The fourth dimension

RECAPITULATION AND EXTENSION 225

that one sphere is touched by eight others. The remaining six spheres of the fourteen which surround the central one will not touch it, but will touch three of those in contact with it. Hence, if the central sphere rotates, it will not necessarily drive those around it so that their motions will be antagonistic to each other, but the velocities will not arrange themselves in a systematic manner,

In four-dimensional space the figure which forms the next term of the series hexagon, tetrakaidecagon, is a thirty-sided figure. It has for its faces ten solid tetrakaidecagons and twenty hexagonal prisms. Such fignres will exactly fill four-dimensional space, five of them meeting at every point. If, now, in each of these figures we suppose a solid four-dimensional sphere to be placed, any one sphere is surrounded by thirty others, Of these it touches ten, and, if it rotates, it drives the rest by means of these. Now, if we imagine the central sphere to be given an A ora B rotation, it will turn the whole mass of sphere round in a systematic manner. Suppose fourdimensional space to be filled with such spheres, each rotating with a double rotation, the whole mass would form one consistent system of motion, in which each one drove every other one, with no friction or lagging behind.

Every sphere would have the same kind of rotation. In three-dimensional space, if one body drives another round the second body rotates with the opposite kind of rotation : but in four-dimensional space these four-dimensional spheres would each have the double negative of the rotation of the one next it, and we have seen that the double negative of an A or B rotation is still an A or B rotation. Thus four-dimensional space could be filled with a system of self-preservative living energy. If we imagine the four-dimensional spheres to be of liquid and not of solid matter, then, even if the liquid were not quite perfect and

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