Our analogy makes all this intelligible.  To the flat-man, clairvoyance in space would consist in that power of perception which we exercise in reference to his plane.  From the third dimension the boundaries of plane figures offer no impediment to the view of their interiors, and they themselves in no way impede our vision of surrounding objects.  If we assume that clairvoyance in space is the perception of the things of our world from the region of the fourth dimension, the phenomena exactly conform to the demands of our analogy.  It is no more difficult for a four-dimensional intelligence to understand the appearance or disappearance of a body in a completely closed room, or the withdrawal of an orange from its skin, without cutting or breaking that skin, than it is for us to see the possibility of taking up a pencil point from the center of a circle and putting it down outside.  We are under no compulsion to draw a line across the circumference of the circle in order to enter or leave it.  Moreover, the volume of our sensible universe embraced in the clairvoyant’s field of view will increase in the same way that a balloonist’s view increases in area as he rises above the surface of the earth.  To account for clairvoyant vision at a distance, it is of course necessary to posit some perceptive organ other than the eye, but the fact that in trance the eyes are closed, itself demands this assumption.

CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME

The perception of a past event as in process of occurring, or the prevision of something which comes to pass later.

No mechanistic explanation will serve to account for this order of clairvoyance since it is inextricably involved in the mystery of consciousness itself.  Yet our already overworked analogy can perhaps cast a little light even here.

To the flat-man, the third dimension of objects passing through his plane translates itself to his experience into time.  Were he capable of rising in the positive direction of the third dimension, he would have pre-vision, because he would be cognizant of that which had not yet intersected his plane:  by sinking in the negative direction, he would have post-vision, because he could re-cognize that which had already passed.

Now there are excellent reasons, other than those based on analogy, that the fourth-dimensional aspect of things may manifest itself to our ordinary experience, not as spatial extension, but as temporal change.  Then, if we conceive of clairvoyance as a transcending by consciousness of our three-dimensional space, prevision and post-vision would be logically possible as corresponding to the positive and negative of the fourth dimension.  This may be made clearer by the aid of a homely illustration.

PISGAH SIGHTS OF LIFE’S PAGEANT