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Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions - Edwin Abbott Abbott · Classic Comedy Library

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  Speaker 1: Part one. Sections one to three flat Land are Romance
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  Speaker 1: of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot. Abbot to the inhabitants
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  Speaker 1: of space in general and hc. In particular. This work
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  Speaker 1: is dedicated by a humble native of Flatland, in the
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  Speaker 1: hope that, even as he was initiated into the mysteries
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  Speaker 1: of three dimensions, having been previously conversant with only two,
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  Speaker 1: so the citizens of that celestial region may aspire yet
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  Speaker 1: higher and higher to the secrets of four, five, or
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  Speaker 1: even six dimensions, thereby contributing to the enlargement of the
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  Speaker 1: imagination and the possible development of that most rare and
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  Speaker 1: excellent gift of modesty among the superior races of solid humanity.
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  Speaker 1: Part one. This world, be patient, for the world is
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  Speaker 1: broad and wide. Section one of the nature of Flatland.
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  Speaker 1: I call our world flatland, not because we call it so,
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  Speaker 1: but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers,
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  Speaker 1: who are privileged to live in space. Imagine a vast
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  Speaker 1: sheet of paper on which straight lines, triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons,
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  Speaker 1: and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places,
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  Speaker 1: move freely about on or in the surface, but without
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  Speaker 1: the power of rising above or sinking below it, very
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  Speaker 1: much like shadows, only hard and with luminous edges. And
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  Speaker 1: you will then have a pretty correct notion of my
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  Speaker 1: country and countrymen, alas a few years ago I should
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  Speaker 1: have said my universe. But now my mind has been
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  Speaker 1: opened to higher views of things. In such a country,
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  Speaker 1: you will perceive at once that it is impossible that
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  Speaker 1: there should be anything of what you call a solid kind.
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  Speaker 1: But I dare say you will suppose that we could
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  Speaker 1: at least distinguish by sight the triangles, squares, and other
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  Speaker 1: figures moving about as I have described them. On the contrary,
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  Speaker 1: we could see nothing of the kind, not at least
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  Speaker 1: so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible,
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  Speaker 1: nor could be visible to us, except straight lines. And
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  Speaker 1: the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate. Place a
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  Speaker 1: penny on the middle of one of your tables in space,
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  Speaker 1: and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will
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  Speaker 1: appear a circle. But now drawing back to the edge
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  Speaker 1: of the table, gradually lower your eye, thus bringing yourself
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  Speaker 1: more and more into the condition of the inhabitance of
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  Speaker 1: flat land, and you will find the penny becoming more
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  Speaker 1: and more oval to your view. And at last, when
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  Speaker 1: you have placed your eye exactly on the edge of
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  Speaker 1: the table, so that you are, as it were, actually
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  Speaker 1: a flatland citizen. The penny will then have ceased to
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  Speaker 1: appear oval at all, and will have become so far
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  Speaker 1: as you can see, a straight line. The same thing
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  Speaker 1: would happen if you were to treat in the same
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  Speaker 1: way a triangle or square, or any other figure cut
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  Speaker 1: out of pasteboard. As soon as you look at it
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  Speaker 1: with your eye on the edge of the table, you
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  Speaker 1: will find that it ceases to appear to you a figure,
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  Speaker 1: and that it becomes in appearance a straight line. Take,
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  Speaker 1: for example, an equilateral triangle who represents with us a
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  Speaker 1: tradesman of the respectable class. Figure one represents the tradesman
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  Speaker 1: as you would see him while you were bending over
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  Speaker 1: him from above. Reader's note. Figure one is a downward
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  Speaker 1: pointing triangle with all sides equal. End of reader's note.
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  Speaker 1: Figures two and three represent the tradesman as you would
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  Speaker 1: see him if your eye were close to the level
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  Speaker 1: or all but on the level of the table. Reader's note. Fig.
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  Speaker 1: Two shares a much flatter downward pointing triangle, with the
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  Speaker 1: top edge much longer than the other two sides which
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  Speaker 1: are of equal length.
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  Speaker 2: Fig.
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  Speaker 1: Three is flatter, still barely identifiable as a triangle at
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  Speaker 1: all end of reader's note. And if your eye were
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  Speaker 1: quite on the level of the table, and that is
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  Speaker 1: how we see him in flat land, you would see
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  Speaker 1: nothing but a straight line. When I was in Spaceland,
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  Speaker 1: I heard that your sailors have very similar experiences while
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  Speaker 1: they traverse your seas and discerned some distant island or
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  Speaker 1: coast lying on the horizon. The far off land may
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  Speaker 1: have bays, fallands, angles in and out to any number
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  Speaker 1: and extent. Yet at a distance you see none of these,
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  Speaker 1: unless indeed your sun shines bright upon them, revealing the
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  Speaker 1: projections and retirements. By means of light and shade. Nothing
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  Speaker 1: but a gray, unbroken line upon the water. Well, that
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  Speaker 1: is just what we see when one of our triangular
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  Speaker 1: or other acquaintances comes towards us in flatland. As there
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  Speaker 1: is neither sun with us, nor any light of such
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  Speaker 1: a kind as to make shadows, we have none of
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  Speaker 1: the helps to the sight that you have in Spaceland.
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  Speaker 1: If our friend comes close to us, we see his
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  Speaker 1: line becomes larger. If he leaves us it becomes smaller,
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  Speaker 1: But still he looks like a straight line. Be he
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  Speaker 1: a triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, circle? What you will a
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  Speaker 1: straight line he looks, and nothing else. You may perhaps ask, how,
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  Speaker 1: under these disadvantageous circumstances we are able to distinguish our
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  Speaker 1: friends from one another. But the answer to this very
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  Speaker 1: natural question will be more fitly and easily given when
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  Speaker 1: I come to describe the inhabitants of flatland. For the present,
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  Speaker 1: let me defer this subject and say a word or
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  Speaker 1: two about the climate and houses in our country. Section
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  Speaker 1: two of the Climate and houses in Flatland. As with you,
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  Speaker 1: so also with us. There are four points of the
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  Speaker 1: compass north, south, east, and west. There being no sun
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  Speaker 1: nor other heavenly bodies, it is impossible for us to
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  Speaker 1: determine the north in the usual way, but we have
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  Speaker 1: a method of our own, by a law of nature.
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  Speaker 1: With us there is a constant attraction to the south,
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  Speaker 1: and although in temperate climates, this is very slight, so
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  Speaker 1: that even a woman in reasonable health can journey several
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  Speaker 1: furlongs northward without much difficulty. Yet the hampering effect of
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  Speaker 1: the southward attraction is quite sufficient to serve as a
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  Speaker 1: compass in most parts of our earth. Moreover, the rain
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  Speaker 1: which falls at stated intervals, coming always from the north,
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  Speaker 1: is an additional assistance. And in the towns we have
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  Speaker 1: the guidance of the houses, which of course have their
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  Speaker 1: side walls running for the most part north and south,
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  Speaker 1: so that the roofs may keep off the rain from
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  Speaker 1: the north. In the country where there are no houses,
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  Speaker 1: the trunks of the trees serve as some sort of guide. Altogether,
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  Speaker 1: we have not so much difficulty as might be expected
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  Speaker 1: in determining our bearings in our more temperate regions, in
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  Speaker 1: which the southward attraction is hardly felt. Walking sometimes in
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  Speaker 1: a perfectly desolate plain, where there have been no houses
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  Speaker 1: nor trees to guide me, I have been occasionally compelled
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  Speaker 1: to remain stationary for hours together, waiting till the rain came,
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  Speaker 1: before continuing my journey. On the week and aged, and
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  Speaker 1: especially on delicate females, the force of attraction tells much
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  Speaker 1: more heavily than on the robust of the male sex,
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  Speaker 1: so that it is a point of breeding. If you
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  Speaker 1: meet a lady in the street, always to give her
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  Speaker 1: the north side of the way, by no means an
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  Speaker 1: easy thing to do, always at short notice, when you
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  Speaker 1: are in rude health, and in a climate where it
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  Speaker 1: is difficult to tell your north from your south windows,
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  Speaker 1: there are none in our houses. For the light comes
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  Speaker 1: to us alike, in our homes and out of them,
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  Speaker 1: by day and by night, equally at all times and
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  Speaker 1: in all places. Whence we know not. It was in
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  Speaker 1: old days with our learned men, an interesting and oft
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  Speaker 1: investigated question, what is the origin of light? And the
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  Speaker 1: solution of it? Has been repeatedly attempted, with no other
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  Speaker 1: result than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would
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  Speaker 1: be solvers. Hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations
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  Speaker 1: indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the
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  Speaker 1: legislature in comparatively recent times absolutely prohibited them. I alas
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  Speaker 1: I alone in flatland, know now only too well the
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  Speaker 1: true solution of this mysterious problem. But my knowledge cannot
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  Speaker 1: be made intelligible to a single one of my countrymen.
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  Speaker 1: And I am mocked at I the sole possessor of
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  Speaker 1: the truths of space and of the theory of the
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  Speaker 1: introduction of light from the world of three dimensions, as
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  Speaker 1: if I were the maddest of the mad. But a
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  Speaker 1: truce to these painful digressions. Let me return to our houses.
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  Speaker 1: The most common form for the construction of a house
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  Speaker 1: is five sided or pentagonal, as in the next figure.
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  Speaker 1: Reader's note. The figure shows a pentagon slightly skewed to
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  Speaker 1: the right, with two sides marked RO and O F,
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  Speaker 1: forming a point marked O to the north. The left
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  Speaker 1: or western side, which has a large opening marked men's door,
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  Speaker 1: is marked a R. The right or eastern side, which
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  Speaker 1: has a small opening marked women's door, is marked b F.
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  Speaker 1: The base, or southern side is marked a b end
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  Speaker 1: of Reader's note. The two northern sides R O F
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  Speaker 1: constitute the roof and for the most part have no doors.
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  Speaker 1: On the east is a small door for the women,
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  Speaker 1: on the west a much larger one for the men.
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  Speaker 1: The south side or floor is usually dawless. Square and
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  Speaker 1: triangular houses are not allowed, and for this reason, the
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  Speaker 1: angles of a square, and still more those of an
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  Speaker 1: equilateral triangle, being much more pointed than those of a pentagon,
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  Speaker 1: and the lines of inanimate objects such as houses being
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  Speaker 1: dimmer than the lines of men and women. It follows
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  Speaker 1: that there is no little danger lest the points of
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  Speaker 1: a square or triangular house residents might do serious injury
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  Speaker 1: to an inconsiderate or perhaps absent minded traveler suddenly running
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  Speaker 1: against them. And therefore, as early as the eleventh century
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  Speaker 1: of our era, triangular houses were universally forbidden by law,
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  Speaker 1: the only exceptions being fortifications, powder magazines, barracks, and other
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  Speaker 1: state buildings which it is is not desirable that the
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  Speaker 1: general public should approach without circumspection. At this period, square
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  Speaker 1: houses were still everywhere permitted, though discouraged by a special tax.
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  Speaker 1: But about three centuries afterwards, the law decided that in
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  Speaker 1: all towns containing a population above ten thousand, the angle
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  Speaker 1: of a pentagon was the smallest house angle that could
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  Speaker 1: be allowed consistently with the public safety. The good sense
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  Speaker 1: of the community has seconded the efforts of the legislature,
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  Speaker 1: and now even in the country the pentagonal construction has
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  Speaker 1: superseded every other. It is only now and then, in
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  Speaker 1: some very remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian
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  Speaker 1: may still discover a square house. Section three. Concerning the
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  Speaker 1: inhabitants of flatland. The greatest length or breadth of a
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  Speaker 1: full grown inhabitant of flat land may be estimated at
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  Speaker 1: about eleven of your inches. Twelve inches may be regarded
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  Speaker 1: as a maximum. Our women are straight lines. Our soldiers
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  Speaker 1: and lowest classes of workmen are triangles, with two equal sides,
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  Speaker 1: each about eleven inches long, and a base or third
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  Speaker 1: side so short, often not exceeding half an inch, that
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  Speaker 1: they form at their vertices a very sharp and formidable angle. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: when their bases are of the most degraded type, not
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  Speaker 1: more than the eighth part of an inch in size,
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  Speaker 1: they can hardly be distinguished from straight lines or women,
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  Speaker 1: so extremely pointed are their vertices. With us, as with you,
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  Speaker 1: these triangles are distinguished from others by being called isosceles,
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  Speaker 1: and by this name I shall refer to them in
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  Speaker 1: the following pages. Our middle class consists of equilateral or
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  Speaker 1: equal sided triangles. Our professional men and gentlemen are squares,
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  Speaker 1: to which class I myself belong, and five sided figures
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  Speaker 1: or pentagons. Next above these come the nobility, of whom
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  Speaker 1: there are several degrees, beginning at six sided figures or hexagons,
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  Speaker 1: and from thence rising in the number of their sides,
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  Speaker 1: till they receive the honorable title of polygonal or many sided. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: when the number of the sides becomes so numerous and
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  Speaker 1: the sides themselves so small that the figure cannot be
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  Speaker 1: distinguished from a circle. He is included in the circular
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  Speaker 1: or priestly order, and this is the highest class of all.
