character of the construction--whether a steel-framed
skyscraper or a wooden shanty. A line system, represented by columns
and girders in the one case, and by studs and rafters in the other,
becomes, by overlay or interposition, a system of planes, so
assembled and correlated as to define a solid.
With nearly everything of man's creating--be it a bureau or a
battleship--the process is as above described. First, a pattern to
scale; next, an actual linear framework; then planes defining a solid.
Consider almost any of the industries practiced throughout the ages:
they may be conceived of thus in terms of dimensions; for example,
those ancient ones of weaving and basket making. _Lines_ (threads in
the one case, rushes in the other) are wrought into _planes_ to
clothe a body or to contain a burden. Or think, if you choose, of
the modern industry of book-making, wherein types are assembled,
impressed upon sheets of paper, and these bound into volumes--
_points, lines, planes, solids_. The book in turn becomes the unit
of another dimensional order, in the library whose serried shelves
form lines, which, combined into planes, define the lateral limits
of the room.
HIGHER--AND HIGHEST--SPACE
These are truisms. What have they to do, it may be asked, with the
idea of _higher_ spaces? They have everything to do with it, for in
achieving the enclosure of any portion of solid space the limit of
known dimensions has been reached without having come to any end.
More dimensions--higher spaces--are required to account for higher
things. All of the products of man's ingenuity are inanimate except
as he himself animates them. They remain as they were made, machines,
not organisms. They have no inherent life of their own, no power of
growth and renewal. In this they differ from animate creation
because the highest achievement of the creative faculty in man in a
mechanical way lacks the life principle possessed by the plant. And
as the most perfect machine is inferior in this respect to the
humblest flower that grows, so is the highest product of the
vegetable kingdom inferior to man himself, the maker of the machine;
for he can reflect upon his own and the world's becoming, while the
plant can only become.
What is the reason for these differences of power and function?
According to the Higher Space Hypothesis they are due to varying
potencies of movement in the secret causeways and corridors of space.
The higher functions of co
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