Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

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THE FOURTH DIMENSION
being, those that do survive will possess such and such
characteristics. This is the necessary beginning for ascertaining
what kinds of organisms do come into existence.
And so Kant’s hypothesis of a random consciousness is
the necessary beginning for the rational investigation
of consciousness as it is. His assumption supplies, as
it were, the space in which we can observe the phenomena.
It gives the general laws constitutive of any
experience. If, on the assumption of absolute randomness
in the constituents, such and such would be
characteristic of the experience, then, whatever the constituents,
these characteristics must be universally valid.
We will now proceed to examine more carefully the
poiograph, constructed for the purpose of exhibiting an
illustration of Kant’s theory of apperception.
In order to show the derivation order out of non-order
it has been necessary to assume a principle of duality—
we have had the axes and the posits on the axes—there
are two sets of elements, each non-ordered, and it is in
the reciprocal relation of them that the order, the definite
system, originates.
Is there anything in our experience of the nature of a
duality?
There certainly are objects in our experience which
have order and those which are incapable of order. The
two roots of a quadratic equation have no order. No one
can tell which comes first. If a body rises vertically and
then goes at right angles to its former course, no one can
assign any priority to the direction of the north or to the
east. There is no priority in directions of turning. We
associate turnings with no order, progressions in a line
with order. But in the axes and points we have assumed
above there is no such distinction. It is the same, whether
we assume an order among the turnings, and no order
among the points on the axes, or, vice versa, an order in