{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_12010/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_12010","id":"gutenberg_12010","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12010","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Art","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)"],"text":"The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition\n\nSan Francisco, 1915\n\nBy Cora Lenore Williams, M. S.\nAuthor of \"As If\" and Essays on \"Involution\"\n\n\n\nPaul Elder and Company\nPublisher - San Francisco\n\n\n\nCopyright, 1915\nBy Paul Elder and Company\nSan Francisco\n\n\n\nTo My Father and Mother\n\n\n\nContents\n\nLines on \"Fourth-Dimensional Insight\" by Ormeida Curtis Harrison.\n   (Tissue Facing Frontispiece.)\nA Fourteenth Century Legend\nEssay on the Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition. By Cora\n   Lenore Williams:\nGeneral Status of the Fourth-Dimensional Theory\nFourth-Dimensional Aspects of the Panama-Pacific International\n   Exposition\nBibliography: Books and Poems having Fourth-Dimensional Insight\n\nIllustrations\n\nAn Unborn Space. The Court of Four Seasons. From an etching by Gertrude\n   Partington (Frontispiece)\nA Structure Brave. Palace of Fine Arts. From an etching by Gertrude\n   Partington\nA Building Inside Out. The Court of Ages. From an etching by Gertrude\n   Partington\nA Four-Dimensional Cover Design. By Julia Manchester Mackie. (Cover.)\n\n\n\nTime is, and all the detail of the world confounds\nThe plastic mind. With multitude of shapes and sounds\n   Do the swift elements of thought contend\n   To form a whole which life may comprehend.\n      Only to those of high intent\n      Is life revealed, and quick dreams sent -\n      Half glimpsed truths omnipotent.\n   Out of the silence of an unborn space\n   A spirit moves, and thought comes face to face\n   With the immutable, and time is past,\n   And the spent soul, done, meets truth at last.\n      Chance, fate, occasion, circumstance,\n      In interfused radiance\n   Are lost. Past, present, future, all combined\n   In one sure instantaneous grasp of mind,\nAnd all infinity unrolls at our command,\nAnd beast and man and God unite, as worlds expand.\n   - Ormeida Curtis Harrison.\n\n\n\nA Fourteenth Century Legend\n\nFriar Bacon, reading one day of the many conquests of England, bethought\nhimself how he might keep it hereafter from the like conquests and so\nmake himself famous to all posterity. This (after great study) he found\ncould be no way so well done as one; which was to make a head of brass,\nand if he could make this head to speak (and hear it when it spoke) then\nmight he be able to wall all England about with brass. To this purpose\nhe got one Friar Bungey to assist him, who was a great scholar and\nmagician (but not to be compared to Friar Bacon); these two with great\nstudy and pains so formed a head of brass that in the inward parts\nthereof there was all things like as in a natural man's head. This being\ndone they were as far from perfection of the work as they were before,\nfor they knew not how to give those parts that they had made motion,\nwithout which it was impossible that it should speak. Many books they\nread, but yet could not find out any hope of what they sought, that at\nthe last they concluded to raise a spirit and to know of him that which\nthey could not attain by their own studies.\n\nThe spirit straight obeyed, and appeared unto them, asking what they\nwould. He told them that with a continual fume of the six hottest\nsimples it should have motion, and in one month space speak: the time of\nthe month: or the day he knew not. Also he told them that if they heard\nit not before it had done speaking, all their labor should be lost.\n\nThen went these two learned Friars home again and prepared the simples\nready and made the fume, and with continual watching attended when this\nBrazen Head should speak. Thus watched they for three weeks without any\nrest, so that they were so weary and sleepy that they could not any\nlonger refrain from rest. Then called Friar Bacon his man Miles, and\ntold him that it was not unknown to him what pains Friar Bungey and\nhimself had taken for three weeks space only to make and to hear the\nBrazen Head speak, which if they did not, then had they lost all their\nlabor, and all England had a great loss thereby. Therefore he entreated\nMiles that he would watch whilst that they slept and call them if the\nhead spake. 'Fear not (good master), I will harken and attend, upon the\nhead and if it do chance to speak, I will call you; therefore, I pray\ntake you both your rest and let me alone for watching this head.'