Charles Howard Hinton

“ It is possible to say a great deal about space of higher dimensions than our own, and to work out analytically many problems which suggest themselves. But can we conceive four-dimensional space in the same way in which we can conceive our own space? Can we think of a body in four dimensions as a unit having properties in the same way as we think of a body having a definite shape in the space with which we are familiar? ”

“ And when we reflect on what surrounds us, when we think that the beauty of fruit and flower, the blue depths of the sky, the majesty of rock and ocean,—all these are but the chance and arbitrary view which we have of true being,—then we can imagine somewhat of the glories that await our coming. How set out in exquisite loveliness are all the budding trees and hedgerows on a spring day—from here, where they almost sing to us in their nearness, to where, in the distance, they stand up delicately distant and distinct in the amethyst ocean of the air! ”

“ The bonds of brotherhood with our fellow-men grow strong, for we know one common purpose. And through the exquisite face of nature shines the spiritual light that gives us a great and never-failing comrade.
Our task is a simple one—to lift from our mind that veil which somehow has fallen on us, to take that curious limitation from our perception, which at present is only transcended by inspiration. ”

“ But when I found that my knowledge was merely an empty pretence, that it was the vanity of being able to predict and foretell that stood to me in the place of an absolute apprehension of fact—when all my intellectual possessions turned to nothingness, then I was forced into that simple quest for fact, which, when persisted in and lived in, opens out to the thoughts like a flower to the life-giving sun.
It is indeed a far safer course, to believe that which appeals to us as noble, than simply to ask what is true ”

“ There is no such thing as wrong love; there is good love and bad knowledge, and men who err, clasp phantoms to themselves. Religion is but the search for realities; and thought, conscious of its own limitations, is its best aid.
Let a man care for any one object—let his regard for it be as concentrated and exclusive as you will, there will be no danger if he truly apprehends that which he cares for. Its true being is bound up with all the rest of existence, and, if his regard is true to one, then, if that one is really known, his regard is true to all. ”

“ To acquire an absolute knowledge of a block of cubes, so that all self relations are cast out, means that one has to take the view of a higher being.
It suddenly comes before one, that the particular relations which are so fixed and important, and seem so absolutely sure when one begins the process of learning, are by no means absolute facts, but marks of a singular limitation, almost a degradation, on one’s own part. In the determined attempt to know the most insignificant object perfectly and thoroughly, there flashes before one’s eyes an existence infinitely higher than one’s own. ”

“ The conception which we shall form of the universe will undoubtedly be as different from our present one, as the Copernican view differs from the more pleasant view of a wide immovable earth beneath a vast vault. Indeed, any conception of our place in the universe will be more agreeable than the thought of being on a spinning ball, kicked into space without any means of communication with any other inhabitants of the universe. ”

“ And then, again, we each of us have a feeling that we ourselves have a right to exist. We demand our own perpetuation. No man, I believe, is capable of sacrificing his life to any abstract idea; in all cases it is the consciousness of contact with some being that enables [71] him to make the last human sacrifice. And what we can do by this study of higher space, is to make this consciousness, which has been reserved for a few, the property of all. Do we not all feel that there is a limit to our devotion to abstractions, none to beings whom we love. ”

“ A human being, an animal and a machine are to the mind all merely portions of matter arranged in certain ways. But the mind can give an exhaustive account of the machine, account fairly well for the animal, while the human being it only defines externally, leaving the real knowledge to be supplied by other faculties.
But we must not under-estimate the work of the mind, for it is only by the observation of and thought about the bodies with which we come into contact that we know human beings. It is the faculty of thought that puts us in a position to recognize a soul. ”

“ And those who feel the immanence of a higher life in us will be needed in this outlook on the wider field of reality, so that they, being fitted to recognize, may tell us what lies ready for us to know.
The true path of wisdom consists in seeing that our intellect is foolishness—that our conclusions are absurd and mistaken, not in speculating on the world as a form of thought projected from the thinking principle within us—rather to be amazed that our thought has so limited the world and hidden from us its real existences. ”

“ Just as here and there on the face of a woman sits the divine spirit of beauty, so that all cannot but love who look—so, presenting itself to us in all this mingled scene of air and ocean, plain and mountain, is a being of such loveliness that, did we but know with one accord in one stream, all our hearts would be carried in a perfect and willing service. It is not that we need to be made different; we have but to look and gaze, and see that centre whereunto with joyful love all created beings move. ”

“ The word “sceptical” has a certain unpleasant association attached to it, for it has been used by so many people who are absolutely certain in a particular line, and attack other people’s convictions. But to be sceptical in the real sense is a far more unpleasant state of mind to the sceptic than to any one of his companions. For to a mind that inquires into what it really does know, it is hardly possible to enunciate complete sentences, much less to put before it those complex ideas which have so large a part in true human life. ”

“ But we have not got to wait for this exploration in order to commence our work of higher-space thought, for we know definitely that whatever our real physical relationship to this wider universe may be, we are practically in exactly the same relationship to it as the creature we have supposed living on the surface of a smooth sheet is to the world of threefold space.
And this relationship of a surface to a solid or of a solid, as we conjecture, to a higher solid, is one which we often find in nature. A surface is nothing more nor less than the relation between two things. ”

“ For, in the simplest apprehension of a higher space lies a knowledge of a reality which is, to the realities we know, as spirit is to matter; and yet to this new vision all our solid facts and material conditions are but as a shadow is to that which casts it. ”

“ Think how much has come into human life through exercising the power of the three-dimensional space perception, and we can form some measure, in a faint way, of what is in store for us.
There is a certain reluctance in us in bringing anything, which before has been a matter of feeling, within the domain of conscious reason. We do not like to explain why the grass is green, flowers bright, and, above all, why we have the feelings which we pass through. ”

