The fourth dimension

256 THE FOURTH DIMENSION

be, I am mistaken. But for my own part, I think there are indications of such an intuition; from the results of my experiments, I adopt the hypothesis that that which thinks in us has an ample experience, of which the intuitions we use in dealing with the world of real objects are a part; of which experience, the intuition of fourdimensional forms and motions is also a part. The process we are engaged in intellectually is the reading the obscure signals of our nerves into a world of reality, by means of intuitions derived from the inner experience.

The image I form is as follows. Imagine the captain of a modern battle-ship directing its course. He has his charts before him; he is in communication with his associates and subordinates; can convey his messages and commands to every part of the ship, and receive information from the conning-tower and the engine-room. Now suppose the captain immersed in the problem of the navigation of his ship over the ocean, to have so absorbed himself in the problem of the direction of his craft over the plane surface of the sea that he forgets himself. All that occupies his attention is the kind of movement that his ship makes. The operations by which that movement is produced have sunk below the threshold of his consciousness, his own actions, by which he pushes the buttons, gives the orders, are so familiar as te be automatic, his mind is on the motion of the ship asa whole. In such a case we can imagine that he identifies himself with his ship; all that enters his conscious thought is the direction of its movement over the plane surface of the ocean.

Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case of the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its craft. As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude of motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the