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

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Part one, Section eight of the Ancient Practice of painting. If my readers
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have followed me with any attention up to this point, they will not be
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surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull in flatland. I do not,
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of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions,
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and all those other phenomena which are supposed to make history interesting. Nor
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would I deny that the strange mixture of the problems of life and the problems
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of mathematics, continually inducing conjecture and giving the opportunity of immediate verification, imparts
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to our existence a zest which you in spaceland can hardly comprehend. I speak
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now from the esthetic and artistic point of view when I say that life with
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us is dull, esthetically and artistically very dull. Indeed, how can it
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be otherwise when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits,
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flowers, still life are nothing but a single line, with no varieties
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except degrees of brightness and obscurity. It was not always thus color, If
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tradition speaks the truth, once, for the space of half a dozen centuries
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or more, threw a transient charm upon the lives of our ancestors. In
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the remotest ages, some private individual, a pentagon whose name is variously reported,
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having casually discovered the constituents of the simpler colors and a rudimentary method of
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painting, is said to have begun by decorating first his house, then his
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slaves, then his father, his sons and grandsons, lastly himself. The
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convenience, as well as the beauty of the results, commended themselves to all
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wherever chromatistes, For by that name, the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling
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him, turned his variegated frame. There he at once excited attention and attracted
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respect. No one now needed to feel him. No one mistook his front
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for his back. All his movements were readily ascertained by his neighbors, without
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the slightest strain on their powers of calculation. No one jostled him or failed
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to make way for him. His voice was saved the labor of that exhausting
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utterance by which we colorless squares and pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality
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when we move amid a crowd of ignorant Isosceles. The fashions spread like wildfire.
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Before a week was over, every square and triangle in the district had
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copied the example of Chromatistes, and only a few of the more conservative pentagons
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held out. A month or two found even the Dodecadens infected with the innovation.
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A year had not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the
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very highest of the nobility. Needless to say, the customs soon made its
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way from the district of Chromatists to surrounding regions, and within two generations no
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one in all flatland was colorless except the women and the priests. Here,
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nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against extending the innovation
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to these two classes. Many sidedness was almost essential as a pretext for the
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innovators. Distinction of sides is intended by nature to imply distinction of colours.
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Such was the sophism, which in those days flew from mouth to mouth,
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converting whole towns at a time to the new culture, but manifestly to our
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priests and women, is added, did not apply. The latter had only
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one side, and therefore plurally and pedantically speaking, no sides. The former,
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if at least they would assert their claim to be really and truly circles,
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and not mere high class polycans with an infinitely large number of infinitesimally small
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sides were in the habit of boasting what women confessed and deplored that they also
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had no sides, being blessed with a perimeter of one line, or in
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other words, a circumference. Hence, it came to pass that these two
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classes could see no force in the so called axiom about distinction of sides implying
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distinction of color. And when all others had succumbed to the fascinations of corporal
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decoration, the priests and the women alone still remained pure from the pollution of
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paint in moral life, sensious, anarchical, unscientific. Call them by what
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names you will. Yet, from an esthetic point of view, those ancient
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days of the color revolked with a glorious childhood of art in Flatland, a
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childhood alas that never ripened into manhood nor even reached the blossom of youth.
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To live was then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing, even
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at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold the richly varied
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hues of the assembly in a church or theater are said to have more than
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once proved too distracting for our greatest teachers and actors. But most ravishing of
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all is said to have been the unspeakable magnificence of a military review. The
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sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles suddenly facing about and exchanging
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the somber black of their base for the orange and purple of the two sides,
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including their acute angle, the militia of the equilateral triangles tricoloured in red,
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white and blue, the mauve, ultramarine gamboge and burnt umber of the
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square artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermilion guns. The dashing and flashing of the
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five colored and six colored pentagons and hexagons careering across the field in their offices
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of surgeons, geometricians, and aide de camp. All these may well have
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been sufficient to render credible the famous story how an illustrious circle, overcome by
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the artistic beauty of the forces under his command, threw aside his marshal's battle
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and his royal crown, exclaiming that he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil.
