________________
240
PSYCHISM AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION
the old philosophers of India were familiar both with the fact and the theory of the fourth dimension, some of their metaphysical conceptions leave us small room to doubt. The only writer on the subject we intend to mention is Professor Zollner, whose book, " Transcendental Physics," is or ought to be familiar to all students of the modern wave of psychism.
Professor Zollner, having been led by his mathematical investigations to forin opinions as to the reality and nature of the fourth dimension of space, was led to connect these views inferentially with the phenomena of spiritualism, then attracting great attention, Supposing the observations of them made by spiritualists to be correct, these phenomena could be explained and reduced to order and intelligibility, in the opinion of Zollner, on the hypothesis that they were caused by agencies or beings acting in space of four dimensions ; space as known to us having three dimensions, length, breadth, and height.
These four-dimensional beings would, argued Zollner, have the same advantage over us that we would have over the hypothetical dwellers in two-dimensional, or surface space, --the Flat-landers of romance; and the three-dimensional space we inhabit would be as much under their power as two-dimensional space, the surface of a sheet of paper, for example, is under ours.
By means of this advantage they could, he thought, transport any material object directly into the center of a room, without its passing through any of the boundaries of the room, whether : walls, ceiling, or:
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
