ZÖLLNER
In the year 1877, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Leipsic, undertook to prove that certain (so-called) psychic phenomena were susceptible of explanation on the hypothesis of a four-dimensional space. He used as illustrations the phenomena induced by the medium Henry Slade. By the irony of events, Slade was afterward arrested and imprisoned for fraud, in England. This fact so prejudiced the public mind against Zöllner that his name became a word of scorn, and the fourth dimension a synonym for what is fatuous and false. Zöllner died of it, but since his death public opinion has undergone a change. There is a great and growing interest in everything pertaining to the fourth dimension, and belief in that order of phenomena upon which Zöllner based his deductions is supported by evidence at once voluminous and impressive.
It is unnecessary to go into the question of the genuineness of the particular phenomena which Zöllner witnessed. His conclusions are alone important, since they apply equally to other manifestations, whose authenticity has never been successfully impeached. Zöllner's reasoning with regard to certain psychic phenomena is somewhat along the following lines.
APPARITIONS
The intrusion (as an apparition) of a person or thing into a completely enclosed portion of three-space; or contrariwise, the exit (as an evanishment) out of such a space.