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How great and glorious the sensuous development of these days must have been is
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in part indicating by the very language and vocabulary of the period. The commonest
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utterances of the commonest citizens in the time of the colour Revolt seemed to have
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been suffused with a richer tinge of word or thought, And to that era
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we are even now indebted for our finest poetry, and for whatever rhythm still
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remains in the more scientific utterance of these modern days Section nine of the Universal
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Color Bill. But meanwhile the intellectual arts were fast decaying. The art of
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sight recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer practiced, and the
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studies of geometry, statics, kinetics, and other kindred subjects came soon to
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be considered superfluous and fell into distribute and neglect. Even at our university.
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The inferior art of feeling speedily experienced the same fate at our elementary schools.
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Then, the Isosceles classes, asserting that the specimens were no longer used nor
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needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from the criminal classes to the
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service of education, waxed daily more numerous and more insolent on the strength of
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their immunity from the old burden which had formerly exercised the twofold wholesome effect of
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at once taming their brutal nature and thinning their excessive numbers. Year by year,
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the soldiers and artisans began more vehemently to assert, and with increasing truth,
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that there was no great difference between them and the very highest class of
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polygons, now that they were raised to inequality with the latter, and enabled
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to grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problems of life, whether
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statical and kinetical, by the simple process of color recognition. Not content with
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the natural neglect into which site recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand
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the legal prohibition of all monopolizing and aristocratic arts, and the consequent abolition of
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all endowments for the studies of site recognition, mathematics, and feeling. Soon
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they began to insist that inasmuch as color, which was a second nature,
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had destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the law should follow in the same
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path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely
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equal and entitled to equal rights. Finding the higher orders wavering and undecided,
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the leaders of the revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last
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demanded that all classes alike, the priests and the women not excepted, should
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do homage to colour by submitting to be painted. When it was objected that
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priests and women had no sides, they retorted that nature and expediency concurred in
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dictating that the front half of every human being, that is to say,
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the half containing his eye and mouth, should be distinguishable from his hinder half.
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They therefore brought before a General and Extraordinary Assembly of all the states of
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Flatland a bill proposing that in every woman, the half containing the iron mouth
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should be colored red and the other half green. The priests were to be
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painted in the same way, red being applied to that semicircle in which the
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eye and mouth formed the middle point, while the other or hinder semicircle was
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to be colored green. There was no little cunning in this proposal, which
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indeed emanated not from any Isosceles, for no being so degraded would have had
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angularity enough to appreciate, much less to devise such a model of state craft.
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But from an irregular circle, who, instead of being destroyed in his
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childhood, was reserved by a foolish indulgence to bring desolation on his country and
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destruction on myriads of his followers. On the one hand, the proposition was
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calculated to bring the women in all classes over to the side of the chromatic
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innovation. For by assigning to the women the same two colours as were assigned
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to the priests, the revolutionists thereby ensured that in certain positions, every woman
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would appear like a priest and be treated with corresponding respect and deference, a
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prospect that could not fail to attract the female sex in a mass. But
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by some of my readers, the possibility of the identical appearance of priests and
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women under the new legislation may not be recognized. If so, a word
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or two will make it obvious. Imagine a woman duly decorated according to the
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new code, with the front half i e. The half containing eye and
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mouth red, and with the hinder half green. Look at her from one
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side. Obviously you will see a straight line half read half green. Reader's
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note. The following paragraph makes reference to an accompanying diagram. The diagram shows
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a circle or priestly figure. If it is visualized as a clock face,
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twelve o'clock is marked M for the priest's mouth, three o'clock is marked B,
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and nine o'clock is marked A. The diameter AB is drawn as a
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dotted line and is extended outside the circle rightwards to a point which represents the
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position of the observer. Dotted lines are drawn downward and rightward from M towards
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this point, and upward and rightward from six o'clock to this point. A
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broad vertical line C b D is drawn between the dotted lines to indicate what
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the observer sees. Cbd is bright at the center and darkens sharply towards its
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ends. End of reader's note. Now imagine a priest whose mouth is at
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M, and whose front semicircle A M B is consequently colored red, while
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his hinder semicircle is green, so that the diameter A B divides the green
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from the red. If you contemplate the great man so as to have your
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eye in the same straight line as his dividing diameter A B, what you
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will see will be a straight line C b D, of which one half
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c B will be red, and the other b D Green. The whole
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line CD will be rather shorter, perhaps than that of a full sized woman,
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and will shade off more rapidly towards its extremities. But the identity of
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the colors would give you an immediate impression of identity, if not class,
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making you neglectful of other details. Bear in mind the decay of sight recognition
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which threatened society at the time of the color revolt, add to the certainty
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that women would speedily learn to shade off their extremities so as to imitate the
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circles. It must then be surely obvious to you, my dear reader,
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that the color bill placed us under a great danger of confounding a priest with
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a young woman. How attractive this prospect must have been to the frail sex
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may readily be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that would ensue at
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home. They might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets intended not for them but for
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their husbands and brothers, and might even issue command in the name of a
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priestly circle out of doors. The striking combination of red and green, without
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addition of any other colours, would be sure to lead the common people into
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endless mistakes, and the women would gain whatever the circles lost in the deference
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of the passes by. As for the scandal that would befall the circular class
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if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the women were imputed to them, and
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as to the consequence subversion of the constitution, the female sex could not be
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expected to give a thought to these considerations. Even in the households of the
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circles, the women were all in favor of the Universal Color Bill. The
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second object aimed at by the bill was the gradual demoralization of the circles themselves.
