The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-15
pie. in imagination, a two dimensional


 shadow we cast on the ground in the sun
 is an actual world, inhabited by living creatures who have length and breadth but mo thickness. Suppose one Of these creatures has committed a crime and we want Ito lock him up so that it will be
 impossible for him to escape All we.
 have to do Is to draw a circle around him. He can't escape by raising himself out of the circle because in his world there is no up and no down." There is only length and breadth, and consequently he is tightly imprisoned.
 But suppose the creature in prison hap
 pens to be a friend of ours and we want to help him escape? We are living in a
 world of three dimensions, while his jail- CTS are living in a world of only two. All, then we have to do is to reach down,
 catch hold of our friend, lift him out of the circle and set him down again n his
 own world on the outside. His jailers will be astounded at his sudden disappearance from their, sight, since they cannot look up, and equally astounded at his sudden | reappearance.
 | Now. take an analogous case involving worlds of three and four dimensions in. stead of worlds of two and three. 1 In our world a man has committed | | crime and we want to lock him up SO that there is no possibility of escape. We procure a hollow globe and put him inside | closing all exits. He can't escape along | the lines of either length, breadth CT | thickness, just as the two dimensional creature. locked in the circle couldn't es-
 cape along the lines of either length or | breadth.
 l But suppose our prisoner has a friend | living in world about us of four dimen- | sions. All this four dimensional friend I would have to do would be to reach into
 the hollow globe along the line of the I fourth dimension, take out his friend and | set him down again into our world out | side the globe. During his journey along | the fourth dimension the prisoner would l be invisible to us, just as the two dimen- l sional creature was invisible to his ,ailers whle he was being lifted over the circlhn- | ference of the circle. The fourth dimen-
 sional friend of the prisoner would be tn- 1 visible to us, too, since we cannot look along the line of the fourth dimension, | just as the jailers of the two dimensional l being couldn't see us along the line of l the third dimension height
 l There Dwell the Ghosts
 There. then, is Zolner's opening. He 1 assumes that not only could creatures exist in a four dimensional world round about us without our seeing them, but that they actually do, and that these creatures are the ghosts of our departed 1 friends. They make use of our world SIS
 
 l just as we make use of the two dimen- sional world as the length and breadth l of ours. But the ghosts do not necessar- 1 fly interfere with it's any more than we l interfere with creatures that might be living under our feet in world of only l length and breadth.
 | Learning of Zollner's hollow globe illus
 lustration of the fourth dimension, the
 prestidigitator Slade, one of the clever | est 'magicians' that ever lived, appeared l before the scientist and performed in his | presence trick that convinced the pro- l lessor that slade had actually induced l a spirit to aid him in the manipulation. l Slade took a hollow glass globe. placed | inside of it a grain of corn, sealed 1t, to 1 all appearances. hermetically, and then
 caused the grain to disappear and reap I pear presently outside the globe. It was 1 done so cleverly that Zollner did not de- l tect the trickery of it and congratulated Shade on providing the existence in act
 uality of four dimensonal world. Slade, too, performed a rope trick which strengthened Zollner in his belief. He | fastened the two ends to a wall Without l apparently disturbing the ends he united the knot. This trick has been performed
 number of times since Slade's day. and l there is now Japanese magician in vaudeville who is presenting a modifica-
 tion of it.
 The proof of the rope trick that four dimensional space exists may be explain l ed by another two dimensional analog '"To two parallel lines in a plane" says l Prof. Schubert. "let the two ends of d
 third line, which intersects itself once, he l attached. Our flat worm would not be
 able to unite the loop formed by the dou- | bled third line, which we will call strin,y
 because it cannot execute motions n | three dimensions. If, therefore, two l Il ,e-t.. :.I. l and accomplish the trick of untying this 1 loop without removing the two ends of I the string from the parallel lines. he will have accomplished for our flat worm a | supersensuous experiment. A human be- | ing engaged in the service of the prestdgi- l tator could execute for him the eXperi- | ment by simply lifting the string a little | out of the plane pulling it taut and placing 1 it back again.
 Exepriment Clears Mystery l If Prof. Schuberts meaning is a little bit hay you might make it clear to your self by the following simple experiment: Take a piece of thread and lay it on the | top of table in the shape of a l.. Now | take one extremity of the ' and lay if across the opposite side. In so doing you | have tied knot that cannot be united | in two dimensional space without disturb | ing the two ends of the thread, but can | be very easily "untied by yourself, three dimensional being, by simply twist l ing the string through half an arc. This suggests the following analogous | experiment for three dimensional beings" | continues Prof. Schubert "The two ends | of a string in which common knot. has | been made are sealed to the opposite walls of room The problem is to un | tie this knot without breaking the seals 1 at the two ends of the string. Everybody 1 knows that his problem is not soluble. but l 1t may be calculated mathematically that the knot in the string can be united easily by motions in the fourth dimension of space as in the experiment above de- scribed the knot in the two dimensonai string was united by three dimensonal motion. Now, as Slade united the Nnot before Zollner's eyes without apparently making any use of the ends fastened in the walls, Zolner was still more firmly confirmed in the view that Slade had power over spirits who performed the eX- periments for Nim.'
 Philosophers with a leaning toward mysticism long ago expressed the belief that this world may be only the shadow of another world, and that the realities are in the spirit world. this world being but q world of fantastic dream ina yes. Frequent use of this thought
 philosophers has been made by poets. Carl Du Prel, one of Zollner's disciples,
 seized upon the four dimensiona woril as furnishing rational, scientific founda- tion for this theory. Just as we throw a two dimensiona shadow on the ground when walking in the sun, so Du 2rel ina zines that the four dimeusional crpa-