Tertium Organum

general 
properties of 
the fourth dimension which we had not noticed before or which we had 
regarded as individual properties of objects (or their motion), just as animals regard the 
extension of objects in the third dimension as their motion. 
Having seen or felt ourselves in the world of four dimensions, we shall find that the 
world of three dimensions has not and never had any real existence, that it was a 
creation of our fantasy, a phantom, a spectre, a delusion, an optical illusion, anything 
you like, but not reality. 
All this is far from being a 'hypothesis', a supposition; it is an exact 
fact,
as much of 
a fact as the existence of infinity. For the sake of its own existence, positivism had 
somehow to do away with infinity or at least to call it a 'hypothesis' which may or may 
not be true. But infinity is not a hypothesis; it is a fact. And just such a fact is also the 
multi-dimensionality of space and all that it implies, i.e. the unreality of everything 
three-dimensional. 

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CHAPTER 10 
Spatial understanding of time. Four-dimensional angles and curves in our life. Does 
motion exist in the world or not? Mechanical motion and 'life'. Biological phenomena 
as manifestations of motion proceeding in higher space. Evolution of space-sense. 
Growth of space-sense and diminution of time-sense. Translation of time-sense into 
space-sense. Handicaps presented by our concepts, our language. The need to find a 
method of expressing time-concepts spatially. Science on the fourth dimension. A 
four-dimensional body. Four-dimensional sphere. 
On the basis of all the conclusions made, we must now try to determine how 
we may see the real four-dimensional world which is screened off from us by
the illusory three-dimensional world. There are two methods by which we 
may 'see' it: either by direct sensation, with the development of 'space-sense' 
and other higher faculties of which we shall speak later, or by a mental 
understanding arrived at by an elucidation of its possible properties by means 
of reasoning.
Earlier, by abstract reasoning, we came to the conclusion that the fourth 
dimension of space 
must
lie in time, i.e. that time is the fourth dimension of 
space. Now we have found psychological proofs of this proposition. By 
comparing the perception of the world by different orders of living beings - a 
snail, a dog and a man - we have seen how different the properties of 
one and 
the same world
are for them -precisely those properties which are expressed 
for us in the concepts of time and space. We have seen that they must sense 
time and space differently. That which is 
time 
for a lower being (a snail),
becomes 
space 
for a being one degree higher (a dog); and the 
time of
that 
being becomes 
space 
for a higher degree of being - a man. 
This confirms the previously advanced supposition that our idea of time is 
essentially 
composite 
and actually contains 
two ideas -
the idea of a certain 
space and the idea of movement in that space. Or, to be more exact - contact 
with a certain space, of which we are but dimly aware, provokes in us the 
sensation of movement in that space, and all taken together, i.e. the dim 
awareness of a certain space and the sensation of movement in that space, we 
call time. 
This latter supports the thought that, instead of the idea of time having
arisen from the observation of motion existing in nature, the 

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actual sensation of motion and the idea of motion have arisen from the 'time-sense' we 
possess, which is nothing but an imperfect