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In the general intellectual decay, they still preserved their pristine clearness and strength
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of understanding from their earliest childhood, familiarized in their circular households with the total
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absence of color. The nobles alone preserved the sacred art of sight recognition,
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with all the advantages that result from that admirable training of the intellect. Hence,
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up to the date of the introduction of the Universal Color Bill, the
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circles had not only held their own, but even increased their lead of other
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classes by abstinence from the popular fashion. Now, therefore, the artful irregular,
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whom I described above as the real author of this diabolical bill, determined
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at one blow to lower the status of the hierarchy by forcing them to submit
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to the pollution of color, and at the same time to destroy their domestic
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opportunities of training in the art of sight recognition, so as to enfeeble their
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intellects by depriving them of their pure and colorless homes. Once subjected to the
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chromatic taint, every parental and every childish circle would demoralize each other. Only
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in discerning between the father and the mother would the circular infant find problems for
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the exercise of its understanding, problems too often likely to be corrupted by maternal
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impostures, with the result of shaking the child's faith in all logical conclusions.
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Thus, by degrees, the intellectual luster of the priestly order would wane,
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and the road would then lie open for a total destruction of all aristocratic legislature
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and for the subversion of our privileged classes Section ten of the Suppression of the
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Chromatic Sedition. The agitation for the Universal Color Bill continued for three years,
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and up to the last moment of that period, it seemed as though anarchy
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were destined to triumph. A whole army of polygons, who turned out to
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fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles triangles.
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The squares and pentagons, meanwhile, remains neutral. Worse than all,
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Some of the ablest circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by political
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animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords with prayers to
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give up their opposition to the colour bill, and some, finding their entreaties
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fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husbands, perishing themselves in
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the act of carnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation, no
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less than twenty three circles perished in domestic discord. Great indeed was the peril.
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It seemed as though the priests had no choice between submission and extermination,
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when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents
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which statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to
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originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies
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of the populace. It happened that an Isosceles, of a low type with
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a brain little, if at all, above four degrees, accidentally dabbling in
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the colors of some tradesman whose shop he had plundered, painted himself, or
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caused himself to be painted, for the story varies with the twelve colors of
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a dodecahedron. Going into the market place, he accosted, in a feigned
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voice a maiden, the orphan daughter of a noble polygon, whose affection in
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former days he had sought in vain, and by a series of deceptions,
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aided on the one side by a string of lucky accidents too long to relate,
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and on the other by an almost inconceivable fetuity and neglect of ordinary precautions
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on the part of the relations of the bride, he succeeded in consummating the
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marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on discovering the fraud to which she had
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been subjected. When the news of this catastrophe spread from state to state,
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the minds of the women were violently agitated sympathy with the miserable victim, and
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anticipations of similar deceptions for themselves. Their sisters and their daughters made them now
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regard the color Bill in an entirely new aspect. Not a few openly avowed
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themselves converted to antagonism. The rest needed only a slight stimulus to make a
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similar avowal. Seizing this favorable opportunity, the circles hastily convened an extraordinary assembly
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of the states, and besides the usual guard of convicts, they secured the
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attendants of a large number of reactionary women. Amidst an unprecedented concourse, the
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chief circle of those days, by name pantos Hyclus, arose to find himself
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hissed and hooted by a hundred twenty thousand Isosceles, But he secured silence by
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declaring that henceforth the circles would enter on a policy of concession, yielding to
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the wishes of the majority, they would accept the Color Bill. The uproar
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being at once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leader of the
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sedition, into the center of the hall, to receive in the name of
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his followers, the submission of the hierarchy. Then followed a speech, a
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masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied nearly a day in the delivery, and to
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which no summary can do justice with a grave appearance of impartiality. He declared
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that as they were now finally committing themselves to reform or innovation, it was
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desirable that they should take one last view of the perimeter of the whole subject