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  Speaker 1: It is a law of nature with us that a
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  Speaker 1: male child shall have one more side than his father,
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  Speaker 1: that each generation shall rise, as a rule, one step
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  Speaker 1: in the scale of development and nobility. Thus, the son
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  Speaker 1: of a square is a pentagon, the son of a
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  Speaker 1: pentagon a hexagon, and so on. But this rule applies
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  Speaker 1: not always to the tradesmen, and still less often to
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  Speaker 1: the soldiers and to the workmen, who indeed can hardly
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  Speaker 1: be said to deserve the name of human figures, since
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  Speaker 1: they have not all their sides equal with them. Therefore
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  Speaker 1: the law of nature does not hold, and the son
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  Speaker 1: of an Isosceles i e. A triangle with two sides equal,
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  Speaker 1: remains Isosceles. Still, nevertheless, all hope is not shut out,
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  Speaker 1: even from the Isosceles, that his posterity may ultimately rise
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  Speaker 1: above his degraded condition. For after a long series of
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  Speaker 1: military successes or diligent and skillful laby, it is generally
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  Speaker 1: found that the more intelligent among the artisan and soldier
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  Speaker 1: classes manifest the slight increase of their third side or base,
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  Speaker 1: and a shrinkage of the two other sides. Intermarriages arranged
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  Speaker 1: by the priests between the sons and daughters of these
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  Speaker 1: more intellectual members of the lower classes generally result in
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  Speaker 1: an offspring approximating still more to the type of the
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  Speaker 1: equal sided triangle, rarely in proportion to the vast number
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  Speaker 1: of Isosceles births. Is a genuine and certifiable equal sided
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  Speaker 1: triangle produced from Isosceles parents. Footnote what need of a certificate,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a spaceland critic may ask, is not the procreation of
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  Speaker 1: a square son a certificate from nature herself proving the
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  Speaker 1: equal sidedness of the father? I reply that no lady
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  Speaker 1: of any position will marry an other certified triangle. Square
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  Speaker 1: offspring has sometimes resulted from a slightly irregular triangle, but
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  Speaker 1: in almost every such case, the irregularity of the first
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  Speaker 1: generation is visited on the third, which either fails to
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  Speaker 1: attain the pentagonal rank or relapses to the triangular end
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  Speaker 1: of footnote. Such a birth requires, as its antecedents not
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: only a series of carefully arranged into marriages, but also
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: a long continued exercise of frugality and self control on
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  Speaker 1: the part of the would be ancestors of the coming equilateral,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and a patient, systematic and continuous development of the Isosceles
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  Speaker 1: intellect through many generations. The birth of a true equilateral
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  Speaker 1: triangle from Isosceles parents is the subject of rejoicing in
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  Speaker 1: our country for many furlongs round. After a strict examination
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board, the infant, if
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: certified as regular, is, with solemn ceremonial admitted into the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: class of equilaterals. He is then immediately taken from his
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some childless equilateral
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  Speaker 1: who is bound by oaths never to permit the child
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  Speaker 1: henceforth to enter his former home, or so much as
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  Speaker 1: to look upon his relations again, for fear lest the
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  Speaker 1: freshly developed organism may, by force of unconscious imitation, fall
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  Speaker 1: back again into his hereditary level. The occasional emergence of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: an Isosceles from the ranks of his serf born ancestors
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: is welcomed not only by the poor serfs themselves as
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous
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  Speaker 1: squalor of their existence, but also by the aristocracy at large.
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  Speaker 1: For all the higher classes are well aware that these
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  Speaker 1: rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize
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  Speaker 1: their own privileges, serve as a most useful barrier against
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: revolution from below. Had the acute angled rabble been all
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they
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  Speaker 1: might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks,
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  Speaker 1: so able as to render their superior numbers and strength
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: too much even for the wisdom of the circles. But
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: a wise ordinance of nature has decreed that in proportion
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: as the working classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue,
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  Speaker 1: in that same proportion, their acute angle, which makes them
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: physically terrible, shall increase also, and approximate to the harmless
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: angle of the equilateral triangle. Thus, in the most brutal
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: and formidable of the soldier class creatures almost on a
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: level with women in their lack of intelligence. It is
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  Speaker 1: found that as they wax in the mental ability necessary
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: they wane in the power of penetration itself. How admirable
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: is this law of compensation and how perfect a proof
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: of the natural fitness, and I may almost say the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the states in flatland.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: By a judicious use of this law of nature, the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: polygons and circles are almost always able to stifle sedition
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the aid of law and order. It is generally found possible,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: by a life artificial compression or expansion on the part
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  Speaker 1: of the state physicians to make some of the more
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly irregular, and to admit
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: them at once into the privileged classes. A much larger number,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the state hospitals,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: where they are kept in honorable confinement for life. One
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: irregular are led to execution. Then the wretched rabble of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the Isosceles, planless and leaderless are either transfixed without resistance
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: by the small body of their brethren, whom the chief
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: circle keeps in pay for emergencies of this kind, or
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: else more often by means of jealousies and suspicions skillfully
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: fermented among them by the circular party. They are stirred
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  Speaker 1: to mutual warfare and perish by one another's angles. No
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: our annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: thirty five, and they have all ended thus end of
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Part one, Section three, Part one, Section four Concerning the women.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: If our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: our women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: woman is a needle, being, so to speak, all point
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: at least at the two extremities. Add to this the
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: will perceive that a female in flatland is a creature
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: by no means to be trifled with. But here perhaps
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: some of my younger readers may ask how a woman
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: in flatland can make herself invisible? This ought, I think
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: to be apparent without any explanation. However, a few words
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: will make it clear to the most unreflecting. Place a
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: needle on a table, Then, with your eye on the
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: level of the table, look at it sideways, and you
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: see the whole length of it. But look at it endways,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and you see nothing but a point. It has become
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: practically invisible. Just so is it with one of our women.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: When her side is turned towards us, we see her
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: as a straight line. When the end containing her eye
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: or mouth, For with us these two organs are identical.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Is the part that meets our eye, then we see
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: nothing but a highly lustrous pa. But when the back
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: is presented to our view, then, being only sublustrous, and
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: indeed almost as dim as an inanimate object, her hinder
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: extremity serves her as a kind of invisible cap. The
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: dangers to which we are exposed from our women must
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: now be manifest to the meanest capacity in spaceland. If
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: even the angle of a respectable triangle in the middle
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: class is not without its dangers. If to run against
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: a working man involves a gash, if collision with an
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: officer of the military class necessitates a serious wound, if
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: a mere touch from the vertex of a private soldier
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: brings with it danger of death. What can it be
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: to run against a woman except absolute and immediate destruction?
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And when a woman is invisible or visible only as
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: a dim, sublustrous point, how difficult must it be, even
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: for the most cautious always to avoid collision. Many are
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the enactments made at different times in the different states
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: of flatland in order to minimize this peril. And in
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: the southern and less temperate climates, where the force of
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: gravitation is greater and human beings more liable to casual
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and involuntary motions, the laws concerning women are naturally much
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: more stringent, but a general view of the code may
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: be obtained from the following summary. One every house shall
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: have one entrance in the eastern side for the use
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of females only, by which all females shall enter in
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: a becoming and respectful manner, and not by the mends
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: or western door footnote. When I was in Spaceland, I
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: understood that some of your priestly circles have in the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: same way a separate entrance for villagers, farmers and teachers
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of board schools Spectator, September eighteen eighty four, Page one,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: two five five, that they may approach in a becoming
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and respectful manner. End of Footnote two. No female shall
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: walk in any public place without continually keeping up her
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: peace cry. Under penalty of death. Three, any female duly
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: certified to be suffering from Saint Vitus's dance fits, chronic
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: cold accompanied by violence, sneezing, or any disease necessitating involuntary motions,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: shall be instantly destroyed. In some of the states, there
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: is an additional law forbidding females under penalty of death
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: from walking or standing in any public place without moving
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: their backs constant from right to left, so as to
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: indicate their presence to those behind them. Others obliged to woman,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: when traveling, to be followed by one of her sons
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: or servants, or by her husband. Others confine women altogether
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: to their houses, except during the religious festivals. But it
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: has been found by the wisest of our circles or statesmen,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that the multiplication of restrictions on females tends not only
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: to the debilitation and diminution of the race, but also
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to the increase of domestic murders, to such an extent
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: that a state loses more than it gains by a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: too prohibitive code. For whenever the temper of the women
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: is thus exasperated by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: and children. And in the less temperate climates, the whole
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: male population of her village has been sometimes to dis
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: destroyed in one or two hours of simultaneous female outbreak. Hence,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: the three laws mentioned above suffice for the better regulated states,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and may be accepted as a rough exemplification of our
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: female code. After all, our principal safeguard is found not
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: in legislature but in the interests of the women themselves.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: For although they can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: yet unless they can at once disengage their stinging extremity
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: from the struggling body of their victim, their own frail
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: bodies are liable to be shattered. The power of fashion
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: is also on our side. I pointed out that in
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: some less civilized states, no female is suffered to stand
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: in any public place without swaying her back from right
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: to left. This practice has been universal among ladies of
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: any pretensions to breeding in all well governed states as
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: far back as the memory of figures can reach. It
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: is considered a disgrace to any state that legislation should
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: have to enforce what ought to be, and is in
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: every respectable female a natural instinct. The rhythmical and, if
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I may say so, well, modulated undulation of the back
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: in our ladies of circular rank is envied and imitated
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: by the wife of a common equilateral, who can achieve
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: nothing beyond a mere monotonous swing like the ticking of
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: a pendulum. And the regular tick of the equilateral is
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: no less admired and copied by the wife of the
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: progressive and aspiring Isosceles, in the females of whose family
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: no back motion of any kind has become as yet
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a necessity of life. Hence, in every family of position
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and consideration, back motion is as prevalent as time itself,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and the husbands and sons in these households enjoy immunity,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: at least from invisible attacks. Not that it must be
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: for a moment supposed that our women are destitute of affection,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: but unfortunately the passion of the moment predominates in the
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: frail sex over every other consideration. This is of course
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. For as they
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: respect to the very lowest of the isosceles, they are
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: consequently wholly devoid of brain power, and have neither reflection, judgment,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: nor forethought, and hardly any memory. Hence, in their fits
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: of fury, they remember no claims and recognize no distinctions.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I have actually known a case where a woman has
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: asked what has become of her husband and her children. Obviously,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: then a woman is not to be irritated as long
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: as she is in a position where she can turn round.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: When you have them in their apartments, which are constructed
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: with a view to denying them that power, you can
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: say and do what you like, for they are then
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: wholly impotent for mischief, and will not remember a few minutes.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Hence the incident for which they may be at this
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: moment threatening you with death, nor the promises which you
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: may have found it necessary to make in order to
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: pacify their fury. On the whole we get on pretty
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: smoothly in our domestic relations, except in the lower strata
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: of the military classes. There the want of tact and
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: discretion on the part of the husbands produces at times
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: indescribable disasters. Relying too much on the offensive weapons of
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: their acute angles instead of the defensive organs of good
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: sense and seasonable simulations, these reckless creatures too often neglect
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: the prescribed construction of the women's apartments, or irritate their
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: wives by ill advised expressions out of doors, which they
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: refuse immediately to retract. Moreover, a blunt and stolid regard
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: for literal truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: by which the more judicious circle can in a moment
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: pacify his consort. The result is massacre, not, however, without
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: its advantages, as it eliminates the more brutal and troublesome
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: of the isosceles, and by many of our circles, the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: destructiveness of the thinner sex is regarded as one among
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: many providential arrangements for suppressing redundant population and nipping revolution
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: in the bud. Yet, even in our best regulated and
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: most approximately circular families, I cannot say that the ideal
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: of family life is so high as with you in spaceland.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: There is peace in so far as the absence of
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: slaughter may be called by that name. But there is
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: necessarily little harmony of tastes or pursuits. And the cautious
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: wisdom of the circles has ensured safety at the cost
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: of domestic comfort in every circular or polygonal household. It
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: has been a habit for time immemorial, and has now
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: become a kind of instinct among the women of our
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: higher classes, that the mothers and daughters should constantly keep
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: their eyes and mouths towards their husband and his male friends.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: And for a lady in a family of distinction to
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: turn her back upon her husband would be regarded as
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: a kind of portent involving loss of status. But as
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I shall soon show, this custom, though it has the
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: advantage of safety, is not without its disadvantages. In the
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: house of the working man or respectable tradesmen, where the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: wife is allowed to turn her back upon her husband
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: while pursuing her household avocations, there are at least intervals
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: of quiet when the wife is neither seen nor heard
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: except for the humming sound of the continuous peace cry,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: But in the homes of the upper classes there is