\n\n* * * *\n\nAt last, after some noise, the Head spake these two words: 'Time is.'\nMiles, hearing it to speak no more, thought his master would be angry if\nhe waked him for that, and therefore he let them both sleep and began to\nmock the Head in this manner: 'Thou Brazen-faced Head, hath my master\ntook all this pains about thee and now dost thou requite him with two\nwords, \"Time is\"?'\n\n* * * *\n\nAfter half an hour had past, the Head did speak again two words which\nwere these: 'Time was.' Miles respected these words as little as he did\nthe former and would not wake his master, but still scoffed at the\nBrazen Head, that it had learned no better words, and have had such a\ntutor as his master; * * * * '\"Time was!\" I knew that, Brazen-face,\nwithout your telling. I knew Time was and I know what things there was\nwhen Time was, and if you speak no wiser, no master shall be waked for\nme.'\n\n* * * *\n\n* * * * The Brazen Head spake again these words: 'Time is past'; and\ntherewith fell down and presently followed a terrible noise, with\nstrange flashes of fire, so that Miles was half dead with fear. At this\nnoise the two Friars waked and wondered to see the whole room so full of\nsmoke, but that being vanished, they might perceive the Brazen Head\nbroken and lying on the ground. At this sight they grieved, and called\nMiles to know how this came. Miles, half dead with fear, said that it\nfell down of itself and that with the noise and fire that followed he\nwas almost frightened out of his wits. Friar Bacon asked him if it did\nnot speak.\n\n'Yes,' quoth Miles, 'it spake, but to no purpose.'\n\n\n\nGeneral Status of the Fourth-Dimensional Theory\n\nThe human mind has so long followed its early cow-paths through the\nwilderness of sense that great hardihood is required even to suggest\nthat there may be other and better ways of traversing the empirical\ncommon. So it is that the fear of being proclaimed a Brazenhead has\nrestrained me until this eleventh hour from telling of my discoveries\nconcerning the fourth-dimensional reaches of our Exposition. That I have\nthe courage now is due to my desire to help in its preservation; not to\nthe end of enclosing it in a brass wall, but to lift it out of the realm\nof things temporal and give it permanent meaning for our thought and\naspiration. Would we save our Exposition from the ravages of Time we\nhave to exorcise that monster with the enigmatical utterances of the\naforesaid Brazen Head. The philosophers are telling us that Time is the\nfourth dimension in the process of evolving for our consciousness. I\ntake it that there are three stages in this evolution; the first, that\nof immediate experience, is subsumed by the phrase 'Time is'; the second\nis a passing from the concrete to the abstract through the fact that\n'Time was'; and the glory of the last is visioned only when we can say\n'Time is past.'\n\nWhile many books have been written descriptive of the Exposition, none\nhas succeeded in accounting completely for the joy we have in yonder\nmiracle of beauty. And this through no fault of the writers. When all\nhas been said concerning plan and execution there is still a subtle\nsomething not spatialized for consciousness. Length, breadth, and height\ndo not suffice to set forth the ways of our delight in it. What of this\nperceptual residue? Obviously to give it extension we shall have to\nascribe to reality other dimensions than those of our present sense\nrealm. Some disciple of Bergson interrupts: 'Ah, this whereof you speak\nis a spiritual thing and as such is given by the intuition. Why, then,\ndo you seek to spatialize it?' And the layman out of his mental\nrepugnance to things mathematical echoes, 'Why?' We have to answer that\nthe process of creative evolution makes imperative the transfixion by\nthe intellect of these so-called spiritual perceptions. Although the\nintuition transcends the intelligence in its grasp of beauty and truth,\nwe may attain to the higher insight it has to offer only if the things\nof the spirit become known to the intellect - a point in Bergson's\nphilosophy which the majority of his readers overlook. 'We have,' he\nsays, 'to engender the categories of our thought; it is not enough that\nwe determine what these are.' Bergson is preeminently the prophet of the\nhigher space concept. We had done better to have held to Kant, for now\nwe are not only confronted with the fourth dimension as a thought-form,\nbut with the duty as well of furthering its creation. And in that light\nwe have to regard what of worth and meaning the Exposition has for us.