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06 - Flatland- A Romance of Many Dimensions - Edwin Abbott Abbott · Classic Sci Fi Books - Daily

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Part two. Other Worlds O brave new worlds that have such people in them.
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Section thirteen. How I had a vision of Lineland. It was the
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last day but one of the nineteen hundred and ninety ninth year of our era,
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and the first day of the long vacation. Having amused myself till a
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late hour with my favorite recreation of geometry, I had retired to rest with
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an unsolved problem in my mind. In the night, I had a dream.
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Reader's Note. The following paragraph makes reference to a diagram. The diagram
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is headed my view of Lineland. Beneath this title and centrally placed is a
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square labeled myself, and that from left to right on a horizontal plane are
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four dots labeled women, a short dash labeled a boy, six longer dashes
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marked men. Then, directly below myself a thick dash labeled the King,
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with an eye looking out from either end. Under the eyes is written the
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King's eyes much larger than the reality, showing that his Majesty could see nothing
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but a point. The horizontal line then continues towards the right with seven dashes
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marked men, one dash marked a boy, and seven dots marked women.
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End of reader's note. I saw before me a vast multitude of small straight
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lines, which I naturally assumed to be women, interspersed with other beings still
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smaller and of the nature of lustrous points, all moving to and fro in
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one and the same straight line, and as nearly as I could judge,
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with the same velocity. A noise of confuse, multitudinous chirping or twittering issued
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from them at intervals as long as they were moving, but sometimes they ceased
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from motion, and then all was silence. Approaching one of the largest of
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what I thought to be women, I accosted her, but received no answer.
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A second and third appeal on my part were equally ineffectual. Losing patience
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at what appeared to me intolerable rudeness, I brought my mouth into a position
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full in front of her mouth, so as to intercept her motion, and
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loudly repeated my question, woman, what signifies this concourse and this strange and
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confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and fro in one and the same
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straight line. I am no woman, replied the small line. I am
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the monarch of the world. But thou, whence intruders thou into my realm
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of Lineland. Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had in
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any way startled or molested his royal Highness, and describing myself as a stranger,
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I besought the King to give me some account of his dominions. But
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I had the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information on points that really interested
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me, for the Monarch could not refrain from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar
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to him must also be known to me, and that I was simulating ignorance
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in jest. However, by persevering questions, I elicited the following facts.
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It seemed that this poor ignorant monarch, as he called himself, was persuaded
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that the straight line which he called his kingdom, and in which he passed
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his existence, constituted the whole of the world, and indeed the whole of
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space. Not being able either to move or to see save in his straight
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line, he had no conception of anything out of it. Though he had
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heard my voice when I first addressed him, the sounds had come to him
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in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had made no answer,
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seeing no man as he expressed it and hearing a voice, as it were,
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from my own intestines. Until the moment when I placed my mouth in
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his world, he had neither seen me nor heard anything except confused sounds beating
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against what I called his side, but what he called his inside or stomach.
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Nor had he even now the least conception of the region from which I
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had come. Outside his world or line. All was a blank to him,
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Nay not even a blank, for a blank implies say. Rather,
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all was nonexistent his subjects, of whom the small lions were men and the
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points women were all alike, confined in motion and eyesight to that single straight
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line which was their world. It need scarcely be added that the whole of
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their horizon was limited to a point. Nor could anyone ever see anything but
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a point, man, woman, child, thing. Each was a point
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to the eye of a linelander. Only by the sound of the voice could
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sex or age be distinguished. Moreover, as each individual occupied the whole of
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the narrow path, so to speak, which constituted his universe, and no
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one could move to the right or left to make way for passers by,
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it followed that no linelander could ever pass Once neighbours always neighbours. Neighborhood with
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them was like marriage with us. Neighbours remained neighbours till death did them part.