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: two often no peace.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: There.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: The voluble mouth and bright penetrating eye are ever directed
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: towards the master of the household, and light itself is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: not more persistent than the stream of feminine discourse. The
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: tact and skill which suffice to avert a woman's sting
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: are unequal to the task of stopping a woman's mouth,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: And as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: absolutely no constraint of wit, sense or conscience to prevent
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: her from saying it, not a few cynics have been
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: found to avert that they prefer the danger of the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: death dealing but inaudible sting to the safe, sonorousness of
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: a woman's other end to my readers in Spaceland, the
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: condition of our women may seem truly deplorable, and so
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: indeed it is of the lowest type of the Isosceles
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: may look forward to some improvement of his angle and
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: to the ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: But no woman can entertain such hopes for her sex.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Once a woman, always a woman. Is a decree of nature,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: and the very laws of evolution seem suspended in her disfavor.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Yet at least we can admire the wise pre arrangement
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: which has ordained that as they have no hopes, so
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: to anticipate the miseries and humiliations which are at once
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: a necessity of their existence and the basis of the
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: constitution of Flatland. Section five of our methods of recognizing
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: one another, You who are blessed with shade as well
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: as light, You who are gifted with two eyes, endowed
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: with a knowledge of perspective, and charmed with the enjoyment
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: of various colors, You who can actually see an angle
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and contemplate the complete circumference of a circle in the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: happy region of the three dimensions, How shall I make
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: experience in recognizing one another's configurations. Recall what I told
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you above. All beings in Flatland, animate or inanimate, no
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: matter what their form, present to our view the same
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: or nearly the same appearance viz. That of a straight line.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: How then, can one be distinguished from another where all
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: appear the same? The answer is threefold. The the first
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: means of recognition is the sense of hearing, which with
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: us is far more highly developed than with you, and
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: which enables us not only to distinguish by the voice
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: our personal friends, but even to discriminate between different classes,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: at least so far as concerns the three lowest orders,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the equilateral, the square, and the pentagon. For of the Isosceles,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: i'd take no account. But as we ascend in the
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: social scale, the process of discriminating and being discriminated by
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: hearing increases in difficulty, partly because voices are assimilated, partly
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: because the faculty of voice discrimination is a plebeian virtue,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: not much developed among the aristocracy, and wherever there is
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: any danger of imposture, we cannot trust to this method.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Amongst our lowest orders, the vocal organs are developed to
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: a degree more than correspondent with those of hearing, so
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: that an Isosceles can easily feign the voice of a polygon,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and with some training, that of a circle himself. A
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: second method is therefore more commonly resorted to feeling is
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: among our women and lower classes about our upper classes.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: I shall speak presently. The principal test of recognition at
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: all events between strangers, and when the question is not
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: as to the individual but as to the class. What
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: therefore introduction is among the higher classes in spaceland that
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the process of feeling is with us. Permit me to
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: ask you to feel and be felt by, my friend,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: mister so and so. Is still among the more old
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: fashioned of our country gentlemen in districts remote from towns
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: the customary formula for a flatland introduction, But in the
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: town and among men of business, the words be felt
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: by are omitted, and the sentence is abbreviated to let
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: me ask you to feel, mister so and so. Although
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: it is assumed, of course, that the feeling is to
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: be reciprocal. Among our still more modern and dashing young gentlemen,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: who are extremely averse to superfluous effort and supremely indifferent
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: to the purity of their native language, the formula is
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: still further curtailed by the use of to feel in
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a technical sense, meaning to recommend for the purposes of
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: feeling at being felt. And at this moment the slang
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of polite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: such a barbarism as mister Smith, permit me to feel you,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: mister Jones. Let not, my reader, however, suppose that feeling
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: is with us the tedious process that it would be
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: with you, or that we find it necessary to feel
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: right round all the sides of every individual before we
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: determine the class to which he belongs. Long practice and training,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: begun in the schools and continued in the experience of
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: daily life, enable us to discriminate at once by the
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: sense of touch between the angles of an equal sided triangle,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: square and pentagon. And I need not say that the
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: brainless vertex of an acute angled isoceles is obvious to
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: the dullest touch. It is therefore not necessary, as a rule,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: to do more than feel a single angle of any individual.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: And this, once ascertained, tells us the class of the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: person whom we are addressing, unless indeed he belongs to
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: the higher sections of the nobility. There the difficulty is
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: much greater. Even a master of Arts in our University
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: of Wentbridge has been known to confuse a ten sided
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: with a twelve sided polygon. And there is hardly a
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: doctor of science in or out of that famous university
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: who could pretend to decide promptly and unhesitatingly between a
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: twenty sided and a twenty four sided member of the aristocracy.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Those of my readers who recall the extracts I gave
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: above from the Legislative Code concerning women will readily perceive
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: that the process of introduction by contact requires some care
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: and discretion. Otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: feeler irreparable injury. It is essential for the safety of
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the feeler that the felt should stand perfectly still. A start,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a fidgety shifting of the position, Yes, even a violent
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: sneeze has been known before now to prove fatal to
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: the incautious, and to nip in the bud many a
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: promising friendship. Especially, is this true among the lower classes
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: of the triangles. With them the eye is situated so
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: far from them in their vertex that they can scarcely
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: take cognizance of what goes on at that extremity of
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: their frame. They are moreover, of a rough, coarse nature,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: not sensitive to the delicate touch of the highly organized polygon.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: What wonder, then, if an involuntary toss of the head
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: has e'er now deprived the state of a valuable life.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I have heard that my excellent grandfather, one of the
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: least irregular of his unhappy Isosceles class, who indeed obtained
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: shortly before his decease four out of seven votes from
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the Sanitary and Social Board for passing him into the
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: class of the equal sided, often deplored with a tear
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: in his venerable eye, a miscarriage of this kind which
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: had occurred to his great great great grandfather, a respectable
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: working man with an angle or brain of fifty nine
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: degrees thirty minutes. According to his account, my unfortunate ancestor,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: being afflicted with rheumatism, and in the act of being
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: felt by a polygon, by one sudden start, accidentally transfixed
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: the great man through the diagonal, and thereby, partly in
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: consequence of his long imprisonment and degradation, and partly because
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: of the moral shock which pervaded the whole of my
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: ancestors relations, threw back our family a degree and a
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: half in their assent towards better things. The result was
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: that in the next generation the family brain was registered
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: at only fifty eight degrees, and not till the lapse
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: of five generations was the lost ground recovered. The full
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: sixty degrees attained, and the ascent from the Isosceles finally achieved,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and all this series of calamities from one little accident
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: in the process of feeling. At this point, I think
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I hear some of my better educated readers exclaim, how
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: could you in flatland know anything about angles and degrees
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: or minutes. We can see an angle, because we, in
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: the region of space can see two straight lines inclined
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: to one another. But you, who can see nothing but
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: one straight line at a time, or at all events,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: only a number of bits of straight lines, all in
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: one straight line, how can you ever discern any angle,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: and much less register angles of different sizes. I answer
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: that though we cannot see angles, we can infer them,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: and this with great precision. Our sense of touch, stimulated
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: by necessity and developed by long training, enables us to
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: distinguish angles far more accurately than your sense of sight
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: when unaided by a rule or measure of angles. Nor
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: must I omit to explained that we have great natural helps.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It is with us a law of nature that the
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: brain of the Isosceles class shall begin at half a
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: degree or thirty minutes, and shall increase if it increases
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: at all by half a degree in every generation, until
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the goal of sixty degrees is reached, when the condition
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of serfdom is quitted and the freeman enters the class
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: of regulars. Consequently, Nature herself supplies us with an ascending
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: scale or alphabet of angles for half a degree up
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to sixty degrees, specimens of which are placed in every
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: elementary school throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: extraordinary fecundity of the criminal and vagabond classes, there is
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: and single degree class, and a fair abundance of space
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: secimens up to ten degrees. These are absolutely destitute of
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: civic rights, and a great number of them, not having
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: even intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: by the state to the service of education, fettered immovably
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: so as to remove all possibility of danger. They are
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: placed in the classrooms of our infant schools, and there
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: they are utilized by the Board of Education for the
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: purpose of imparting to the offspring of the middle classes
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: that tact and intelligence of which these wretched creatures themselves
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: are utterly devoid. In some states the specimens are occasionally
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: fed and suffered to exist for several years. But in
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the more temperate and better regulated regions, it is found,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: in the long run more advantageous for the educational interests
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of the young to dispense with food and to renew
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: the specimens every month, which is about the average duration
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of the foodless existence of the criminal class in the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: cheaper schools. What is gained by the longer existence of
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the specimens is lost, partly in the expenditure for food,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: and partly in the diminished accuracy of the angles, which
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: are impaired after a few weeks of constant feeling. Nor
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: must we forget to add, in enumerting the advantages of
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the more expensive system, that it tends, though slightly yet perceptibly,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: to the diminution of the redundant isosceles population, an object
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: which every statesman in Flatland constantly keeps in view on
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the whole. Therefore, although I am not ignorant that in
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: many popularly elected school boards there is a reaction in
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: favor of the cheap system, as it is called, I
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: am myself disposed to think that this is one of
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the many cases in which expense is the truest economy.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: But I must not allow questions of school board politics
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: to divert me from my subject. Enough has been said,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: I trust to show that recognition by feeling is not
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: so tedious or indecisive a process as might have been supposed,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: and it is obviously more trustworthy than recognition by hearing.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Still there remain, as has been pointed out above, the
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: objection that this method is not without danger. For this reason,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: many in the middle and lower classes, and all without
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: exception in the polygonal and circular orders, prefer a third method,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the description of which shall be reserved for the next section.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: End of Part one, Section five, Part one, Section six
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: of recognition by sight. I am about to appear very
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: inconsistent in previous sections. I have said that all figures
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: in flatland present the appearance of a straight line, and
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: it was added or implied that it is consequently impossible
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: to distinguish by the visual organ between individuals of different classes.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Yet now I am about to explain to my spaceland
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: critics how we are able to recognize one another by
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: the sense of sight. If, however, the reader will take
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the trouble to refer to the passage in which recognition
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: by feeling is stated to be universal. He will find
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: this qualification among the lower classes. It is only among
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: the higher classes and in our more temperate climates, that
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: site recognition is practiced. That this power exists in any
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: regions and for any classes, is the result of fog,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: which prevails during the greater part of the year in
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: all parts save the torrid zones. That which is with
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: you in spaceland and unmixed evil, blotting out the landscape,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: depressing the spirits and enfeebling the health, is by us
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: recognized as a blessing scarcely inferior to air itself, and
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: as the nurse of arts and parent of sciences. But
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: let me explain my meaning without further eulogies on this
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: beneficent element. If fog were non existent, all lines would
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: appear equally and indistinguishably clear. And this is actually the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: case in those unhappy countries in which the atmosphere is
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: perfectly dry and transparent. But wherever there is a rich
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: supply of fog, objects that are at a distant, say
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: of three feet, are appreciably dimmer than those at a
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: distance of two feet eleven inches, And the result is that,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: by careful and constant experimental observation of comparative dimness and clearness,
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: we are enabled to infer with great exactness the configuration
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: of the object observed. An instance will do more than
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: a volume of generalities to make my meaning clear. Suppose
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I ce two individuals approaching whose rank I wish to
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: ascertain they are. We will suppose a merchant and a physician,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: or in other words, an equilateral triangle and a pentagon.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: How am I to distinguish them? Reader's note. The following
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: paragraph makes reference to an accompanying diagram. Diagram one is
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: a rightward pointing equilateral triangle, the vertical left hand side
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: of which is marked B C, the other two sides
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: being marked B A and C A. Dotted lines are
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: drawn from B and C to appoint further to the
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: right to form an Isosceles triangle. The far right hand
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: point of this triangle represents the eye of the observer,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: and a horizontal dotted arrow pointing left from it indicates
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: his eye glance. A broad vertical line DAE is drawn
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: to indicate what the observer sees dae is bright at
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the center and darkens sharply towards its ends. End of
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: Reader's note. It will be obvious to every child in
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Spaceland who has touched the threshold of geometrical studies, that
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: if I can bring my eye so that its glance
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: may bisect an angle A of the approaching stranger, my
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: view will lie, as it were, evenly between his two
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: sides that are next to me, viz. C A and
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: A B, so that I shall contemplate the two impartially,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: and both will appear of the same size. Now, in
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the case of one the merchant, what shall I see?
