Hinton - The Fourth Dimension.pdf

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THE FOURTH DIMENSION
Place them before you, a grey or null cube on the
table, above it a red cube, and on the top a null cube
again. Then away from you place a yellow cube, and
beyond it a null cube. Then to the right place a white
cube and beyond it another null. Then complete the
block, according to the scheme of the catalogue cube,
putting in the centre of all an ochre cube.
You now have a cube like that which is described in
the text. For the sake of simplicity, in some cases, this
cubic block can be reduced to one of eight cubes, by
leaving out the terminations in each direction. Thus,
instead of null, red, null, three cubes, you can take null,
red, two cubes, and so on.
It is useful, however, to practise the representation in
a plane of a block of twenty-seven cubes. For this
purpose take the slabs, and build them up against the
piece of cardboard, or the book, in such a way as to
represent the different aspects of the cube.
Proceed as follows:—
First, cube in normal position.
Place nine slabs against the cardboard to represent
the nine cubes in the wall of the red and yellow axes,
facing the cardboard; these represent the aspect of the
cube as it touches the plane.
Now push these along the cardboard and make a
different set of nine slabs to represent the appearance
which the cube would present to a plane being if it were
to pass half way through the plane.
There would be a white slab, above it a pink one, above
that another white one, and six others, representing what
would be the nature of a section across the middle of the
block of cubes. The section can be thought of as a thin
slice cut out by two parallel cuts across the cube.
Having arranged these nine slabs, push them along the
plane, and make another set of nine to represent what