Читать книгу A Theory of the Mechanism of Survival: The Fourth Dimension and Its Applications онлайн

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Fig. 6

Let us now extend this idea rather further.

Suppose we were to take a series of cinematograph pictures of the two-dimensional world, from the direction of the third dimension. We should obtain a succession of pictures each representing the precise state of affairs at some given moment in the two space world. Every thing in it would be represented in each. There would be no question of one thing being hidden by another because we are regarding them all from the direction of the third dimension in which they have an inappreciable extension. If we imagine the two space world to be very small or our camera to be very large there is no difficulty in supposing that each of our pictures includes the whole of the two space universe,—plane beings, earth, sun, planets, etc., all complete.

Imagine further that these pictures are reproduced, as cinematograph films actually are, on a transparent substance and then let us superimpose these successive pictures on one another in order so as to form a block. By this means we can represent the disposition of all the objects in a two space system at a number of successive instants in one single three space figure. For instance, the motion of a two space planet round its sun would become a part of a helix or spiral. If we now cut away from our block all the blank material which intervenes between the representations of the various two space objects we shall have a complete synthesis in three space of a succession of two space arrangements. If we were now to pass this three space object through a penetrable two space surface, e.g., a soap film, we should exactly reproduce for the two space beings in it the changes which we had originally recorded.