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: I shall see a straight line DAE, in which the
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: middle point A will be very bright because it is
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: nearest to me, But on either side the line will
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: shade away rapidly into dimness, because the sides AC and
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: A B recede rapidly into the fog, And what appear
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: to me as the merchant's extremities viz. D and E
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: will be very dim. Indeed, Reader's note, The following paragraph
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: makes reference to an accompanying diagram. Diagram two is a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: regular pentagon sitting on a horizontal base with C one
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: at the apex A one at middle right and B
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: one at lower right. Longer dotted lines are drawn out
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: towards the right, upwards from B one and downwards from
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: C one to form an irregular pentagon. Our right hand
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: point of the extended pentagon represents the eye of the observer,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and a dotted arrow pointing from it towards the center
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: of the lower left edge of the pentagon indicates his
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: eye glance. Again, a broad line D one A one
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: e one parallel to the lower left edge of the
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: pentagon is drawn to indicate what the observer sees. D
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: one A one e one is bright at the center
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: and darkens very gradually towards its ends. End of reader's note.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, in the case of two the physician,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: though I shall here also see a line D one
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: A one e one with a bright center A one.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Yet it will shade away less rapidly into dimness, because
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the sides A one, C one, A one, B one
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: recede less rapidly into the fog, And what appear to
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: me the physician's extremity viz. D one and E one
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: will be not so dim as the extremities of the merchant.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: The reader will probably understand from these two instances. How
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: after a very long training supplemented by constant experience, it
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: is possible for the well educated classes among us to
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: discriminate with fair accuracy between the middle and lowest orders
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: by the sense of sight. If my spaceland patrons have
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: grasped this general conception so far as to conceive the
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: possibility of it, and not to reject my account as
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: altogether incredible, I shall have attained all I can reasonably expect.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Were I to attempt further details, I should only perplex Yet,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: for the sake of the young and inexperienced, who may
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: perchance infer from the two simple instances I have given
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: above of the manner in which I should recognize my
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: father and my sons, that recognition by sight is an
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: easy affair. It may be needful to point out that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: in actual life most of the problems of sight recognition
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: are far more subtle and complex. If, for example, when
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: my father the triangle approaches me, he happens to present
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: his side to me instead of his angle, then until
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: I have asked him to rotate, or until I have
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: edged my eye round him, I am, for the moment
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: doubtful whether he may not be a straight line, or,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: in other words, a woman. Reader's note. The following paragraph
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: makes reference to an accompanying diagram. The diagram shows a
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: hexagon with points at top and bottom. The vertical right
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: hand side is marked AB. Dotted lines are drawn downward
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: from the topmost and upward from the bottommost points of
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: the hexagon, and extended to the right until they meet,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: forming an irregul Kuller pentagon. The far right hand point
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: of the pentagon represents the eye of the observer. The
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: line A B is extended to where it meets the
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: dotted lines to form a broad vertical line at C A,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: B D. The middle portion of this line A B
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: is bright, and the outer portions darken towards C and D.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: End of Reader's note. Again, when I'm in the company
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: of one of my two hexagonal grandsons, contemplating one of
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: his sides A B full front, it will be evident
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: from the accompanying diagram that I shall see one whole
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: line A B in comparative brightness, shading off hardly at
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: all at the ends, and two smaller lines C, A
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: and B D dim throughout and shading away into greater
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: dimness toward the extremities C and D. But I must
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: not give way to the temptation of enlarging on these topics.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: The meanest mathematician in Spaceland will readily believe me when
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: I assert that the problems of life which present themselves
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: to the well educated when they are themselves in motion, rotating,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: advancing or retreating, and at the same time attempting to
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: discriminate by the sense of sight between a number of
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: polygons of high rank moving in different directions, as for example,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: in a ballroom or conversazione, must be of a nature
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: to task the angularity of the most intellectual and amply
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: justify the rich endowments of the learned professors of geometry,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: both static and kinetic. In the illustrious University of Wentbridge,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: where the science and art of site recognition are regularly
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: taught to large classes of the elite of the States,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: it is only a few of the science of our
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: noblest and wealthiest houses who are able to give the
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: time and money necessary for the thorough prosecution of this
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: noble and valuable art. Even to me, a mathematician of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: no means standing, and the grandfather of two most hopeful
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: and perfectly regular hexagons. Defined myself in the midst of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: a crowd of rotating polygons of the higher classes is
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: occasionally very perplexing, and of course to a common tradesman
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: or surf such a site is almost as unintelligible as
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: it would be to you, my reader, were you suddenly
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: transported into our country, in such a crowd, you could
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: see on all sides of you nothing but a line,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: apparently straight, but of which the parts would vary irregularly
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: and perpetually in brightness or dimness. Even if you had
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: completed your third year in the pentagonal and hexagonal classes
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: in the university, and were perfect in the theory of
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: the subject, you would still find that there was need
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: of many years of experience before you could move in
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: a fashionable crowd without jobustling against your betters, whom it
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: is against etiquette to ask to feel, and who, by
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: their superior culture and breeding, know all about your movements,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: while you know very little or nothing about theirs. In
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: a word, to comport oneself with perfect propriety. In polygonal society,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: one ought to be a polygon one's self. Such at
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: least is the painful teaching of my experience. It is
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: astonishing how much the art, or I may almost call
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: it instinct of sight recognition is developed by the habitual
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: practice of it, and by the avoidance of the custom
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: of feeling. Just as with you, the deaf and dumb,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: if once allowed to gesticulate and to use the hand alphabet,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: will never acquire the more difficult but far more valuable
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: art of lip speech and lip reading. So it is
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: with us as regards seeing and feeling. None who in
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: early life resort to feeling will ever learn seeing in perfection.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: For this reason, among our higher classes, feeling is discouraged
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: or absolutely forbidden from the cradle. Their children, instead of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: going to the public elementary schools where the art of
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: feeling is taught, are sent to higher seminaries of an
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: exclusive character, and at our illustrious university. To feel is
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: regarded as a most serious fault, involving rustication for the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: first offense and expulsion for the second. But among the
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: lower classes, the art of sight recognition is regarded as
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: an unattainable luxury. A common tradesman cannot afford to let
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: his son spend a third of his life in abstract studies.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: The children of the poor are therefore allowed to feel
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: from their earliest lie years, and they gain thereby a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: precocity and an early vivacity, which contrast at first most
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: favorably with the inert, undeveloped, and listless behavior of the
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: half instructed youths of the polygonal class. But when the
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: latter have at last completed their university course and are
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: prepared to put their theory into practice, the change that
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: comes over them may almost be described as a new birth,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: and in every art, science, and social pursuit they rapidly
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: overtake and distance their triangular competitors. Only a few of
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the polygonal class fail to pass the final test or
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: leaving examination at the university. The condition of the unsuccessful
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: minority is truly pitiable. Rejected from the higher class, they
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: are also despised by the lower. They have neither of
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: them matured and systematically trained powers of the polygonal bachelors
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: and masters of arts, nor yet the native precocity and
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: mercurial versatility of the useful tradesmen. The professions the public
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: services are closed against them, and though in most states
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: they are not actually debarred from marriage, yet they have
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the greatest difficulty in forming suitable alliances, as experience shows
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: that the offspring of such unfortunate and ill endowed parents
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: is generally itself unfortunate, if not positively irregular. It is
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: from these specimens of the refuse of our nobility that
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: the great tumults and seditions of past ages have generally
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: derived their leaders. And so great is the mischief, thence
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: arising that an increasing minority of our more progressive statesmen
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: are of opinion that true mercy would dictate their entire
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: suppression by an actor that all who fail to pass
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: the final examination of the university should be either imprisoned
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: for life or extinguished by a painless death. But I
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: find myself digressing into the subject of irregularities, a matter
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: of such vital interest that it demands a separate section,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: Section seven of irregular figures. Throughout the previous pages, I
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: have been assuming what perhaps should have been laid down
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental proposition, that
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: every human being in flatland is a regular figure, that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: is to say, of regular construction. By this, I mean
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: that a woman must not only be a line, but
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: a straight line. That an artisan or soldier must have
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: two of his sides equal, that tradesmen must have three
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: sides equal, lawyers, of which class I am humble member,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: four sides equal, and generally that in every polygon all
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: the sides must be equal. The size of the sides would,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: of course depend upon the age of the individual. A
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: female at birth would be about an inch long, while
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: a tall adult woman might extend to a foot. As
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: to the males of every class, it may be roughly
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: said that the length of an adult sides, when added together,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: is three feet or a little more. But the size
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: of our sides is not under consideration. I am speaking
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: of the equality of sides, and it does not need
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: much reflection to see that the whole of the social
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: life in Flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that nature
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: wills all figures to have their sides equal. If our
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: sides were unequal, our angles would be unequal. Instead of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: its being sufficient to feel or estimate by sight a
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: single angle in order to determine the form of an individual,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: it would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: experiment of feeling. But life would be too short for
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: such a tedious groping. The whole science and art of
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: sight recognition would at once perish feeling so far as
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: it is an art, would not long survive. Intercourse would
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: become perilous or impossible. There would be an end to
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: all confidence, all forethought. No one would be safe in
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: making the most simple social arrangements. In a word, civilization
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: would relapse into barbarism. Am I going too fast to
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: carry my readers with me to these obvious conclusions? Surely
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: a moment's reflection and a single instance from common life
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: must convince everyone that our whole social system is based
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: upon regularity or equality of angles. You meet, for example,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: two or three tradesmen in the street, whom you recognize
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: at once to be tradesmen by a glance at their
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: step into your house to lunch. This you do at
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: present with perfect confidence, because everyone knows to an inch
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: or two the area occupied by an adult triangle. But
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: imagine that your tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: a parallelogram of twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal. What
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: are you to do with such a monster sticking fast
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: in your house door? But I am insulting the intelligence
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: of my readers by accumulating details which must be patent
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: to everyone who enjoys the advantages of a residence in spaceland. Obviously,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the measurements of a single angle would no longer be sufficient.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Under such portentous circumstances. One's whole life would be taken
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: up in feeling or surveying the perimeter of one's acquaintances. Already,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: enough to tax the sagacity of even a well educated square.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: But if no one could calculate the regularity of a
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: single figure in the company, all would be chaos and confusion,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: and the slightest panic would cause serious injuries, or, if
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: there happened to be any women or soldiers present, perhaps
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: considerable loss of life. Expediency therefore concurs with nature in
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: stamping the seal of its approval upon regularity of conformation.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: Nor has the law been backward in seconding their efforts.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Irregularity of figure means with us the same as or
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: more than a combination of moral obliquity and criminality with you,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: and is treated accordingly. There are not wanting. It is
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: true some promulgators of paradoxes, who maintain that there is
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: no necessary connection between geometrical and moral irregularity. The irregular,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: they say, is from his birth, scouted by his own parents,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: derided by his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all posts
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: of responsibility, trust, and useful activity. His every movement is
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: jealously watched by the police till he comes of age
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: and presents himself for inspection. Then he is either destroyed
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: or else immured in a government office as a clerk
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: of the seventh class, prevented from marriage, forced to drudge
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend, obliged to
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: live and board at the office, and to take even
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: his vocation under close supervision. What wonder that human nature,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: by such surroundings. All this very plausible reasoning does not
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: our statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: as an axiom of policy that the toleration of irregularity
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: is incompatible with the safety of the state. Doubtless, the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: life of an irregular is hard, but the interests of
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: the greater number require that it shall be hard. If
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life?
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: Are the houses and doors and churches in flatland to
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: be altered in order to accommodate such monsters? Are our
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: ticket collectors to be required to measure every man's perimeter
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: before they allow him to enter a theater or to
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: take his place in a lecture room? Is an irregular
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: to be exempted from the militia? And if not, how
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: is he to be prevented from carrying desolation into the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: ranks of his comrades? Again, what irresistible temptations to fraudulent
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: impostures must needs beset such a creature? How easy for
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: him to enter a shop with his polygonal front foremost,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: and to order goods to any extent from a confiding tradesman.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: Let the advocates of a falsely called philanthropy pleaders, they
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: may for the abrogation of the irregular penal laws. I,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: for my part, have never known an irregular who was
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: not also what nature evidently intended him to be, a hypocrite,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: a perpetrator of all manner of mischief. Not that I
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: should be disposed to recommend at present the extreme measures
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: adopted in some states where an infant whose angle deviates
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: by half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: destroyed at birth. Some of our highest and ablest men,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: men of real genius, have during their earliest days labored
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: under deviations as great as or even greater than forty
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: five minutes, and the loss of their precious lives would
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: have been an irreparable injury to the state. The art
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: of healing also has achieved some of its most glorious
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: triumphs in the compressions, extensions, japannings, collegations, and other surgical
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: or dietetic operations by which irregularity has been partly or
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: wholly cured. Advocating therefore a fia media, I would lay
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: down no fixed or absolute line of demarcation, but at
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: the period when the frame is just beginning to set,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: and when the medical board has reported that recovery is improbable,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: I would suggest that the irregular offspring be painlessly and
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: mercifully consumed. End of Section seven, Part one, Section eight
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: of the Ancient Practice of Painting. If my readers have
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: followed me with any attention up to this point, they
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: dull in Flatland. I do not, of course, mean that
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions, and all those
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: other phenomena which are supposed to make history inter Nor
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: would I deny that the strange mixture of the problems
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: of life and the problems of mathematics, continually inducing conjecture
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: and giving the opportunity of immediate verification, imparts to our
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: existence a zest which you in Spaceland can hardly comprehend.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: I speak now from the esthetic and artistic point of
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: view when I say that life with us is dull,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: esthetically and artistically very dull. Indeed, how can it be
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: otherwise when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: still life are nothing but a single line, with no
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: varieties except degrees of brightness and obscurity. It was not
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: always us color, if tradition speaks the truth, once, for
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: the space of half a dozen centuries or more, through
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: a transient charm upon the lives of our antiers in
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: the remotest ages, some private individual, a pentagon whose name
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: is variously reported, having casually discovered the constituents of the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: simpler colors, and a rudimentary method of painting, is said
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: to have begun by decorating first his house, then his slaves,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: then his father, his sons and grandsons, lastly himself. The
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: convenience as well as the beauty of the results, commended
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: themselves to all wherever chromatistes, For by that name, the
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him, turned his variegated frame.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: There he at once excited attention and attracted respect. No
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: one now needed to feel him. No one mistook his
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: front for his back. All his movements were readily ascertained
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: by his neighbors, without the slightest strain on their powers
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: of calculation. No one job muscled him or failed to
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: make way for him. His voice was saved the labour
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: of that exhausting utterance by which we colourless squares and
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: move amid a crowd of ignorant isosceles. The fashions spread
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: like wildfire. Before a week was over, every square and
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: triangle in the district had copied the example of chromatistes,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: and only a few of the more conservative pentagons still
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: held out. A month or two found even the Dodecadans
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: infected with the innovation. A year had not elapsed before
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the habit had spread to all but the very highest
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: of the nobility. Needless to say, the customs soon made
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: its way from the district of Chromatists to surrounding regions,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: and within two generations no one in all flatland was
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: colourless except the women and the priests. Here, nature herself
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against extending
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: the innovation to these two classes. Many sidedness was almost
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: essential as a pretext for the innovators. Distinction of sides
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: is intended by nature to imply distinction of colours. Such
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: was the sophism, which in those days flew from mouth
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: to mouth, converting whole towns at a time to the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: new culture, but manifestly to our priests and women, this