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Such a life, with all vision limited to a point and all motion
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to a straight line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary, and I was surprised
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to note the vivacity and cheerfulness of the King. Wondering whether it was possible,
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amid circumstances so unfavorable to domestic relations, to enjoy the pleasures of conjugal
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union. I hesitated for some time to question his Royal Highness on so delicate
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a subject, but at last I plunged into it by abruptly inquiring as to
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the health of his family, My wives and children, he replied, are
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well and happy. Staggered at this answer, for in the immediate proximity of
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the Monarch, as I had noted in my dream before I entered Lymeland,
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there were none but men, I ventured to reply, Pardon me, but
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I cannot imagine how your Royal Highness can at any time either see or approach
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their majesties when there are at least half a dozen intervening individuals whom you can
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neither see through nor pass by. Is it possible that in Lineland proximity is
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not necessary for marriage and for the generation of children? How can you ask
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so absurd a question, replied the monarch. If it were indeed as you
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suggest, the universe would soon be depopulated. No, no, neighborhood is
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needless for the union of hearts, and the birth of children is too important
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a matter to have been allowed to depend upon such an accident as proximity.
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You cannot be ignorant of this, Yet, since you are pleased to affect
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ignorance, I will instruct you as if you were the veriest baby in Lineland.
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Know then, that marriages are consummated by means of the faculty of sound
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and the sense of hearing. You are, of course aware that every man
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has two mouths or voices, as well as two eyes, a base at
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one and a tenor at the other of his extremities. I should not mention
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this, but that I have been unable to distinguish your tenor. In the
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course of our conversation, I replied that I had but one voice, and
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that I had not been aware that His Royal Highness had two, That confirms
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my impression, said the King that you are not a man, but a
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feminine monstrosity with a base voice and an utterly uneducated ear. But to continue,
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nature herself, having ordained that every man should wed two wives, why
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two, asked I. You carry your affected simplicity too far, He cried,
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how can there be a completely harmonious union without the combination of the four
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in one viz. The base and tenor of the man, and the soprano
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and contralto of the two women. But supposing, said I, that a
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man should prefer one wife or three, it is impossible, he said.
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It is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five, or that
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the human eye should see a straight line. I would have interrupted him,
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but he proceeded as follows. Once in the middle of each week, a
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law of nature compels us to move to and fro with a rhythmic motion of
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more than usual violence, which continues for the time you would take to count
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one hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance, at the
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fifty first pulsation, the inhabitants of the universe pause in full career, and
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each individual sends forth his richest fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this
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decisive moment that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation of
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base to treble of tenor to contralto that. Oftentimes the loved ones, though
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twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive note of their destined lover,
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and penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, love unites the three. The
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marriage, in that instant, consummated results in a threefold male and female offspring,
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which takes its place in Lineland. What always threefold? Said I must
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one wife then always have twins? Base voice monstrosity, yes, replied the
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king. How else could the balance of the sexes be maintained if two girls
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were not born for every boy? Would you ignore the very alphabet of nature?
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He ceased speechless for fury, and some time elapsed before I could induce
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him to resume his narrative. You will, not, of course, suppose
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that every bachelor among us finds his mates at the first wooing in this universal
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marriage chorus. On the contrary, the process is by most of us,
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many times repeated. Few are the hearts whose happy lot it is at once
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to recognize in each other's voices the partner intended for them by providence, and
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to fly into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. With most of us,
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the courtship is of long duration. The wooer's voices may perhaps accord with one
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of the future wives, but not with both, or not at first with
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either, or the soprano and contralto may not quite harmonize. In such cases,
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Nature has provided that every weekly chorus shall bring the three lovers into closer
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harmony. Each trial of voice, each fresh discovery of discord, almost imperceptibly
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induces the less perfect to modify his or her vocal utterance so as to approximate
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to the more perfect. And after many trials and many approximations, the result
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is at last achieved. There comes a day, at last, when,
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while the wonted marriage chorus goes forth from universal Lineland, the three far off
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lovers suddenly find themselves in exact harmony, And before they are aware, the
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wedded triplet is wrapped vocally into a duplicate embrace, and Nature rejoices over one
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more marriage and over three more births. Section fourteen. How I vainly tried
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to explain the nature of flatland. Thinking that it was time to bring down
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the monarch from his raptures to the level of common sense, I determined to
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endeavor to open up to him some glimpses of the truth, that is to
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say, of the nature of things in flatland. So I began, thus,
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how does your Royal Highness distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects?