“ When the eye takes in the form of an external object there is something more than a sense impression, something more than a sensation of greenness and light and dark. The mind works as well as the sense, and these sense impressions are definitely grouped in what we call the shape of the object. The essential act of perceiving lies in the apprehension of a shape, and a shape is an arrangement of parts. It does not matter what these parts are; if we take meaningless dots of colour and arrange them we obtain a shape which represents the appearance of a stone or a leaf to a certain degree. ”

“ Then, just as our own individual life is empty and meaningless without those we love, so the life of the human race is empty and meaningless without a knowledge of those that surround it. And although to some an inner knowledge of the oneness of all men is vouchsafed, it remains to be demonstrated to the many.
The perpetual struggle between individual interests and the common good can only be solved by merging both impulses in a love towards one being whose life lies in the fulfilment of each. ”

“ We have a conception of atoms; but no one supposes that atoms actually exist. We suppose a force varying inversely as the square of the distance; but no one supposes such a mysterious thing to really be in nature. And when we come to the region of descriptive science, when we come to simple observation, we do not find ourselves any better provided with a real knowledge of nature. If, for instance, we think of a plant, we picture to ourselves a certain green shape, of a more or less definite character. ”

“ The absolute soul, since it is the thinker, can never be the subject of thought; but, as physically conditioned, it can be thought about. Thus we can never, without committing a ludicrous error, think of the mind of man except as a material organ of some kind; and the path of discovery lies in investigating what the devious line of his thought history is due to, which winds between two domains of physics—the unknown conditions which affect the perceiver, the partially known physics which constitute what we call the external world. ”

“ And this is universally true; it is not that we must rise to the higher by a long and laborious process. We may have a long and laborious process to go through, but, when we find the higher, it is this: we discover our true selves, our essential being, the fact of our lives. In this case, we pass from the ridiculous limitation, to [83] which our eyes and hands seem to be subject, of acting in a mere section of space, to the fuller knowledge and feeling of space as it is. ”

“ In the works of the poets, and still more in the pages of religious thinkers, lies an untold wealth of conception, the organization of which in our every-day intellectual life is the work of the practical educator.
But none is capable of such simple demonstration and absolute presentation as this of higher space, and none so immediately opens our eyes to see the world as a different place. And, indeed, it is very instructive; for when the new conception is formed, it is found to be quite simple and natural. We ask ourselves what we have gained ”

“ The artist is not conscious of the thought process he goes through. For our purpose it is necessary that the manipulation of colour and form which the artist goes through unconsciously, should become a conscious power, and that, at whatever sacrifice of immediate beauty, the art of mental painting should exist beside our more unconscious art. All that I mean is this—that in the course of our campaign it is necessary to take up the task of learning pictures by heart, so that, just as an artist thinks over the outlines of a figure he wants to draw, so we think over each stroke in our pictures. ”

“ Those who feel superficially with a great many people, are like those learners who have a slight acquaintance with a block of cubes from many points of view. Those who have some deep attachments, are like those who know them well from one or two points of view.
Thus there are two definite paths—one by which the instinctive feeling is called out and developed, the other by which we gain the faculty of rationally apprehending and learning the higher beings. ”

“ It appears to me self-evident, that in the particular disposition of any portion of matter, that is, in any physical action, there can be neither right nor wrong; the thing done is perfectly indifferent.
At the same time, it is only in things done that we come into relationship with the beings about us and higher than us. Consequently, in the things we do lies the whole importance of our lives. ”

“ The prosecution of science is an ennobling pursuit; but it is of scientific knowledge that I am now speaking in itself. We have no scientific knowledge of any existences higher than ourselves—at least, not recognized as higher. But we have abundant knowledge of the actions of beings less developed than ourselves, from the striking unanimity with which all inorganic beings tend to move towards the earth’s centre, to the almost equally uniform modes of response in elementary organized matter to different stimuli. ”

“ But I do not for a moment wish to go in thought beyond physical nature—I do not suppose that in thought we can. To the mind it is only the body that appears, and all that I hope to do is to show material relations, mechanism, arrangements. ”

“ We cannot even say whether there is more than humanity before the highest; and any conception which we form now must use the human drama as its only possible mode of presentation.
But that there is such a relation seems clear; and the ludicrous manner, in which our perceptions have been limited, is a sufficient explanation of why they have not been scientifically apprehended.
The mode, in which an apprehension of these higher beings or being is at present secured, is as follows; and it bears a striking analogy to the mode by which the self is cut out of a block of cubes. ”

“ All the directions in which he could move, or could conceive movement possible, would be exhausted when he had thought of the directions along the rim and at right angles to it, both in the plane.
What he would call solid bodies, would be groups of the atoms of his world cohering together. Such a mass of atoms would, we know, have a slight thickness; namely, the thickness of a single atom. But of this he would know nothing. He would say, “A solid body has two dimensions—height (by how much it goes away from the rim) and thickness (by how much it lies along the rim) .” ”

“ The rational knowledge will not replace feeling, but will form the vehicle by which the facts will be presented to our consciousness. Just as we learn to know our fellows by watching their deeds,—but it is something beyond the mere power of observing them that makes us regard them,—so the higher existences need to be known; and, when known, then there is a chance that in the depths of our nature they will awaken feelings towards them like the natural response of one human being to another. ”

“ We may talk about space, and use big words, but, after all, the preferable way of putting our efforts is this: let us look first at the simplest facts of higher existence, and then, when we have learnt to realize these, We shall be able to see what the world presents. And then, also, light will be thrown on the constituent organisms of our own bodies, when we see in the thorough development of our social life a relation between ourselves and a larger organism similar to that which exists between us and the minute constituents of our frame. ”