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: adage did not apply. The latter had only one side,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: and therefore, plurally and pedantically speaking, no sides. The former,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: if at least they would assert their claim to be
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: really and truly circles and not mere high class polygons
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: with an infinitely large number of infinitesimally small sides, were
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: in the habit of boasting what women confessed and deplored
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: that they also had no sides, being blessed with a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: perimeter of one line, or in other words, a circumference.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: Hence it came to pass that these two classes could
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: see no force in the so called axiom about distinction
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: of sides implying distinction of colour. And when all others
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: had succumbed to the fascinations of corporal decoration, the priests
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: and the women alone still remained pure from the pollution
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: of paint in moral licentious, a narchical, unscientific call them
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: by what names you will. Yet, from an esthetic point
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: of view, those ancient days of the colour revolked with
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: a glorious childhood of art in flatland, a childhood alas
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: that never ripened into manhood nor even reached the blossom
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: of youth. To live was then in its self a delight,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: because living implied seeing, even at a small party, the
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: company was a pleasure to behold. The richly varied hues
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: of the assembly in a church or theater are said
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: to have more than once proved too distracting for our
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: greatest teachers and actors. But most ravishing of all is
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: said to have been the unspeakable magnificence of a military review.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: The sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: suddenly facing about and exchanging the somber black of their
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: bases for the orange and purple of the two sides,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: including their acute angle, The militia of the equilateral triangles
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: tricoloured in red, white and blue, the mauve, ultramarine gamboge
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: and burnt umber of the square artillerymen rapidly rotating near
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: their vermilion guns. The dashing and flashing of the five
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: colored and six colored pentagons and hexagons careering across the field.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: In their offices of surgeons, geometricians, and aide de camp.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: All these may well have been sufficient to render credible
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: the famous story how an illustrious circle, overcome by the
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: artistic beauty of the forces under his command, threw aside
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: his marshal's battle and his royal crown, exclaiming that he
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil. How great and
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: glorious the sensuous development of these days must have been
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: is in part indicated by the very language and vocabulary
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: of the period. The commonest utterances of the commonest citizens
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: in the time of the color Revolt seem to have
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: been suffused with a richer tinge of word or thought,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: And to that era we are even now indebted for
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: our finest poetry, and for whatever rhythm still remains in
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: the more scientific utterance of these modern days. Section nine
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: of the Universal Color Bill. But meanwhile the intellectual arts
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: were fast decaying. The art of site recognition, being no
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: longer needed, was no longer practiced, and the studies of geometry, statics, kinetics,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and other kindred subjects came soon to be considered superfluous
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and fell into distribute and neglect. Even at our university.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: The inferior art of feeling speedily experienced the same fate
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: at our elementary schools. Then the Isosceles classes, asserting that
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: the specimens were no longer used nor needed, and refusing
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: to pay the customary tribute from the criminal classes to
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: the service of education, waxed daily more numerous and more insolent,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: on the strength of their immunity from the old burden
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: which had formerly exercised the twofold wholesome effect of at
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: once taming their brutal nature and thinning their excessive numbers.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Year by year, the soldiers and artisans began more vehemently
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: to assert, and with increasing truth, that there was no
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: great difference between them and the very highest class of polygons,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: now that they were raised to inequality with the latter,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: and enabled to grapple with all the difficulties and solve
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: all the problems of life, whether statical and kinetical, by
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the simple process of color recognition. Not content with the
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: natural neglect into which sight recognition was falling, they began
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: boldly to demand the legal prohibition of all monopolizing and
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: aristocratic arts, and the consequent abolition of all endowments for
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: the studies of sight recognition, mathematics, and feeling. Soon they
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: began to insist that inasmuch as color which was a
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: second nature, had destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions. The
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: law should follow in the same path, and that henceforth
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: equal and entitled to equal rights. Finding the higher orders
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: wavering and undecided, the leaders of the revolution advanced still
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: further in their requirements, and at last demanded that all
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: classes alike, the priests and the women not excepted, should
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: do homage to color by submitting to be painted. When
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: it was objected that priests and women had no sides,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: they retorted that nature and expediency concurred in dictating that
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: the front half of every human being, that is to say,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: the half containing his eye and mouth, should be dist
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: divinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore brought before a
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: General and extraordinary Assembly of all the States of Flatland
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: a bill proposing that in every woman, the half containing
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: the iron mouth should be colored red and the other
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: half green. The priests were to be painted in the
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: same way, red being applied to that semicircle in which
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: the eye and mouth formed the middle point, while the
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: other or hinder semicircle was to be colored green. There
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed emanated
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: not from any Isosceles, for no being so degraded would
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: have had angularity enough to appreciate, much less to devise
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: such a model of state craft, but from an irregular circle, who,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: instead of being destroyed in his childhood, was reserved by
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: a foolish indulgence to bring desolation on his conlor entry
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: and destruction on myriads of his followers. On the one hand,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the proposition was calculated to bring the women in all
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: classes over to the side of the chromatic innovation. For
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: by assigning to the women the same two colors as
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: were assigned to the priests, the revolutionists thereby ensured that
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: in certain positions, every woman would appear like a priest
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: and be treated with corresponding respect and deference, a prospect
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: that could not fail to attract the female sex in
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: a mass. But by some of my readers, the possibility
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: of the identical appearance of priests and women under the
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: new legislation may not be recognized. If so, a word
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: or two will make it obvious. Imagine a woman duly
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: decorated according to the new code, with the front half
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: i e. The half containing I and mans red, and
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: with the hinder half green. Look at her from one side.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Obviously you will see a straight line, half red, half green.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Reader's note. The following paragraph makes reference to an accompanying diagram.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: The diagram shows a circle or priestly figure. If it
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: is visualized as a clock face, twelve o'clock is marked
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: M for the priest's mouth, three o'clock is marked B,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: and nine o'clock is marked A. The diameter A B
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: is drawn as a dotted line and is extended outside
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: the circle right woods to a point which represents the
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: position of the observer. Dotted lines are drawn downward and
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: rightwood from M towards this point, and upward and rightward
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: from six o'clock to this point. A broad vertical line
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: C B D is drawn between the dotted lines to
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: indicate what the observer sees. C B D is bright
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: at the center and darkens sharply towards its ends. End
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: of reader's note. Now imagine a priest whose mouth is
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: at M and whose front semicircle A M B is
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: consequently colored red, while his hinder semicircle is green, so
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: that the diameter A B divides the green from the red.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: If you contemplate the great Man so as to have
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: your eye in the same straight line as his dividing
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: diameter A B, what you will see will be a
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: straight line C B D, of which one half C
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: B will be red and the other B D green.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: The whole line CD will be rather shorter, perhaps than
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: that of a full sized woman, and will shade off
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: more rapidly towards its extremities. But the identity of the
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: colours would give you an immediate impression of identity, if
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: not class, making you neglectful of other details. Bear in
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: mind the decay of sight recognition which threatened society at
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: the time of the colour revolt. Add too the certainty
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: that women would speedily learn to shade off their extremities
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: so as to imitate the circles. It must then be
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: surely obvious to you, my dear reader, that the colour
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: bill placed us under a great danger of confounding a
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: priest with a young woman. How attractive this prospect must
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: have been to the frail sex may readily be imagined
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: they anticipated with delight the confusion that would inc at home.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: They might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets intended not for them,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: but for their husbands and brothers, and might even issue
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: command in the name of a priestly circle out of doors.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: The striking combination of red and green, without addition of
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: any other colours, would be sure to lead the common
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: people into endless mistakes, and the women would gain whatever
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: the circles lost in the deference of the passers by.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: As for the scandal that would befall the circular class
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: if the frivolous and unseemly conduct of the women were
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: imputed to them, and as to the consequence subversion of
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: the constitution, the female sex could not be expected to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: give a thought to these considerations. Even in the households
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: of the circles, the women were all in favor of
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: the Universal Color Bill. The second object aimed at by
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: the bill was the gradual demoralization of the circles themselves.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: In the general intellectual decay, they still preserved their pristine
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: clearness and strength of understanding from their earliest childhood, familiarized
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: in their circular households with the total absence of color.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: The nobles alone preserved the sacred art of sight recognition,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: with all the advantages that result from that admirable training
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: of the intellect. Hence, up to the date of the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: introduction of the universal color Bill, the circles had not
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: only held their own but even increased their lead of
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: other classes by abstinence from the popular fashion. Now, therefore,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: the artful irregular, whom I described above as the real
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: author of this diabolical bill, determined at one blow to
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: lower the status of the hierarchy by forcing them to
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: submit to the pollution of color, and at the same
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: time to destroy their domestic opportunities of training in the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: art of sight recognition, so as to enfeeble their intellects
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: by depriving them of their pure and colorless homes. Once
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: father and the mother would the circular infant find problems
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: for the exercise of its understanding, problems too often likely
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: to be corrupted by maternal impostures, with the result of
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: shaking the child's faith in all logical conclusions. Thus, by degrees,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: the intellectual luster of the priestly order would wane, and
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: the road would then lie open for a total destruction
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: of all aristocratic legislature and for the subversion of our
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: privileged classes Section ten of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: The agitation for the Universal Color Bill continued for three years,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: and up to the last moment of that period, it
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: seemed as though anarchy were destined to triumph. A whole
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: army of polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles triangles,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: the squares and pentagons, meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: some of the ablest circles fell a prey to conjugal fury.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: opposition to the Color Bill, and some, finding their entreaties fruitless,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husbands, perishing
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: during that triennial agitation, no less than twenty three circles
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: perished in domestic discord. Great indeed was the peril. It
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: seemed as though the priests had no choice between submission
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: and extermination. When suddenly the course of events was completely
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: changed by one of those picturesque incidents which statesmen ought
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: to the sympathies of the populace. It happened that an Isosceles,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: of a low type with a brain little, if at all,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: above four degrees, accidentally dabbling in the colors of some
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: tradesman whose shop he had plundered, painted himself or caused
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: himself to be painted, for the story varies with the
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: twelve colors of a dodecahedron. Going into the market place,
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: he accosted, in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: daughter of a noble polygon, whose affection in former days
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: he had sought in vain, and by a series of deceptions,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: aided on the one side by a string of lucky
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: accidents too long to relate, and on the other by
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: an almost inconceivable fetuity and neglect of ordinary precautions on
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: the part of the relations of the bride, he succeeded
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: in consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: discovering the fraud to which she had been subjected. When
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: the news of this catastrophe spread from state to state,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: the minds of the women were violently agitated. Sympathy with
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: the miserable victim, and anticipations of similar deceptions for themselves,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: their sisters, and their daughters made them now regard the
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: Color Bill in an entirely new aspect. Not a few
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: openly avowed themselves converted to antagonism. The rest needed only
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: a slight stimulus to make a similar avowal. Seizing this
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: favorable opportunity, the circles hastily convened an extraordinary assembly of
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: the States, and besides the usual guard of convicts, they
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: secured the attendants of a large number of reactionary women.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: Amidst an unprecedented concourse, the chief circle of those days,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: by name Pantoshyclus, arose to find himself hissed and hooted
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: by one hundred and twenty thousand Isosceles, But he secured
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: silence by declaring that henceforth the circles would enter on
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: a policy of concession, yielding to the wishes of the majority,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: they would accept the Color Bill. The uproar being at
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leader of
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: the sedition, into the centre of the hall, to receive
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: in the name of his followers, the submission of the hierarchy.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Then followed a speech, a masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: nearly a day in the delivery, and to which no
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: summary can do justice. With a grave appearance of impartiality,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: he declared that as they were now finally committing themselves
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: to reform or innovation, it was desirable that they should
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: take one last view of the perimeter of the whole,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: subject its defects as well as its advantages. Gradually introducing
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: the mention of the dangers to the tradesmen, the professional classes,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: and the gentlemen, he silenced the rising murmurs of the
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: Isosceles by reminding them that in spite of all these defects,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: he was willing to accept the bill if it was
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: approved by the majority, but it was manifest at all
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: except the Isosceles were moved by his words and were
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: either neutral or averse to the bill. Turning now to
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: the workmen, he asserted that their interests must not be neglected,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: and that if they intended to accept the colour bill,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: they ought at least to do so with a full
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: view of the consequences. Many of them, he said, were
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: on the point of being admitted to the class of
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: the regular triangles. Others anticipated for their children a distinction
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: they could not hope for themselves. That honorable ambition would
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: now have to be sacrificed. With the universal adoption of colour,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: all distinctions would cease. Regularity would be confused with irregularity.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: Development would give place to retrogression. The workmen would in
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: a few generations be degraded to the level of the
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: military or even the convict class. Political power would be
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: in the hands of the greatest number, that is to say,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: the criminal classes, who were already more numerous than the workmen,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: and would soon outnumber all the other classes put together.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: When the usual compensative laws of nature were violated, a
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: subdued murmur of assent ran through the ranks of the
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: artisans and chromatistes in alarm attempted to step forward and
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: address them, but he found himself encompassed with guards and
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: forced to remain silent, while the chief circle, in a
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: few impassioned words, made a final appeal to the women,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: exclaiming that if the colour bill passed, No marriage would
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: henceforth be safe, no woman's honor secure. Fraud, deception, hypocrisy
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: would pervade every household. Domestic bliss would share the fate
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: of the constitution and pass to speed perdition. Sooner than this,
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: he cried, come death. At these words, which were the
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: preconcerted signal for action, the Isosceles convicts fell on and
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: transfixed the wretched chromatistes. The regular classes, opening their ranks,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: made way for a band of women, who, under direction
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: of the circles, moved back foremost invisibly and unerringly upon
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: the unconscious soldiers. The artisans, imitating the example of their betters,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: also opened their ranks. Meantime, bands of convicts occupied every
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: entrance with an impenetrable phalanx. The battle, or rather carnage,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: was of short duration. Under the skillful generalship of the circles.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: Almost every woman's charge was fatal, and very many extracted
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter. But no
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: second blow was needed. The rabble of the Isosceles did
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: the rest of the business for themselves. Surprised, leaderless, attacked
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: in front by invisible foes, and finding egress cut off
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: by the convicts behind them, they at once, after their manner,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: lost all presence of mind, and raised the cry of treachery.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: This sealed their fate. Every isosceles now saw and felt
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: a foe in every other. In half an hour, not
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: one of that vast multitude was living, and the fragments
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: of seven score thousand of the criminal class slain by
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: one another's angles, attested the triumph of order. The circles delayed,
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: not to push their victory to the uttermost the workingmen
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: they spared, but decimated. The militia of the equilaterals was
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: at once called out, and every triangle suspected of irregularity
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: on reasonable grounds was destroyed by court martial, without the
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: formality of exact measurement by the Social Board. The homes
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: of the military and artisan classes were inspected in a
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: course of visitations extending through upwards of a year, and
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: during that period every town, village, and hamlet was systematically
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: purged of that excess of the lower orders, which had
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: been brought about by the neglect to pay the tribute
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: of criminals to the schools and university, and by the
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: violation of other natural laws. Of the Constitution of Flatland.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Thus the balance of classes was again restored. Needless to
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: say that henceforth the use of colour was abolished and
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting colour,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: except by the circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: punished by a severe penny only at our university, in
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: some of the very highest and most esoteric classes, which
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: I myself have never been privileged to attend. It is
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: understood that the sparing use of color is still sanctioned
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper problems
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: of mathematics. But of this I can only speak from hearsay.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: Elsewhere in Flatland's color is now non existent. The art
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: of making it is known to only one living person,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: the Chief Circle, for the time being, and by him
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: it is handed down on his deathbed to none but
