The fourth dimension

THE EVIDENCES FOR A FOURTH DIMENSION 77

are accustomed to, suffices to explain it. In our space a symmetrical object must be built up by equal additions on each side of a central plane. Such additions about such a plane are as little likely as any other increments. The probability against the existence of symmetrical form in inorganic nature is overwhelming in our space, and in organic forms they would be as difficult of production as any other variety of configuration. To illustrate this point we may take the child’s amusement of making from dots of ink on a piece of paper a life-like representation of an insect by simply folding the paper over. The dots spread out on a symmetrical line, and give the impression of a segmented form with antennw and legs.

Now seeing a number of such figures we should naturally infer a folding over. Can, then, a folding over in four-dimensional space account for the symmetry of organic forms? The folding cannot of course be of the bodies we see, but it may be of those minute constituents, the ultimate elements of living matter which, turned in one way or the other, become right- or left-handed, and so produce a corresponding structure.

There is something in life not included in our conceptions of mechanical movement. Is this something a fourdimensional movement?

If we look at it from the broadest point of view, there is something striking in the fact that where life comes in there arises an entirely different set of phenomena to those of the inorganic world.

The interest and values of life as we know it in ourselves, as we know it existing around us in subordinate forms, is entirely and completely different to anything which inorganic nature shows. And in living beings we have a kind of form, a disposition of matter which is entirely different from that shown in inorganic matter,