\n\nAlthough the scientist has found it useful on occasion to postulate the\nfourth dimension, he has not thought necessary as yet to put it in the\ncategory of reality; much less has the layman. Consequently the\nmathematician holds the sole title to its knowledge unless we recognize\nthe claims of the medium to a fourth-dimensional insight.\n\nThere is much, however, today which points to our coming to such\nperception as the natural result of our evolution and quite apart from\ngeometrical abstractions or occultism. It is as though some great tidal\nwave had swept over space and we have, quite unbeknown to ourselves,\nbeen lifted by it to new heights. And when we have once obtained our\nspiritual balance we shall doubtless find that our space world has taken\nto itself another direction, inconceivable as that now seems.\n\nSpace is more than room wherein to move about; it is, first of all, the\nroom in which we think, and upon how we do so depends the number of its\ndimensions. If the attention has become 'riveted to the object of its\npractical interest' to the extent that this is the only good the\ncreature knows, then is its thought-form one-dimensional even though its\nbodily movements are three-spaced. The great Peacock Moth wings a sure\ncourse mateward to the mystification of the scientist; the dog finds the\ndirect road home - his master cannot tell how; Mary Antin climbs to an\neducation over difficulties apparently insurmountable; Rockefeller knows\nhis goal and attains it, regardless of other moral worths. For these the\nway is certain. They can suffer no deflection since there are no\nrelative values, no possible choices. Their purpose makes the road\none-dimensional. That the majority of persons are still feeling their\nway over the surface of things is attested by the general mental\nineptitude for the study of solid geometry. Depth and height play little\npart in our physical perception. For most of us the third dimension is\npractically unknown beyond the reach of a few feet. A Beachey soaring\naloft - why all the bravado of curve and loop? Sooner or later he will\nfall to his death. Ay, verily! but his is a joyous martyrdom making for\nthe evolution of consciousness. Not always shall we crawl like flies the\nsurface of our globe!\n\nWhile a man's space-world is limited by his thought, it is, on the\nother hand, as boundless as his thought. That the world evolves with our\nconsciousness, is at once the philosophy of 'Creative Evolution' and of\nthe higher space theory. Our present spatial milieu has settled down to\na seemingly three dimensional finality because our thought-form has\nbecome so habitual as to give rise to certain geometric axioms. All we\nneed in order to come to a fourth-dimensional consciousness, said Henri\nPoincare, 'the greatest of moderns,' is a new table of distribution;\nthat is, a breaking up of old associations of ideas and the forming of\nnew relations - a simple matter were it not for our mental inertia.\nLester Ward speculates that life remained aquatic for the vast periods\nthat paleontology would indicate; Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian,\nCarboniferous - a duration greater than all subsequent time - for the\nreason that the creature had not progressed beyond the stage when it\ncould move otherwise than in a straight line when actuated by desire for\nfood or mate. Life was not able to maintain itself on land until it had\novercome this one-dimensional limitation. A venturesome Pterodactyl was\nhe who first essayed to make his way among the many obstructions to be\nfound ashore! By what intuition was he impelled?\n\nIt is a matter of common observation that the growth of the higher\nperceptive faculty is strangely concomitant with adversity. The\nintuitive person is a person who has suffered. When conditions press\nsufficiently hard, a new table of distribution may be the only means for\nsurvival. Thus we proceed to make a virtue of necessity and so come to\nthe recognition of other values which we denominate spiritual because we\nhave not as yet spatialized them. The caterpillar has to mount the twig\nto find the tender green that is his food, but, he solaces himself for\nthe journey by thinking himself a creature of the light. Mr. Carpenter,\nin an interesting study of what he calls Intermediate Types, shows that\nthe seers and spiritually-minded come to be such because they found\nthemselves differing in some wise from their fellows, and dwelling on\nthat difference had their minds turned inward. Progress in thought and\nimagination naturally followed, with the result that these were lifted\nabove the majority and came thereby to larger vision. Failure may well\nbe the measure of extension in a new dimension.