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: his successor. One manufactory alone produces it, and lest the
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: secret should be betrayed, the workmen are annually consumed and
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: fresh ones introduced. So great is the terror with which
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: even now our aristocracy looks back to the far distant
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: days of the Adjuti for the Universal Color Bill. End
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: of Section ten, Part one, Section eleven, concerning our priests.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: It is high time that I should pass from these
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: brief and discursive notes about things in flatland to the
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: central event of this book, my initiation into the mysteries
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: of space, that is my subject. All that has gone
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: before is merely preface. For this reason I must omit
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: many matters of which the explanation would not I flatter myself,
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: be without interest for my readers, as for example, our
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: method of propelling and stopping ourselves, although destitute of feet,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: the means by which we give fixity to structures of wood,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: stone or brick, although of course we have no hands,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: nor can we lay foundations as you can, nor avail
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: ourselves of the lateral pressure of the earth. The manner
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: in which the rain originates in the intervals between our
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: various zones, so that the northern regions do not intercept
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: the moisture from falling on the southern. The nature of
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: our hills and mines, our trees and vegetables, our seasons
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: and harvests, our alphabet and method of writing adapted to
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: our linear tablets. These and a hundred other details of
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: our physical existence I must pass over, nor do I
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: mention them now. Except to indicate to my readers that
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: their omission proceeds not from forgetfulness on the part of
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: the author, but from his regard for the time of
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: the reader. Yet, before I proceed to my legitimate subject,
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: some few final remarks will no doubt be expected by
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: my readers upon those pillars and mainstays of the constitution
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: of flatland, the controllers of our conduct and shapers of
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: our destiny, the objects of universal homage and almost of adoration.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: Need I say that I mean our circles or priests.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: When I call them priests, let me not be understood
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: as meaning no more than the term denotes.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: With you, with us.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: Our priests are administrators of all business, art and science,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: directors of trade, commerce, generalship, architecture, engineering, education, statesmanship, legislature, morality, theology.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: Doing nothing themselves, they are the causes of everything worth
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: doing that is done by others. Although popularly everyone called
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: a circle is deemed a circle, yet among the better
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: educated classes it is known that no circle is really
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: a circle, but only a polygon with a very large
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: number of very small sides. A portioned to the number
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: of the sides the polygon approximates to a circle. And
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: when the number is very great, say for example, three
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: it would be difficult, for, as I have shown above,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: recognition by feeling is unknown among the highest society, and
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: to feel a circle would be considered a most audacious insult.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: This habit of abstension from feeling in the best society
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: enables a circle the more easily to sustain the veil
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: of mystery in which from his earliest years he is
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: wont to enrap. The exact nature of his perimeter or circumference,
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: three feet being the average perimeter, it follows that in
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: a polygon of three hundred sides, each side will be
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: no more than the hundredth part of a foot in length,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: or life little more than the tenth part of an inch,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: And in a polygon of six or seven hundred sides,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: the sides are little larger than the diameter of a
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: spaceland pin head. It is always assumed, by courtesy that
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: the chief circle, for the time being has ten thousand sides.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: The ascent of the posterity of the circles in the
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: social scale is not restricted, as it is among the
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: lower regular classes, by the law of nature, which limits
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: the increase of sides to one in each generation. If
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: it were so, the number of sides in a circle
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: would be a mere question of pedigree and arithmetic, and
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: the four hundred ninety seventh descendant of an equilateral triangle
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: would necessarily be a polygon with five hundred sides. But
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: this is not the case. Nature's law prescribes two antagonistic
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: decrees affecting circular propagation. First, that as the rate sace
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: climbs higher in the scale of development, so development shall
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: proceed at an accelerated pace. Second that in the same proportion,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: the race shall become less fertile. Consequently, in the home
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: of a polygon of four or five hundred sides, it
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: is rare to find a sun. More than one is
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: never seen. On the other hand, the sun of a
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: five hundred sided polygon has been known to possess five hundred,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: fifty or even six hundred sides. Art also steps in
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: to help the process of the higher evolution. Our physicians
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: have discovered that the small and tender sides of an
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: infant polygon of the higher class can be fractured, and
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: his whole frame reset with such exactness that a polygon
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: of two or three hundred sides, sometimes by no means always,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: for the process is attended with serious rec but sometimes
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: overleaps two or three hundred generations, and, as it were,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: doubles at a stroke the number of his progenitors and
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: the nobility of his descent. Many a promising child is
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: sacrificed in this way. Scarcely one out of ten survives.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Yet so strong is the parental ambition among those polygons
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: who are, as it were, on the fringe of the
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: circular class, that it is very rare to find a
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: nobleman of that position in society who has neglected to
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: place his firstborn son in the circular neo therapeutic gymnasium
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: before he has attained the age of a month one
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: year determined success or failure. At the end of that time,
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: the child has, in all probability, added one more to
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: the tombstones that crowd the neo therapeutic cemetery. But on
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: rare occasions, a glad procession bears back the little one
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: to his exultant parents, no longer a polygon but a circle.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: At least by courtesy, and a single instance of so
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: blessed a result induces multitudes of polygonal parents to submit
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: to similar domestic sacrifices which have a dissimilar issue Section
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: twelve of the Doctrine of Our Priests. As to the
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: doctrine of the Circles, it may briefly be summed up
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: in a single maxim attend to your configuration, whether political, ecclesiastical,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: or moral. All their teaching has for its object the
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: improvement of individual and collective configuration, with special reference, of course,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: to the configuration of the circles, to which all other
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: objects are subordinated. It is the merit of the circles
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: anything else but configuration. It was Pantocyclus, the illustrious Circle
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: mentioned above as the Quella of the color of Vault,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: who first convinced mankind that configuration makes the man. That, if,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: for example, you are born an Isosceles with two uneven sides,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: even for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles hospital. Similarly,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: if you are a triangle or square, or even a
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: polygon born with any irregularity, you must be taken to
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: one of the regular hospitals to have your disease cured.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: Otherwise you will end your days in the state prison
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: or by the angle of the state executioner. All faults
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: Pentocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect regularity in the
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: bodily figure, caused, perhaps if not congenital, by some collision
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: in a crowd, by neglect to take exercise, or by
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: taking too much of it, or even by a sudden
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: change of temperature resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore concluded that
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: illustrious philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct, is a
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: fit subject in any sober estimation for either praise or blame.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: a square who faithfully defends the interests of his client,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: when you ought, in reality, rather to admire the exact
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: precision of his rectangles. Or again, why blame allying with
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: thievish Isosceles when you all rather to deplore the incurable
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: inequality of his sides. Theoretically this doctrine is unquestionable, but
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: it has practical drawbacks in dealing with an Isosceles. If
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbors, you
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: the magistrate cannot help sentencing him to be consumed. And
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties,
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: whether penalty of consumption or death is out of the question.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: This theory of configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly, and I
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: must confess that occasionally when one of my own hexagonal
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: grandsons pleads, as an excuse for his disobedience, that a
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: sudden change of the temperature has been too much for
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: his perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blas
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: aim not on him, but on his configuration, which can
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats. I
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: neither see my way logically to reject nor practically to
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: accept his conclusions. For my own part, I find it
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: has some latent and strengthening influence on my grandson's configuration,
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: though I own that I have no grounds for thinking
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: so at all events, I am not alone in my
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: way of extricating myself from this dilemma, For I find
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: that many of the highest circles, sitting as judges in
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: law courts, use praise and blame towards regular and irregular figures,
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: and in their homes I know by experience that when
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: scolding their children, they speak about right or wrong as
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: vehemently and passionately, as if they believed that these names
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: represented real existences, and that a human figure is really
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: capable of choosing between them. Consistently carrying out their policy
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: of making configuration the leading idea in every mind, the
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: circles reverse the nature of that commandment which in Spaceland
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: regulates the relations between parents and children. With you, children
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: are taught to honor their parents with us next to
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: the circles, who are the chief object of universal homage.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: A man is taught to honor his grandson if he
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: has one, or if not his son. By honor, however,
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: is by no means meant indulgence, but a reverent regard
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: for their highest interests. And the circles teach that the
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: duty of fathers is to subordinate their own interests to
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: those of posterity, thereby advancing the welfare of the whole
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: state as well as that of their own immediate deayence.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: The weak point in the system of the circles, if
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: a humble square may venture to speak of anything circular
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: as containing any element of weakness, appears to me to
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: be found in their relations with women. As it is
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: of the utmost importance for society that irregular births should
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: be discouraged, it follows that no woman who has any
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: irregularities in her ancestry is a fit partner for one
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: who desires that his posterity should rise by regular degrees
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: in the social scale. Now, the irregularity of a male
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: is a matter of measurement. But as all women are
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: straight and therefore visibly regular, so to speak, one has
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: to devise some other means of ascertaining what I may
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: call their invisible irregularity, that is to say, their potential irregularities.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: As regards possible offspring. This is effected by carefully kept pedigrees,
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: which are preserved and supervised by the state, and without
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: a certified pedigree, no woman is allowed to marry. Now,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: it might have been supposed that a circle, proud of
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: his ancestry and regardful for a posterity which might possibly
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: issue hereafter in a chief circle, would be more careful
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: than any other to choose a wife who had no
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so. The
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: care in choosing a regular wife appears to diminish as
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: one rises in the social scale. Nothing would induce an
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: aspiring Isosceles, who had hopes of generating an equilateral son,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: to take a wife who reckoned a single irregularity among
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: her ancestors. A square or pentagon who is confident that
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: his family is steadily on the rise does not inquire
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: above the five hundredth generation. A hexagon or dodecahedron is
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: even more careless of the wife's pedigree. But a circle
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: has been known deliberately to take a wife who has
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: had an irregular great grandfather, and all because of some
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: slight superiority of luster, or because of the charms of
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: a low voice, which with us, even more than with you,
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: is thought an excellent thing in woman. Such ill judged
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: marriages are as might be expected barren if they do
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: not result in positive irregularity or in diminution of sides.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: But none of these evils have hitherto proved sufficiently deterrent.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: The loss of a few sides in a highly developed
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: polygon is not easily noticed, and is sometimes compensated by
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: a successful operation in the neo therapeutic gymnasium, as I
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: have described above. And the circles are too much disposed
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: to acquiesce in infant cunditty as a law of the
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: superior development. Yet it is evil be not arrested. The
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: gradual diminution of the circular class may soon become more rapid,
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: and the time may not be far distant when the race,
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: being no longer able to produce a chief circle, the
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: constitution of flatland must fall. One other word of warnings
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: suggests itself to me, though I cannot so easily mention
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: a remedy, and this also refers to our relations with women.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: chief circle that, since women are deficient in reason but
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: abundant in emotion, they ought no longer to be treated
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: as rational, nor receive any mental education. The consequence was
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: that they were no longer taught to read, nor even
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: to master arithmetic enough to enable them to count the
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: angles of their husband or children. And hence they sensibly
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: declined during each generation in intellectual power. And this system
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: of female non education or quietism, still prevails. My fear
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: carried so far as to react injuriously on the male sex.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: For the consequence is that, as things now are, we
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: males have to lead a kind of bilingual and I
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: may almost say by mental existence. With the women we
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: speak of love, duty, right, wrong, pity, hope, and other
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: irrational and emotional conceptions which have no existence, and the
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: But among ourselves and in our books, we have an
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: entirely different vocabulary, and I may almost say idiom. Love
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: then becomes the anticipation of benefits, duty becomes necessity or fitness,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among women, we
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: use language implying the utmost deference for their sex, and
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: they fully believe that the Chief circle himself is not
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: more devoutly adored by us than they are. But behind
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: their backs they are both regarded and spoken of by
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: all except the very young, as being little better than
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: mindless organisms. Our theology also in the women's chambers is
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: entirely different from our theology elsewhere. Now, my humble fear
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: is that this double training in language as well as
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young,
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: especially when, at the age of three years old they
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: the old language except for the purpose of repeating it
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: in the presence of their mothers and nurses, and to
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already, methinks I
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: the present time, as compared with the more robust intellect
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: of our ancestors three hundred years ago. I say nothing
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: of the possible danger if a woman should ever surreptitiously
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: learn to read and convey to her sex the result
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: of her perusal of a single popular volume, nor of
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: the possibility that the indiscretion or disobedience of some infant
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: male might reveal to a mother the secrets of the
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: logical dialect on the simple ground of the enfeebling of
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: the male intellect. I rest this humble appeal to the
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: highest authorities to reconsider the regulations of female education. End
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: of Section twelve and of Part one, Part two. Other worlds, Oh,
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: brave new worlds that have such people in them. Section thirteen.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: How I had a vision of Lineland. It was the
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: last day but one of the nineteen hundred and ninety
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: ninth year of our era, and the first day of
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: the long vacation. Having amused myself till a late hour
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: with my favorite recreation of geometry, I had retired to
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: rest with an unsolved problem in my mind. In the night,
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: I had a dream. Reader's note. The following paragraph makes
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: reference to a diagram. The diagram is headed my view
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: of Lineland. Beneath this title, and centrally placed is a
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: square labeled myself. Under that, from lefts to write on
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: a horizontal plane are four dots labeled women, a short
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: dash labeled a boy, six longer dashes marked men. Then
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: directly below myself, a thick dash labeled the King, with
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: an eye looking out from either end. Under the eyes
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: is written the King's eyes much larger than the reality,
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: showing that his Majesty could see nothing but a point.
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: The horizontal line then continues towards the right, with seven
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: dashes marked men, one dash marked a boy, and seven
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: dots marked women. End of reader's note. I saw before
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: me a vast multitude of small straight lines, which I
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: naturally assumed to be women, interspersed with other beings, still
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: smaller and of the nature of lustrous points, all moving
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: to and fro in one and the same straight line,
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: and as nearly as I could judge, with the same velocity.
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: A noise of confused, multitudinous chirping or twittering issued from
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: them at intervals as long as they were moving, but
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: sometimes they ceased from motion, and then all was silence.
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: Approaching one of the largest of what I thought to
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: be women, I accosted her, but received no answer. A
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: second and third appeal on my part were equally ineffectual.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: Losing patience at what appeared to me intolerable rudeness, I
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: brought my mouth into a position full in front of
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: her mouth, so as to intercept her motion, and loudly
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: repeated my question, woman, what signifies this concourse and this
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: strange and confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: fro in one and the same straight line. I am no, woman,
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: replied the small line. I am the monarch of the world.
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: But thou, whence intrudest thou into my realm of Lineland.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: in any way startled or molested his royal Highness, and
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: describing myself as a stranger, I besought the king to
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: give me some account of his dominions. But I had
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information on points
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: that really interested me, for the monarch could not refrain
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar to him must
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: also be known to me, and that I was simulating
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: ignorance in jest. However, by persevering questions, I elicited the
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: following facts. It seemed that this poor ignorant monarch, as
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: he called himself, was persuaded that the straight line which
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: he called his kingdom and in which he passed his existence,
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: constituted the whole of the world, and indeed the whole
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: of space. Not being able either to move or to
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: see save in his straight line, he had no conception
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: of anything out of it. Though he had heard my
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: voice when I first addressed him, the sounds had come
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: to him in a manner so contrary to his experience
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: that he had made no answer, seeing no man as
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: he expressed it, and hearing a voice as it were
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: from my own intestines. Until the moment when I placed
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: my mouth in his world, he had neither seen me
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: nor heard anything except confused sounds beating against what I
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: called his side, but what he called his inside or stomach.
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: Nor had he even now the least conception of the
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: region from which I had come. Outside his world or life.
