The fourth dimension

228 THE FOURTH DIMENSION

electricity produces a current. Imagine a vortex in the ether of the A kind and unite with this one of the B kind. An A motion and B motion produce rotation round a plane, which is in the ether a vortex round an axial surface. It is a vortex of the kind we represent as a part of a sphere turning inside out. Now such a vortex must have its rim on a boundary of the ether—on a body in the ether.

Let us suppose that a conductor is a body which has the property of serving as the terminal abutment of such a vortex, Then the conception we must form of a closed current is of a vortex sheet having its edge along the circuit of the conducting wire. The whole wire will then be like the centres on which a spindle turns in threedimensional space, and any interruption of the continuity of the wire will produce a tension in place of a continuous revolution.

As the direction of the rotation of the vortex is from a three-space direction into the fourth dimension and back again, there will be no direction of flow to the current ; but it will have two sides, according to whether z goes to w or 2 goes to negative w.

We can draw any line from one part of the circuit to another ; then the ether along that line is rotating round its points.

This geometric image corresponds to the definition of an electric circuit. It is known that the action does not lie in the wire, but in the medium, and it is known that there is no direction of flow in the wire.

No explanation has been offered in three-dimensional mechanics of how an action can be impressed throughout a region and yet necessarily run itself out along a closed boundary, as is the case in an electric current. But this phenomenon corresponds exactly to the definition of a four-dimensional vortex.