\n\nThe significance of the much fumbling and groping of earth's creatures\nis the desire for a larger outlook. Man has to feel his way out of a\nthree-fold world even as the worm out of his hole. That we are hearing\nmuch of the principle of relativity is perhaps the best indication we\nhave that the collective human consciousness is about to enter a higher\ndimension. So long as man knew only an absolute good was his world a\ndefinitely determined world. Now that the question of relative values\nobtrudes itself on every side the range of consciousness promises to be\ninfinite.\n\nMan's interest having in these latter days become largely centered on\nvalue-judgments and estimates of worth, an exposition affords perhaps\nthe most general application of the principle of relativity, bringing it\nhome to the collective mind in an intimately human way as nothing else\ncould: - With nation vying with nation and individual with individual in\nall of the arts and crafts of human industry, absolute standards must\nneeds vanish, and with their going we may be able to set up such a\ndistribution of values as will give new direction to our efforts.\nHowever that may be, the industrial competition to which, in the last\nanalysis, the Exposition owes its inception, is pushing many aside from\nthe beaten highways into hitherto unexplored regions of thought and\nendeavor, and who is to say that we may not in consequence find a\ndirection quite at right angles to all of our wonted ways of thinking.\nCertainly there could be no more fitting occasion for the launching of a\nnew thought-form than a great international exposition.\n\n\n\nThe Fourth-Dimensional\nAspects of the Panama-Pacific\nInternational Exposition\n\nAnd I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,\n   That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.\nConsider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:\n   It is everywhere in the world - loud, soft, and all is said:\nGive it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:\n   And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!\n\n   - Browning.\n\nThe Panama-Pacific International Exposition is best seen in its\nfourth-dimensional aspect when approached through the Gateway of Memory.\nThis is what one might expect, for that entrance alone has the requisite\ngeometrical structure. You will recall having heard, I am sure, how in\nthe fourth dimension a person may go in and out of a locked room at his\npleasure with bolts and bars untouched. Broad and open as is this Gate\nof Memory, when you pass its portals the wall closes behind you; there\nis no visible opening to mark the spot of your entry. A feeling of\ndetachment comes over you. This is augmented by the burst of light and\ncolor that flashes across the field of your vision, and for the first\ntime you understand the purport of those 'banners yellow, glorious,\ngolden' which 'do float and flow.' They seem to bear you on breezes of\ntheir own creating to the freedom of outer spaces. What you had taken\nfor the flauntings of festivity are become the heralds of hyperspace.\n\nAs you wend your way down the Avenue of Time you feel an inexpressive\nlightness, a sensation of being lifted out of yourself. The moment seems\nunique. Things are unrelated. There is no concern of proportion. The\nplace is one of immediacy. You wander from the ephemeral to the\nephemeral. 'Time is,' you say, in childish glee. And you hasten to\nassemble images as many and as disparate as possible, believing that you\nare drinking life at its fountain head. The outer world presents itself\nto your consciousness in the form of facts in juxtaposition. You read\nguide-books and rejoice in the acquisition of knowledge. Gradually\nthrough the perception of the same phantasmagoria comes an at-oneness\nwith your fellows. You are caught up in the swirl of a larger self.\n\nSoon you weary of the heterogeneous. The Zone of Consciousness stands\nrevealed in all its grotesqueness. 'Time is,' you cry, but to give\nthought its impulse, and you hasten on if perchance you may discover the\ndirection of the life-principle. What you had taken for reality is but\nits cross-section - so does this empirical realm stand to the higher\nworld of your spirit, even as a plane to a solid.\n\nNow you turn your attention from things to relations in the hope of\ngetting at truth in the large. A passage in Plato comes vividly to your\nmind. 'For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to\nproceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;\n- this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while\nfollowing God, when, regardless of that which we now call being, she\nraised her head up towards the true being.'