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: All was a blank to him, Nay not even a blank,
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: for a blank implies space, say, Rather, all was nonexistent
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: his subjects, of whom the small lions were men and
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: the points women were all alike, confined in motion and
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: eyesight to that single straight line which was their world.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: It need scarcely be added that the whole of their
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: horizon was limited to a point. Nor could anyone ever
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: see anything but a point, man, woman, child, thing. Each
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: was a point to the eye of a linelander. Only
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: by the sound of the voice could sex or age
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: be distinguished. Moreover, as each individual occupied the whole of
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 1: the narrow path, so to speak, which constituted his universe,
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: and no one could move to the right or left
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: to make way for passers by, it followed that no
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: linelander could ever pass another. Once neighbors always neighbors, neighborhood
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: with them was like marriage with us. Neighbours remained neighbours
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: till death did them part. Such a life, with all
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: vision limited to a point and all motion to a
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: straight line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary, and I was
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: surprised to note the vivacity and cheerfulness of the King.
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: Wondering whether it was possible, amid circumstances so unfavorable to
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: domestic relations, to enjoy the pleasures of conjugal union. I
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: hesitated for some time to question his Royal Highness on
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: so delicate a subject, but at last I plunged into
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: it by abruptly inquiring as to the health of his family.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: My wives and children, he replied, are well and happy.
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: Staggered at this answer, for in the immediate proximity of
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: the Monarch, as I had noted in my dream before
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 1: I entered Lymeland, there were none but men, I ventured
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: to reply. Pardon me, but I cannot imagine how your
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: Royal Highness can at any time either see or approach
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: their majesties when there are at least half a dozen
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: intervening individuals whom you can neither see through nor pass by.
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: Is it possible that in Lineland proximity is not necessary
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: for marriage and for the generation of children? How can
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: you ask so absurd a question, replied the Monarch. If
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: it were indeed as you suggest, the universe would soon
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: be depopulated. No, no, neighborhood is needless for the union
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: of hearts, and the birth of children is too important
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: a matter to have been allowed to depend on such
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: an accident as proximity. You cannot be ignorant of this, yet,
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: since you are pleased to affect ignorance, I will instruct you,
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: as if you were the veriest baby in Lineland. Know then,
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: that marriages are consummated by means of the faculty of
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: sound and the sense of hearing. You are, of course
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: aware that every man has two mouths or voices as
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: well as two eyes, a base at one and a
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: tenor at the other, of his extremities. I should not
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: mention this, but that I have been unable to distinguish
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: your tenor in the course of our conversation. I replied
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: that I had but one voice, and that I had
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: not been aware that his Royal Highness had two. That
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: confirms my impression, said the King, that you are not
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: a man, but a feminine monstrosity with a base voice
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: and an utterly un educated ear. But to continue, nature herself,
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: having ordained that every man should wed two wives, why two,
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: asked I. You carry your affected simplicity too far. He cried,
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: how can there be a completely harmonious union without the
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: combination of the four in one viz. The base and
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: tenor of the man, and the soprano and contralto of
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: the two women. But supposing, said I, that a man
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: should prefer one wife or three, it is impossible. He said.
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: It is as inconceivable as that two and one should
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: make five, or that the human eye should see a
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: straight line. I would have interrupted him, but he proceeded
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: as follows. Once in the middle of each week, a
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: law of nature compels us to move to and fro
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: with a rhythmic motion of more than usual violence, which
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: continues for the time you would take to count one
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance,
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: at the fifty first pulsation, the inhabitants of the universe
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest,
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment that all
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptation of
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: base to treble of tenor to contralto that. Oftentimes the
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 1: loved ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: the responsive note of their destined lover, and penetrating the
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: paltry obstacles of distance, love unites the three. The marriage,
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: in that instant, consummated results in a threefold male and
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: female offspring, which takes its place in lineland. What always threefold?
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: Said I must one wife, then always have twins? Base
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: voice monstrosity, Yes, replied the king. How else could the
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: balance of the sexes be maintained if two girls were
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: not born for every boy? Would you ignore the very
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: alphabet of nature? He ceased speechless for fury, and some
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: time elapsed before I could induce him to resume his narrative.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: You will, not, of course, suppose that every bachelor among
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: us finds his mates at the first wooing in this
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: universal marriage chorus. On the contrary, the process is by
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: most of us many times repeated. Few are the hearts
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: whose happy lot it is at once to recognize in
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: each other's voices the partner intended for them by providence,
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: and to fly into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace.
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: With most of us, the courtship is of lafe duration.
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: The wooer's voices may perhaps accord with one of the
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: future wives, but not with both, or not at first
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: with either, or the soprano and contralto may not quite harmonize.
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: In such cases, Nature has provided that every weekly chorus
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: shall bring the three lovers into closer harmony. Each trial
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: of voice, each fresh discovery of discord, almost imperceptibly induces
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: the less perfect to modify his or her vocal utterance
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: so as to approximate to the more perfect. And after
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: many trials and many approximations, the result is at last achieved.
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: There comes a day, at last, when while the wonted
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 1: marriage chorus goes forth from universal lineland. The three far
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: off lovers suddenly find themselves in exact harmony, and before
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: they are aware the the wedded triplet is wrapped vocally
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: into a duplicate embrace, and nature rejoices over one more
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: marriage and over three more births. Section fourteen. How I
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: vainly tried to explain the nature of flatland. Thinking that
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: it was time to bring down the monarch from his
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: raptures to the level of common sense, I determined to
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: endeavor to open up to him some glimpses of the truth,
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 1: that is to say, of the nature of things in Flatland.
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: So I began, thus, how does your Royal Highness distinguish
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: the shapes and positions of his subjects? I, for my part, noticed,
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: by the sense of sight before I entered your kingdom,
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: that some of your people are lines and others points,
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: and that some of the lines are larger. You speak
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 1: of an impossibility, interrupted the king You must have seen
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: a vision. For to detect the difference between a line
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: and a point by the sense of sight is, as
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: everyone knows, in the nature of things impossible. But it
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: can be detected by the sense of hearing and by
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: the same means my shape can be exactly as attained.
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: Behold me, I am a line the longest in Lineland,
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: over six inches of space of length, I ventured to suggest.
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 1: Fool said he spaces length. Interrupt me again, and I
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: have done. I apologized, but he continued scornfully. Since you
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: are impervious to argument, you shall hear with your ears.
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: How by means of my two voices, I reveal my
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: shape to my wives, who are at this moment six
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: thousand miles seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: one to the north, the other to the south. Listen,
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: I call to them, He chirruped, and then complacently continued.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: My wives, at this moment, receiving the sound of one
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: of my voices closely followed by the other, and perceiving
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: that the latter reaches them after an interval in which
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: sound can traverse six point four five seven inches, infer
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: that one of my mouths is six point four five
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: seven inches further from them than the other, and accordingly
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: know my shape to be six point four five seven inches.
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: But you will, of course understand that my wives do
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: not make this calculation. Every time they hear my two voices.
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: They made it once for all before we were married,
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: but they could make it at any time. And in
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: the same way, I can estimate the shape of any
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: of my male subjects by the sense of sound. But
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: how said I, if a man feigns a woman's voice
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: with one of his two voices, or so disguises his
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 1: southern voice that it cannot be recognized as the echo
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 1: of the northern? May not such deceptions cause great inconvenience?
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: And have you no means of checking frauds of this
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: kind by commanding your neighboring subjects to feel one another? This,
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: of course, was a very stupid question, for feeling could
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: not have answered the purpose. But I asked with the
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: view of irritating the monarch, and I succeeded perfectly. What
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: cried he in horror, Explain your meaning, feel, touch, come
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: into contact, I replied, If you mean by feeling, said
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: the king, approaching so close as to leave no space
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: between two individuals, no stranger that this offense is punishable,
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: in my denay millions by death. And the reason is obvious.
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: The frail form of a woman, being liable to be
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the state.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: But since women cannot be distinguished by the sense of
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: sight from man, the law ordains universally that neither man
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: nor woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: the interval between the approximator and the approximated. And indeed,
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: what possible purpose would be served by this illegal and
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 1: unnatural excess of approximation, which you call touching, when all
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: the ends of so brutal and coarse a process are
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: attained at once, more easily and more exactly by the
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: sense of hearing. As to your suggested danger of deception,
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: it is non existent. For the voice being, the essence
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: of one's being, cannot be thus changed at will. But
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: come suppose that I had the power of passing through
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: solid things, so that I could penetrate my subjects one
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: after another, even to the number of a billion, verifying
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 1: the size and distance of each by the sense of feeling.
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: How much time and energy would be wasted in this
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: clumsy and inaccurate method, Whereas now, in one moment of audition,
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: I take, as it were, the senses and statistics, local, corporal, mental,
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: and spiritual of every living being in Lineland. Hark only
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: hark so saying he paused and listened, as if in
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: an ecstasy, to a sound which seemed to me no
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 1: better than a tiny chirping from an innumerable multitude of
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: Lilliputian grasshoppers. Truly replied, I your sense of hearing serves
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: you in good stead and fills up many of your deficiencies.
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: But permit me to point out that your life in
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: line land must be deplorably dull to see nothing but
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: a point, not even to be able to contemplate a
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: straight line, nay, not even to know what a straight
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: line is, to see yet to be cut off from
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: those linear prospects which are vouchsafed to us in flat land.
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: Better surely, to have no sense of sight at all
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: than to see so little. I grant you, I have
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: not your discriminative faculty of hearing, for the concert of
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: all lineland, which gives you such intense pleasure is to
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: me no better than a multitudinous twittering or chirping. But
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: at least I can discern by sight a line from
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: a point, and let me prove it. Just before I
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: came into your kingdom, I saw you dancing from left
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: to right, and then from right to left with seven
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: men and a woman in your immediate proximity on the left,
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: and eight men and two women on your right. Is
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: not this correct? It is correct, said the King, so
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: far as the numbers and sexes are concerned. Though I
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: know not what you mean by right and left. But
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: I deny that you saw these things, For how could
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: you see the line, that is to say, the inside
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: of any man? But you must have heard these things
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: and then dreamed that you saw them. And let me
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: ask what you mean by those words left and right.
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: I suppose it is your way of saying northwood and southward.
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: Not so, replied I. Besides your motion of northwood and southward,
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: there is another motion, which I call from right to left. King,
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: exhibit to me, if you please this motion from left
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: to right. I nay that I cannot do unless you
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: could step out of your life altogether, King, out of
• 2:25:03
  Speaker 1: my lind Do you mean out of the world, out
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: of space? I well, yes, out of your world, out
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: of your space, For your space is not the true space.
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: True space is a plane. But your space is only
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: a line. King. If you cannot indicate this motion from
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: left to right by yourself moving in it, then I
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: beg you to describe it to me in words. I,
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: if you cannot tell your right side from my left,
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: I fear that no words of mine can make my
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 1: meaning clear to you. But surely you cannot be ignorant
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: of so simple a distinction, King, I do not in
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: the least understand you. I alas, how shall I make
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: it clear? When you move straight on? Does it not
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: sometimes occur to you that you could move in some
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: other way, turning your eye round so as to look
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: in the direction to which your side is now fronting?
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: In other words, instead of always moving in the direction
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: of one of your extremities, do you never feel a
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: desire to move in the direction, so to speak of
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 1: your side? King? Never? And what do you mean? How
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: can a man's inside front in any direction? Or how
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: can a man move in the direction of his inside? I? Well, then,
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: since words cannot explain the matter, I will try deeds
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: and will move gradually out of Lineland in the direction
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: which I desire to indicate to you. Reader's Note. The
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: following paragraph makes reference to a diagram. The diagram shows
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: a horizontal line. At the left is marked Lineland, with
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: an arrow pointing rightward at the right on the line
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: is a broad dash labeled the King. In the center.
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: On the line is a horizontally shaded square, over which
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: is written my body just before I disappeared. End of
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: reader's note. At the word I began to move my
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: body out of Limeland. As long as any part of
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: me remained in his dominion and in his view, the
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: King kept exclaiming, I see you, I see you. Still
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 1: you are not moving. But when I had at last
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: moved myself out of his line, he cried, in his
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: shrillest voice, she is vanished. She is dead.
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 3: I am not.
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: Dead, replied I. I am simply out of lime Land,
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: that is to say, out of the straight line which
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: you call space, and in the true space, where I
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: can see things as they are, And at this moment
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: I can see your line or side, or inside, as
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: you are pleased to call it. And I can also
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 1: see the men and women on the north and south
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: of you, whom I will now enumerate, describing their order,
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: their size, and the interval between each. When I had
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: done this at great length, I cried, triumphantly, does this
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: at last convince you? And with that I once more
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 1: entered Lymeland, taking up the same position as before. But
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: the monarch replied, if you were a man of sense,
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: though as you appear to have only one voice, I
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: have little doubt you are not a man but a woman.
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 1: But if you had a particle of sense, you would
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: listen to reason. You ask me to believe that there
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: is another line besides that which my senses indicate, and
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: another motion besides that of which I am daily conscious.
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 1: I in return ask you to describe in words or
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 1: indicate by motion that other line of which you speak.
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: Instead of moving, you merely exercise some magic art of
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: vanishing and returning to sight. And instead of any lucid
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: description of your new world, you simply tell me the
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: numbers and sizes of some forty of my retinue facts
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: known to any child in my capital? Can anything be
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 1: more irrational or audacious acknowledge, or folly or depart from
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: my dominions? Furious at his perversity, and especially indignant that
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: he professed to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted,
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 1: in no measured terms, besotted being, you think yourself the
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: perfection of existence, while you are, in reality the most
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see whereas you can
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 1: see nothing but a point. You plume yourself on inferring
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: the existence of a straight line. But I can can
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 1: see straight lines, and infer the existence of angles, triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons,
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: and even circles. Why waste more words? Suffice it that
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: I am the completion of your incomplete self. You are
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: a line, but I am a line of lines, called
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: in my country a square, and even I infinitely superior.
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: Though I am to you am of little account among
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: the great nobles of flatland. Whence I have come to
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: visit you in the hope of enlightening your ignorance. Hearing
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 1: these words, the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry,
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: as if to pierce me through the diagonal. And in
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 1: that same moment there arose from myriads of his subjects
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: a multitudinous war cry, increasing enveheremence, till at last me
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: thought it rivaled the roar of an army of one
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand isosceles and the artillery of a thousand pentagons.