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I, for my part, noticed, by the sense of sight before I
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entered your kingdom, that some of your people are lines and others points,
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and that some of the lines are larger. You speak of an impossibility,
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interrupted the king. You must have seen a vision. For to detect the
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difference between a line and a point by the sense of sight is, as
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every one knows in the nature of things, impossible. But it can be
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detected by the sense of hearing, and by the same means my shape can
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be exactly as attained. Behold me, I am aligned the longest in lineland,
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over six inches of space of length, I ventured to suggest. Fool
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said he spaces length. Interrupt me again, and I have done. I
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apologized, but he continued scornfully. Since you are impervious to argument, you
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shall hear with your ears. How by means of my two voices, I
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reveal my shape to my wives, who are at this moment six thousand miles
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seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the one to the north, the
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other to the south. Listen, I call to them, he chirruped,
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and then complacently cont my wives at this moment, receiving the sound of one
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of my voices closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches
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them after an interval in which sound can traverse six point four five seven inches,
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infer that one of my mouths is six point four five seven inches further
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from them than the other, and accordingly know my shape to be six point
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four five seven inches. But you will, of course understand that my wives
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do not make this calculation every time they hear my two voices. They made
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it once for all, before we were married, but they could make it
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at any time. And in the same way I can estimate the shape of
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any of my male subjects by the sense of sound. But how said I,
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if a man feigns a woman's voice with one of his two voices,
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or so disguises his southern voice that it cannot be recognized as the echo of
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the northern May not such deceptions cause great inconvenience? And have you no means
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of checking frauds of this kind by commanding your neighboring subjects to feel one another?
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This, of course, was a very stupid question, for feeling could
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not have answered the purpose. But I asked, with the view of irritating
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the monarch, and I succeeded perfectly. What cried he in horror, explain
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your meaning, feel, touch, come into contact? I replied. If
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you mean by feeling, said the king, approaching so close as to leave
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no space between two individuals, no stranger that this offense is punishable in my
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dominions by death, And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a
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woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved
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by the state. But since women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight
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from man, the law ordains universally that neither man nor woman shall be approached
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so closely as to destroy the interval between the approximator and the approximated. And
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indeed, what possible purpose would be served by this illegal and unnatural excess of
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approximation, which you call touching, when all the ends of so brutal and
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coarse a process are attained at once, more easily and more exactly by the
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sense of hearing. As to your suggested danger of deception, it is non
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existent, for the voice being, the essence of one's being, cannot be
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thus changed at will. But come suppose that I had the power of passing
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through solid things, so that I could penetrate my subjects one after another,
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even to the number of a billion, verifying the size and distance of each,
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by the sense of feeling. How much time and energy would be wasted
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in this clumsy and inaccurate method, Whereas now, in one moment of audition,
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I take, as it were, the senses and statistics, local,
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corporal, mental, and spiritual of every living being in Lineland. Hark only
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hark so, saying he paused and listened, as if in an ecstasy,
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to a sound which seemed to me no better than a tiny chirping from an
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innumerable multitude of Lilliputian grasshoppers. Truly replied, I, your sense of hearing
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serves you in good stead and fills up many of your deficiencies. But permit
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me to point out that your life in Lineland must be deplorably dull to see
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nothing but a point, not even to be able to contemplate a straight line,
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nay, not even to know what a straight line is, to see
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yet to be cut off from those linear prospects which are vouchsafed to us in
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flat land. Better surely, to have no sense of sight at all than
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to see so little, I grant you, I have not your discriminative faculty
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of hearing, for the concert of all line land, which gives you such
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intense pleasure, is to me no better than a multitudinous twittering or chirping.
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But at least I can discern by sight a line from a point, and
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let me prove it. Just before I came into your kingdom, I saw
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you dancing from left to right, and then from right to left, with
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seven men and a woman in your immediate proximity on the left, and eight
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men and two women on your right. Is not this correct? It is
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correct, said the king, so far as the numbers and sexes are concerned.
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Though I know not what you mean by right and left, But I
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deny that you saw these things. But how could you see the line?
