moved away, may form its image at the same point of the retina. Sight responds yes, the object has remained at the same point and touch answers no, because my finger which just now touched the object, at present touches it no longer. If experience had shown us that one finger may respond no when the other says yes, we should likewise say that touch acts at a distance.
In short, for each attitude of my body, my first finger determines a point, and this it is, and this alone, which defines a point of space.
To each attitude corresponds thus a point; but it often happens that the same point corresponds to several different attitudes (in this case we say our finger has not budged, but the rest of the body has moved). We distinguish, therefore, among the changes of attitude those where the finger does not budge. How are we led thereto? It is because often we notice that in these changes the object which is in contact with the finger remains in contact with it.
Range, therefore, in the same class all the attitudes obtainable from each other by one of the changes we have thus distinguished. To all the attitudes of the class will correspond the same point of space. Therefore to each class will correspond a point and to each point a class. But one may say that what experience arrives at is not the point, it is this class of changes or, better, the corresponding class of muscular sensations.
And when we say space has three dimensions, we simply mean that the totality of these classes appears to us with the characteristics of a physical continuum of three dimensions.
One might be tempted to conclude that it is experience which has taught us how many dimensions space has. But in reality here also our experiences have bearing, not on space, but on our body and its relations with the neighboring objects. Moreover they are excessively crude.
In our mind pre-existed the latent idea of a certain number of groups—those whose theory Lie has developed. Which group shall we choose, to make of it a sort of standard with which to compare natural phenomena? And, this group chosen, which of its sub-groups shall we take to characterize a point of space? Experience has guided us by showing us which choice best adapts itself to the properties of our body. But its rôle is limited to that.
Ancestral Experience
It has often been said that if individual experience could not create geometry the same is not true of ancestral experience. But what does that mean? Is it meant that we could not experimentally demonstrate Euclid's postulate, but that our ancestors have been able to do it? Not in the least. It is meant that by natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world, that it has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species: or in other words the most convenient. This is entirely in conformity with our conclusions; geometry is not true, it is advantageous.