\n\nHenceforth the multiplicity that you seek is one of organization and has\nnothing to do with number. 'Time was,' you proclaim, that consciousness\nmight sift out the irrelevant. As you pass from collection to collection\nindividual fact becomes prolonged into general law and science dominates\nthe field of thought. A thousand years are as a day when subsumed by its\nlaws. You look at the objects of man's creating with new eyes. The\ndisplays are no longer contests of laborious industry but of vision, and\nfaith. You see that truth has made itself manifest through the long\nrepetition of the same fundamental theme. That which is unique and\npersonal you are surprised to find of less value than the habit\nperfected by patient practice. The routine and monotony of daily toil\nbecome glorified in the light that now falls athwart your vision. You\nlearn to substitute for your personal feeling the common impersonal\nelement felt by the many. Your concern is not as formerly to recollect,\nbut to symbolize. To this end you study frieze and statuary and frequent\nlectures. Your sense of social solidarity grows through mutual\ncomprehension of the same truths.\n\nAnd again that 'vexing, forward reaching sense of some more noble\npermanence' urges you on. 'Time was;' you joyously affirm for man to\ncome to the knowledge of an eternal self. But that, your tradition and\neducation have led you to believe, is still yonder, worlds away. And you\nimage the soul in its quest passing from life to life as you are now\npassing from building to building, from hall to hall. But glad the\nthought - there will be courts wherein you may perhaps glimpse the plan\nof the whole and so gather strength and purpose for another housing. All\nat once you know that death has no fear for you and you feel toward your\npresent life as you do toward these Palaces of the Mundane - the sooner\ncompassed the better.\n\nYou pass from court to edifice and from edifice to court, marveling at\nthe symmetry of plan and structure. Unity, balance, and harmony become\nmanifest as spatial properties - you had been taught to regard them as\nprinciples of art. You wonder if art itself may not be merely a matter\nof right placing - the adjustment of a thing to its environment. You are\ncertain that this is so as each coign and niche offers you its\nparticular insight. Strange vagaries float through your mind - one's\nduty to the inanimate things of one's possession; the house too large\nfor the personality of the owner; the right setting for certain\nidiosyncrasies; character building as a constructive process; the ideal\nas the limit of an infinite series - each pointing the way, as you\nthink, to a different vista of human outlook. What then your glad\nsurprise to find these converging toward one ideal synthesis. In\nanticipation of the splendor you hasten on till earth shall have\nattained to heaven. There it stands - 'a structure brave,' the Palace of\nArt, the Temple of the Soul - and you know you were made to be perfect\ntoo.\n\nNow that you apprehend the plan of the whole, symmetry takes on a vital\nsignificance for your thought. You try to recall what you learned of it\nin geometry. There was a folding over, you remember, and a fitting\ntogether 'congruence' you believe it was called. But that could have no\nmeaning for solids. Stop! a folding over? Why, that implies another\ndimension! The two halves of a leaf can be brought together only as one\nor the other is lifted out of the plane of the leaf into a third\ndimension. So to bring two buildings into superposition when they are\nalike except for a reverse order of parts, would necessitate a fourth\ndimension and a turning inside out. Quick as the thought, the court you\nare in is that - a building inside out!\n\nAh! you know now wherefor that wonderful uplifting sensation that comes\nwhenever you enter one of these beautiful inclosures. You have passed\ninto the fourth dimension of spatial realization. 'Time is past,' you\nshout aloud, and laugh to find yourself on the inside of externality.\nCubism in architecture! Futurism, in very truth!\n\nYou visit again the galleries of the New Art, not to scoff, but in\nearnest desire for enlightenment as to this thing which is so near to\nconsciousness and yet so far. You find yourself exclaiming:\n\n'Ah, there is something here\nUnfathomed by the cynic's sneer!'