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That is to say, the inside of any man. But you must have
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heard these things and then dreamed that you saw them. And let me ask
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what you mean by those words left and right. I suppose it is your
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way of saying northwood and southward. Not so, replied I. Besides your
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motion of northwood and southward, there is another motion, which I call from
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right to left. King, exhibit to me, if you please this motion
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from left to right. I nay that I cannot do unless you could step
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out of your line altogether. King, out of my line? Do you
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mean out of the world, out of space? I? Well, yes,
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out of your world, out of your space. For your space is
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not the true space. True space is a plane, but your space is
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only a line. King. If you cannot indicate this motion from left to
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right by yourself moving in it, then I beg you to describe it to
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me in words. I. If you cannot tell your right side from my
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left, I fear that no words of mine can make my meaning clear to
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you. But surely you cannot be ignorant of so simple a distinction. King,
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I do not in the least understand you. I alas, how shall
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I make it clear? When you move straight on. Does it not sometimes
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occur to you that you could move in some other way, turning your eye
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round so as to look in the direction to which your side is now fronting?
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In other words, instead of always moving in the direction of one of
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your extremities, do you never feel a desire to move in the direction so
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to speak of your side? King? Never? And what do you mean,
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how can a man's inside front in any direction? Or how can a
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man move in the direction of his inside? I? Well, then,
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since words cannot explain the matter, I will try deeds and will move gradually
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out of Lineland in the direction which I desire to indicate to you. Reader's
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note. The following paragraph makes reference to a diagram. The diagram shows a
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horizontal line. At the left is marked Lineland with an arrow pointing rightwood.
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At the right on the line is a broad dash labeled the King. In
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the center on the line is a horizontally shaded square, over which is written
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my body just before I disappeared. End of reader's note. At the word
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I began to move my body out of Limeland as long as any part of
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me remained in his dominion and in his view, the King kept exclaiming,
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I see you. I see you. Still you are not moving. But
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when I had at last moved myself out of his line, he cried,
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in his shrillest voice, she is banished, she is dead. I'm not
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dead, replied I. I am simply out of limeland, that is to
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say, out of the straight line which you call space, and in the
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true space, where I can see things as they are. And at this
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moment I can see your line, or side, or inside, as you
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are pleased to call it. And I can also see the men and women
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the north and south of you, whom I will now enumerate, describing their
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order, their size, and the interval between each. When I had done
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this at great length, I cried, triumphantly, does this at last convince
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you? And with that I once more entered Lynland, taking up the same
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position as before. But the monarch replied, if you were a man of
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sense, though as you appear to have only one voice, I have little
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doubt you are not a man but a woman. But if you had a
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particle of sense, you would listen to reason. You ask me to believe
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that there is another line besides that which my senses indicate, and another motion
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besides that of which I am daily conscious, I in return ask you to
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describe in words or indicate by motion that other line of which you speak.
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Instead of moving, you merely exercise some magic art of vanishing and returning to
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sight. And instead of any lucid description of your new world, you simply
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tell me the numbers and sizes of some forty of my retinue facts known to
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any child in my capital? Can anything be more irrational or audacious? Acknowledge
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your folly or depart from my dominions. Furious at his perversity, and especially
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indignant that he professed to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted, in
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no measured terms, besotted being, you think yourself the perfection of existence,
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while you are, in reality the most imperfect and imbecile You profess to see,
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whereas you can see nothing but a point. You plume yourself on inferring
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the existence of a straight line. But I can see straight lines, and
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infer the existence of angles, triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, and
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even circles. Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the completion
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of your incomplete self. You are a line, but I am a line
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of lines. Called in my country a square, and even I infinitely superior,
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though I am to you am of little account among the great nobles of
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Flatland. Whence I have come to visit you in the hope of enlightening your
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ignorance. Hearing these words, the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry,
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as if to pierce me through the diagonal. And in that same moment
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there arose from myriads of his subjects a multitudinous war cry, increasing in vehemence,
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till at last me thought it rivaled the roar of an army of a
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hundred thousand isosceles and the artillery of a thousand pentagons. Spellbound and motionless,
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I could neither speak nor move to avert the pending destruction, and still the
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noise grew louder, and the king came closer. When I awoke to find
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the breakfast bell recalling me to the realities of Flatland. End of Section fourteen.