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its defects as well as its advantages. Gradually introducing the mention of the dangers
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to the tradesmen, the professional classes, and the gentlemen, he silenced the
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rising murmurs of the Isosceles by reminding them that in spite of all these defects,
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he was willing to accept the bill if it was approved by the majority,
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but it was manifest at all except the Isosceles were moved by his words
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and were either neutral or averse to the bill. Turning now to the workmen,
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he asserted that their interests must not be neglected, and that if they
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intended to accept the Color Bill, they ought at least to do so with
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a full view of the consequences. Many of them, he said, were
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on the point of being admitted to the class of the regular triangles. Others
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anticipated for their children a distinction they could not hope for themselves, that honorable
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ambition would now have to be sacrificed. With the universal adoption of colour,
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all distinctions would cease, Regularity would be confused with irregularity. Development would give
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place to retrogression. The workmen would in a few generations be degraded to the
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level of the military or even the convict class. Political power would be in
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the hands of the greatest number, that is to say, the criminal classes,
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who were already more numerous than the workmen, and would soon outnumber all
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the other classes put together. When the usual compensative laws of nature were violated,
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a subdued murmur of assent ran through the ranks of the artisans and chromatistes
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in alarm attempted to step forward and address them, but he found himself in
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compass with guards and forced to remain silent, while the chief circle, in
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a few impassioned words, made a final appeal to the women, exclaiming that
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if the color Bill passed, no marriage would henceforth be safe, no woman's
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honor secure. Fraud, deception, hypocrisy would pervade every household. Domestic bliss
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would share the fate of the constitution and pass to speedy perdition. Sooner than
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this, he cried, come death. At these words, which were the
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preconcerted signal for action, the Isosceles convicts fell on and chansfixed the wretched chromatistes.
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The regular classes, opening their ranks, made way for a band of
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women, who, under direction of the circles, moved back foremost invisibly and
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unerringly upon the unconscious soldiers. The artisans, in imitating the example of their
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betters, also opened their ranks. Meantime, bands of convicts occupied every entrance
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with an impenetrable phalanx. The battle, or rather carnage, was of short
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duration. Under the skillful generalship of the circles. Almost every woman's charge was
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fatal, and very many extracted their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter.
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But no second blow was needed. The rabble of the Isosceles did the
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rest of the business for themselves. Surprised, leaderless, attacked in front by
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invisible foes, and finding egress cut off by the convicts behind them, they
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at once, after their manner, lost all presence of mind and raised the
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cry of treachery. This sealed their fate. Every Isosceles now saw and felt
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a foe in every other. In half an hour, not one of that
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vast multitude was living, and the fragments of seven score thousand of the criminal
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class slain by one another's angles, attested the triumph of order. The circles
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delayed, not to push their victory to the uttermost the workingmen they spared,
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but decimated. The militia of the equilaterals was at once called out, and
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every triangle suspected of irregularity on reasonable grounds was destroyed by court martial. Without
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the formality of exact measurement by the Social Board. The homes of the military
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and artisan classes were inspected in a course of visitations extending through upwards of a
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year, and during that period every town, village and hamlet was systematically purged
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of that excess of the lower orders which had been brought about by the neglect
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to pay the tribute of criminals to the schools and university, and by the
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violation of other natural laws of the Constitution of Flatland. Thus the balance of
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classes was again restored. Needless to say that henceforth the use of colour was
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abolished and its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting color except
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by the circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty
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only at our university, in some of the very highest and most esoteric classes,
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which I myself have never been privileged to attend. It is understood that
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the sparing use of color is still sanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of
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the deeper problems of mathematics. But of this I can only speak from hearsay.
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Elsewhere in Flatland colour is now non existent. The art of making it
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is known to only one living d person, the Chief Circle, for the
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time being, and by him it is handed down on his death bed to
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none but his successor. One manufactory alone produces it, and lest the secret
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should be betrayed, the workmen are annually consumed and fresh ones introduced. So
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great is the terror with which even now our aristocracy looks back to the far
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distant days of the agitation for the Universal Color Bill. End of Section ten.