The fourth dimension

APPENDIX II

A LANGUAGE OF SPACE

THE mere naming the parts of the figures we consider involves a certain amount of time and attention. This time and attention leads to no result, for with each new figure the nomenclature applied is completely changed, every letter or symbol is used in a different significance.

Surely it must be possible in some way to utilise the labour thus at present wasted !

Why should we not make a language for space itself, so that every position we want to refer to would have its own name? Then every time we named a figure in order to demonstrate its properties we should be exercising ourselves in the vocabulary of place.

If we use a definite system of names, and always refer to the same space position by the same name, we create as it were a multitude of little hands, each prepared to grasp a special point, position, or element, and hold it for us in its proper relations.

We make, to use another analogy, a kind of mental paper, which has somewhat of the properties of a sensitive plate, in that it will register, without effort, complex, visual, or tactual impressions.

But of far more importance than the applications of a

space language to the plane and to solid space is the 248