\n\nAs you gaze at the portrayal so strangely weird in form and color you\nask yourself where have I felt that, seen this, before? Immediately you\nare transported in memory to the midst of a crowded street. In the mad\nbustle and noise you are conscious only of mechanical power; of speed -\nalways of speed. Your voice far away - 'The child, oh, the child!' A\nswooning sensation. Men's faces as triangles and horses with countless\nlegs. The chaos of primal forces about youthen darkness.\n\nAs the past fuses with the present you awaken to a larger privilege of\nlife than man now knows. You feel yourself encompassed by truth, vital\nand strong. This art, erstwhile so baffling, stands revealed as the\nstruggle of a superhuman entity for self-expression. The tendency toward\nGod has to begin anew with each round of the life-spiral - that eternal\ncircle which life pursues.\n\nNow you find yourself in the Court of the Universe. Bands of\nmany-colored light, the white radiance of eternity, stream athwart the\nsky. The illumination is of the wonder that now is. How marvelously\nstrange the sight of the world-consciousness passing over into a higher\nthought-form! Each individual element suffering reversal to take its\nproper place in the new world-order! You see positive becoming negative,\nnegative becoming positive, and Evolution giving place to Involution - a\nprocess as yet uncomprehended by our narrow thought. And the secret of\nthe world-struggle across the sea you know; men passing their nature's\nbound; new hopes and loyalties supplanting old ties and joys; the\nestablished creeds of right and wrong as they vanish in this\nimmeasurable thirst for an unknown good. All these things you know to be\nthe travail of the world as it gives birth to some higher entity than\nindividual man.\n\n'Time is past,' and as you speak a dove settles to rest upon a pediment.\nTherewith you are carried away in the spirit to a great and high\nmountain and you behold a new heaven and a new earth; for the first\nheaven and the first earth are passed away. You see the holy city coming\ndown out of heaven - her light is like unto a stone most precious, as it\nwere a jasper stone, clear as crystal, and the walls thereof are adorned\nwith all manner of precious stones - and they brought the glory and the\nhonor of the nations into it.\n\n\n\nCreative Evolution\n(After Bergson)\n\nOut of a sense of immediacy\nComes an intuition of things forming.\nPressed up by the vital urge,\nMind meets matter and matter mind\nIn mutual understanding.\nThat which apprehends, since by the object shaped,\nA fitting instrument is for what itself has wrought.\nFrom the same stuff,\nCut by an identical process,\nThing and intellect to congruence come,\nIn a space-world forever unfolding.\n\nNo preestablished harmony this\nOf inner to outer realm corresponding,\nNor spirit nor form by the other determined.\nStranger far the genesis whereof I speak:\nFrom the universal flux,\nIn a moment, that is ever unique,\nLife to new consciousness springs;\nCreator and created together evolve,\nIn a time-stream continually changing.\n\n\n\nMy Bibliography of Fourth-Dimensional Insight\n\nWhile to books I owe much, I owe still more to the beautiful people by\nwhom I have been, like Marcus Aurelius, all my life surrounded, and\nparticularly to my parents of large vision.\n\nCreative Evolution: Bergson.\n   An intuition so great that if spatialized it would lead to a world of\n   infinite dimensions.\n\nThe Ethical Implications of Bergson's Philosophy: Una Bernard Sait.\n\nThe New Infinite and the Old Theology: C. J. Keyser.\n\nThe Fourth Dimension: C. H. Hinton.\n\nFirst and Last Things: H. G. Wells.\n\nThe Art of Creation: Edward Carpenter.\n\nSome Neglected Factors of Evolution: Bernard.\n   A scientific presentation of Involution, a book than which none other\n   has more light to throw on present world problems.\n\nPrimer of Higher Space: Claude Bragdon.\n\nProjective Ornament: Claude Bragdon.\n\nParacelsus: Browning.\n\nABT Vogler: Browning.\n\nCommemoration Ode: Lowell.\n\nThe Book of Revelations.\n\n\n\nHere ends \"The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific\nInternational Exposition,\" written by Cora Lenore Williams, M.S., with\nlines on Fourth-Dimensional Insight by Ormeida Curtis Harrison; and the\nillustrations are from etchings done by Gertrude Partington, and the\nFourth Dimensional cover design by Julia Manchester Mackie. Published by\nPaul Elder & Company, and printed under the typographical direction of\nH. A. Funke at their Tomoye Press, in San Francisco, during the month of\nNovember, Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen.","title":"The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition: San Francisco, 1915","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":4678}