The fourth dimension

APPENDIX IT 257

directing the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the soul is capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion, which is not used in its task of directing the body in the three-dimensional region in which the body’s activity lies. If for any reason it became necessary for the captain to consider three-dimensional motions with regard to his ship, it would not be difficult for him to gain the materials for thinking about such motions; all he has to do is to call his own intimate experience into play. As far as the navigation of the ship, however, is concerned, he is not obliged to call on such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a surface. The problem of three-dimensional movement does not ordinarily concern its steering. And thus with regard to ourselves all those movements and activities which characterise our bodily organs are three-dimensional ; we never need to zonsider the ampler movements. But we do more than use the movements of our body to effect our aims by direct means ; we have now come to the pass when we act indirectly on nature, when we call processes into play which lie beyond the reach of any explanation we can give by the kind of thought which has been sufficient for the steering of our craft asa whole. When we come to the problem of what goes on in the minute, and apply ourselves to the mechanism of the minute, we find our habitual conceptions inadequate.

The captain in us must wake up to his own intimate nature, realise those functions of movement which are his own, and in virtue of his knowledge of them apprehend how to deal with the problems he has come to.

Think of the history of man. When has there been a time, in which his thoughts of form and movement were not exclusively of such varieties as were adapted for his bodily performance? We have never had a demand to conceive what our own most intimate powers are. But,

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