world, in a precisely analogous manner, might be curved, twisted, or even involved, in extra space, without S having any possible means of becoming aware of the fact. This, of course, opens up the possibility that two bodies -- say the earth and sun -- which are, measured in space, millions of miles apart, may, if the measurement were made along the axis of the fourth dimension, prove to be close together, or actually touching. Some such explanation as this has, as a matter of fact, been invoked occasionally to account for various phenomena, such as the action of various natural forces across vacua of infinite extent, telepathy and the like. [1]
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But just as Euclidean plane geometry fails utterly on an irregularly curved surface where the three angles of a triangle are not equivalent to two right angles, so our solid geometry would prove to be fundamentally incorrect in any portion of space which had such a curvature in extraspace. Thus we may see that by extending our ideas of the possibilities of existence downward to a world of two dimensions, it is quite possible, if not to obtain actual information, at least to get glimpses of what relations the fourth-dimension world would bear to our universe, supposing it to exist; though it is only fair to say that just as a mathematically plane world would be utterly incapable of apprehension by our-three-dimension senses, so a world of four -- or more -dimensions, while not impossible of conception, would be equally beyond the reach of our present faculties; so that worlds of two, four, five, or even n dimensions, may coexist with space in the universe we are familiar with, and we all the while be blissfully unconscious of the: fact.

[1] If our space were thus curved certain places might be actually much nearer in space of four dimensions than they are in our space, but the difference would in most cases be very slight. -- H. P. M. Page 144

XII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FOURTH DIMENSION. BY "RICHMOND" (LOUIS W. WORRELL, WASHINGTON, D. C.)
Consider the following figures:

Figures 1, 2, and 3
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