Adventure Magazine Cover — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The People of the Fourth Dimension AS HE told it, he did not look at Sinclair and when he did look up he was startled by the expression of gravity on the face of the elder man, who said: “Tt’s too late to ask you why you stared, and I won’t. You are living in a country where queer things happen. I mean, things which would be called queer in En- gland, but which are every-day events in India.”’ He paused for a few minutes, then con- tinued: “In my many years here, to quote New- ton, I have felt myself, as it were, walking by the shore of a boundless sea, picking up small pebbles. Each pebble means so much more knowledge—but what is a ton of such to all the knowledge hidden by the sea? It appears that you, unwittingly, have taken a plunge into the sea itself. Once, and only once, I myself wet my hand in it. Well, whatever their reason, they did not allow it for mere amusement.” And Sinclair finished speaking almost as if he were talking to himself. “Who,”’ Sesson stammered, ‘‘who do you mean by they?” “T do not know,” said Sinclair very sim- Fa “Eh?” Sesson might well be surprized. “No. I have discovered society after society. I found the gang which wishes to hypnotize the world, and may, because the silly world does not believe it possible! As if the western world knew anything about hypnotism! Yes, I have unearthed clique after clique—knowing all the time that be- hind all these manifestations lurked a power, a power which seemed as far beyond my reach as the fourth dimension, a power be- yond me, which I was almost content to ad- mit as my master. I believe that power is interested in you.”’ Sesson was dumb. Not because he had heard about a mysterious power, which appeared to be interested in himself, but because Sinclair had admitted there was something in-India which he was content to let alone, if not consider his superior. This was more than extraordinary; it was hardly believable. “My explanation may be miles from being correct,” Sinclair continued, as if soliloquiz- ing, “but it’s the best I have been able to build up: in all these years. To make my idea easier of understanding, suppose we 77 call this they who appear to be interested in you ‘The People of the Fourth Dimen- sion.’ Then, remember how almost every- thing pertaining to the so-called ‘“‘Occult”’ has its origin in India. “Sect after sect has arisen, book after book has been written, mahatma after ma- hatma—so called—has said his little say and passed on. But all of these were perhaps but the echo of the they I speak of: the sects, the wise men, the books were maybe but gropings for the truth of this myste- rious people, although, being human, these gropers pretended to have the truth, and lived by peddling it. ‘Few of them knew more than you do to- day—every one was trying to explain, and is trying to explain an experience similar to your own. That is why India is the home of occultism—because it seems to be the home of this unseen people of fourth di- mensional space. “T am a materialist, but not in the narrow sense in which the term is generally under- stood. I am so because the material is con- stantly showing us new wonders and until we are certain that the marvels of the ma- terial are exhausted—which will never be— I see no reason to speak of the spiritual. For what we call spiritual is only matter refined. Therefore, tnis unseen people are as physical as you and me. They are in- visible to us because they occupy four di- mensions*of space instead of three. “Even if we admit a common evolution- ary basis—I speak, of course, of some basis of which undifferentiated protoplasm is a product—why should not one branch of life have evolved in a space of four dimen- sions, while our branch evolved in three? If we admit the possibility of this—and I see no reason and no consistency in deny- ing it—then the evolution of man in fourth- dimensional space must kave resulted in a super-being, a being who grew beyond us for millions of years, in the ratio of as four is to three, with all the added possibilities of that added space. “That we can not see them is to be ex- pected, since we can not even imagine fourth space, verbally intelligible though it may be. But the theory is big. That these people exist you will, I think, soon have greater proof than I have. I suggest that you go on with your ink experiments, and if you tell the lady what I have told you, she will be apt to confirm it. If she doesn’t, ’ COMIC VOO|KS (F@)