The fourth dimension

26 THE FOURTH DIMENSION

Thus we can imagine a plane world, in which all the variety of motion is the phenomenon of structures consisting of filamentary atoms traversed by a plane of consciousness. Passing to four dimensions and our space, we can conceive that all things and movements in our world are the reading off of a permanent reality by a space of consciousness. Each atom at every moment is not what it was, but a new part of that endless line which is itself. And all this system successively revealed in the time which is but the succession of consciousness, separate as it is in parts, in its entirety is one vast unity. Representing Parmenides’ doctrine thus, we gain a firmer hold on it than if we merely let his words rest, grand and massive, in our minds. And we have gained the means also of representing phases of that Eastern thought to which Parmenides was no stranger. Modifying his uncompromising doctrine, let us suppose, to go back to the plane of consciousness and the structure of filamentary atoms, that these structures are themselves moving—are acting, living. Then, in the transverse motion of the film, there would be two phenomena of motion, one due to the reading off in the film of the permanent existences as they are in themselves, and another phenomenon of motion due to the modification of the record of the things themselves, by their proper motion during the process of traversing them.

Thus a conscious being in the plane would have, as it were, a two-fold experience. In the complete traversing of the structure, the intersection of which with the film gives his conscious all, the main and principal movements and actions which he went through would be the record of his higher self as it existed unmoved and unacting. Slight modifications and deviations from these moyements and actions would represent the activity and selfdetermination of the complete being, of his higher self.

It is admissible to suppose that the consciousness in