• 2:31:01
  Speaker 1: Spellbound and motionless, I could neither speak nor move to
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: avert the impending destruction. And still the noise grew louder,
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: and the king came closer when I awoke to find
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: the breakfast bell recalling me to the realities of flatland.
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: End of Section fourteen, Part two, Section fifteen concerning a
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: stranger from Spaceland. From dreams, I proceed to facts. It
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: was the last day of the nineteen hundred and ninety
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: ninth year of our era. The pattering of the rain
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: had long ago announced nightfall, and I was sitting in
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: the company of my wife, musing on the events of
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: the past and the prospects of the coming year, the
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: coming century, the coming millennium. Footnote. When I say sitting,
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: of course, I do not mean any change of attitude,
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: such as you in Spaceland signify by that word. For
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: as we have no feet, we can no more sit
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: nor stand, in your sense of the word, than one
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: of your souls or flounders. Nevertheless, we perfectly well recognize
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 1: the different mental states of volition implied in lying sitting
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: and standing, which are to some extent indicated to a
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: beholder by a slight increase of luster corresponding to the
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: increase of volition. But on this and a thousand other
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: kindred subjects, time forbids me to dwell end a footnote.
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: My four sons and two orphan grandchildren had retired to
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: their several apartments, and my wife alone remained with me
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: to see the old millennium out and the new one in.
• 2:32:51
  Speaker 1: I was wrapped in thought, pondering in my mind some
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: words that had casually issued from the mouth of my
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: youngest grandson, a most promising young hexagon of unusual brilliancy
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: and perfect angularity. His uncles and I had been giving
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: him his usual practical lesson in sight recognition, turning ourselves
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: upon our centers, now rapidly, now more slowly, and questioning
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: him as to our positions. And his answers had been
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: so satisfactory that I had been induced to reward him
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: by giving him a few hints on arithmetic as applied
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: to geometry. Taking nine squares each an inch every way,
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: I had put them together so as to make one
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: large square with a side of three inches. And I
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: had hence proved to my little grandson that though it
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: was impossible for us to see the inside of the square,
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: yet we might ascertain the number of square inches in
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: a square by simply squaring the number of inches in
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: the side. And thus said I, we know that three
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: squared or nine represents the number of square inches in
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: a square whose side is three inches long. The little
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: hexagon meditated on this a while, and then said to me,
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 1: but you have been teaching me to raise numbers to
• 2:34:16
  Speaker 1: the third power. I suppose three cubed must mean something
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: in geometry. What does it mean? Nothing at all? Replied I, not,
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: at least in geometry, for geometry has only two dimensions.
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: And then I began to show the boy how a point,
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: by moving through a length of three inches, makes a
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: line of three inches, which may be represented by three,
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: And how a line of three inches moving parallel to
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: itself through a length of three inches makes a square
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: of three inches every way, which may be represented by
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: three squared. Upon this, my grandson, again returning to his
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: former suggestion, took me up rather suddenly and exclaimed, well, then,
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: if a point, by moving three inches makes a line
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 1: of three inches represented by three, and if a straight
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 1: line of three inches moving parallel to itself makes a
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: square of three inches every way represented by three squared,
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: it must be that a square of three inches every way,
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: moving somehow parallel to itself. But I don't see how
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: must make something else. But I don't see what of
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: three inches every way? And this must be represented by
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: three cubed go to bed, said I, a little ruffled
• 2:35:48
  Speaker 1: by his interruption. If you would talk less nonsense, you
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: would remember more sense. So my grandson had disappeared in disgrace,
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: and there I sat by my wife side, endeavoring to
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: form a retrospect of the year nineteen ninety nine and
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: of the possibilities of the year two thousand, but not
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 1: quite able to shake off the thoughts suggested by the
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: prattle of my bright little hexagon. Only a few sands
• 2:36:17
  Speaker 1: now remained in the half hour glass. Rousing myself from
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: my reverie, I turned the glass northward for the last
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 1: time in the old millennium, and in the act I
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: exclaimed aloud, the boy is a fool. Straightway, I became
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: conscious of a presence in the room, and a chilling
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: breath thrilled through my very being. He is no such thing,
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: cried my wife. And you are breaking the commandments in
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: thus dishonoring your own grandson. But I took no notice
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: of her. Looking round in every direction, I could see nothing.
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 1: Yet still I felt a presence, and shivered. As the
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: cold whisper came again. I started up. What is the matter,
• 2:37:05
  Speaker 1: said my wife. There is no draft. What are you
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: looking for? There is nothing? There was nothing, and I
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: resumed my seat again, exclaiming, the boy is a fool.
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: I say, three cubed can have no meaning in geometry.
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: At once there came a distinctly audible reply, the boy
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 1: is not a fool, and three cubed has an obvious
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: geometrical meaning. My wife, as well as myself heard the words,
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: although she did not understand their meaning, and both of
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 1: us sprang forward in the direction of the sound. What
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 1: was our horror when we saw before us a figure.
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: At the first glance it appeared to be a woman
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 1: seen sideways, But a moment's observation showed me that the
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: extremities passed into dimness too rapidly to represent one of
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: the female sex. And I should have thought it a circle,
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: only that it seemed to change its size in a
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 1: manner impossible for a circle, or for any regular figure
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 1: of which I had had experience. But my wife had
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: not my experience nor the coolness necessary to note these characteristics.
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: With the usual hastiness and unreasoning jealousy of her sex,
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 1: she flew at once to the conclusion that a woman
• 2:38:31
  Speaker 1: had entered the house through some small aperture. How comes
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: this person here, she exclaimed. You promised me, my dear,
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: that there should be no ventilators in our new house,
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 1: nor are there any, said I, But what makes you
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 1: think that the stranger is a woman? I see by
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 1: my power of sight recognition. Oh, I have no patience
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: with your sight recognition, replied she. Feeling is believing, and
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: a straight line to the touches worth a circle to
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: the sight, two proverbs very common with the frailes sex
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 1: in flat land. Well said I, for I was afraid
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: of irritating her. If it must be so, demand an introduction,
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: Assuming her most gracious manner, My wife advanced towards the stranger.
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: Permit me, madam, to feel and be felt by then
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: suddenly recoiling. Oh, it is not a woman. And there
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 1: are no angles either, not a trait of one. Can
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 1: it be that I have so misbehaved to a perfect circle?
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 1: I am, indeed in a sense a circle, replied the voice,
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: and a more perfect circle than any in flat land.
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 1: But to speak more accurately, I am many circles in one.
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: Then he added, more mildly, I have a message, dear
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: Madam to your husband, which I must not deliver in
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: your presence, and if you would suffer, asked to retire
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 1: for a few minutes. But my wife would not listen
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: to the proposal that our august visitor should so incommode himself,
• 2:40:09
  Speaker 1: and assuring the circle that the hour for her own
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: retirement had long passed. With many reiterated apologies for her
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: recent indiscretion, she at last retreated to her apartment. I
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: glanced at the half hour glass. The last sands had fallen.
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: The second millennium had begun. Section sixteen. How the stranger
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: vainly endeavored to reveal to me in word as the
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 1: mysteries of spaceland. As soon as the sound of my
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 1: wife's retreating footsteps had died away, I began to approach
• 2:40:48
  Speaker 1: the stranger with the intention of taking a nearer view,
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 1: and of bidding him be seated. But his appearance struck
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: me dumb and motionless with astonishment. Without the slightest symptoms
• 2:41:02
  Speaker 1: of angularity, he nevertheless varied every instant with gradations of
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 1: size and brightness, scarcely possible for any vigor within the
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: scope of my experience. The thought flashed across me that
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: I might have before me a burglar or cut throat,
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: some monstrous irregular Isosceles, who by feigning the voice of
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: a circle, had obtained admissions somehow into the house and
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: in a sitting room. The absence of fog, and the
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: season happened to be remarkably dry, made it difficult for
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: me to trust to sight recognition, especially at the short
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: distance at which I was standing. Desperate with fear, I
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: rushed forward with an unceremonious you must permit me, sir,
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: and felt him. My wife was right. There was not
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: the trace of an angle, not the slightest roughness or inequality.
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: Never in my life had I met with a more
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: perfect circle. He remained motionless while I walked round him,
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 1: beginning from his eye and returning to it again circular.
• 2:42:15
  Speaker 1: He was throughout a perfectly satisfactory circle. There could not
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: be a doubt of it. Then followed a dialogue, which
• 2:42:25
  Speaker 1: I will endeavor to set down as near as I
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: can recollect it, omitting only some of my profuse apologies,
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: for I was covered with shame and humiliation that I
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: a square should have been guilty of the impertinence of
• 2:42:38
  Speaker 1: feeling a circle. It was commenced by the stranger with
• 2:42:43
  Speaker 1: some impatience at the lengthiness of my introductory process. Stranger,
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: have you felt me enough by this time? Are you
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 1: not introduced to me yet? I most illustrious, sir, excuse
• 2:42:58
  Speaker 1: my awkwardness, which rise is not from ignorance of the
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 1: usages of polite society, but from a little surprise and
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: nervousness consequent on this somewhat unexpected visit. And I beseech
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: you to reveal my indiscretion to no one, and especially
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: not to my wife. But before your lordship enters into
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: further communications, would he deign to satisfy the curiosity of
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: one who would gladly know whence his visitor came, stranger
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 1: from space? From space? Sir? Whence else? I pardon me,
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: my lord, but is not your lordship already in space?
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 1: Your lordship and his humble servant even at this moment,
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 1: Stranger pool, what do you know of space? Define space?
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 1: I space, my Lord, is height and breadth indefinitely prolonged. Stranger, exactly,
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 1: you see, you do not even know what space is.
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: You think it is of two dimensions only but I
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: have come to announce to you a third height, breadth
• 2:44:15
  Speaker 1: and length. I your lordship is pleased to be merry.
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: We also speak of length and height, or breadth and thickness,
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: thus denoting two dimensions by four names. Stranger, But I
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: mean not only three names, but three dimensions. I would
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: your lordship indicate or explain to me in what direction
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 1: is the third dimension? Unknown to me, Stranger, I came
• 2:44:49
  Speaker 1: from it. It is up above and down below, I,
• 2:44:54
  Speaker 1: my lord means seemingly that it is northwood and southward. Stranger,
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: I mean nothing of the kind. I mean a direction
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: in which you cannot look because you have no eye
• 2:45:07
  Speaker 1: in your side. I pardon me, my lord. A moment's
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 1: inspection will convince your lordship that I have a perfect
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: luminary at the juncture of two of my sides. Stranger. Yes,
• 2:45:23
  Speaker 1: but in order to see into space, you ought to
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 1: have an eye, not on your perimeter, but on your side.
• 2:45:32
  Speaker 1: That is, on what you would probably call your inside,
• 2:45:36
  Speaker 1: but we in Spaceland should call it your side. I
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: an I in my inside, an I in my stomach,
• 2:45:47
  Speaker 1: your lordship jests, Stranger, I am in no jesting humor.
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: I tell you that I come from space, or, since
• 2:45:58
  Speaker 1: you will not understand what space means, from the land
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: of three dimensions. Whence I but lately looked down upon
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 1: your plane, which you call space four sooths from that
• 2:46:12
  Speaker 1: position of advantage, I discerned all that to speak of
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 1: as solid, by which you mean enclosed on four sides,
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: your houses, your churches, your very chests and safes, yes,
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: even your insides and stomachs, all lying open and exposed
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: to my view. I such assertions are easily made, my
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: Lord Stranger, but not easily proved, you mean, but I
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: mean to prove mine. When I descended here, I saw
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: your four sons, the Pentagons, each in his apartment, and
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 1: your two grandsons, the hexagons. I saw your youngest Hexagon
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 1: remain awhile with you, and then retire to his room,
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: leaving you and your wife alone. I saw your Isosceles
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: servants three in number in the kitchen at supper, and
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 1: the little page in the scullery. Then I came here.
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 1: And how do you think I came? I through the roof,
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 1: I suppose, Stranger.
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 2: Not so.
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 1: Your roof, as you know very well, has been recently
• 2:47:22
  Speaker 1: repaired and has no aperture by which even a woman
• 2:47:25
  Speaker 1: could penetrate. I tell you I come from space. Are
• 2:47:30
  Speaker 1: you not convinced by what I have told you? Of
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 1: your children and household? I your lordship must be aware
• 2:47:37
  Speaker 1: that such facts touching the belongings of his humble servant
• 2:47:41
  Speaker 1: might be easily ascertained by anyone in the neighborhood possessing
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 1: your Lordship's ample means of obtaining information. Stranger, how shall
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 1: I convince him? Surely a plain statement of facts followed
• 2:47:56
  Speaker 1: by ocular demonstration ought to suffice. Sir. Listen to me.
• 2:48:03
  Speaker 1: You are living on a plane. What you style flat
• 2:48:07
  Speaker 1: land is the vast level surface of what I may
• 2:48:12
  Speaker 1: call a fluid on or in the top of which
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: you and your countrymen move about without rising above it
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 1: or falling below it. I am not a plane figure,
• 2:48:25
  Speaker 1: but a solid. You call me a circle, But in
• 2:48:29
  Speaker 1: reality I am not a circle, but an infinite number
• 2:48:34
  Speaker 1: of circles, of size varying from a point to a
• 2:48:38
  Speaker 1: circle of thirteen inches in diameter, one placed on the
• 2:48:42
  Speaker 1: top of the other. When I cut through your plane,
• 2:48:46
  Speaker 1: as I am now doing, I make in your plane
• 2:48:50
  Speaker 1: a section which you very rightly call a circle. For
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 1: even a sphere which is my proper name in my
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: own country. If he manifest himself at all to an
• 2:49:02
  Speaker 1: inhabitant of flatland, must needs manifest himself as a circle.
• 2:49:08
  Speaker 1: Do you not remember, for I, who see all things,
• 2:49:11
  Speaker 1: discerned last night the phantasmal vision of Limeland written upon
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 1: your brain. Do you not remember? I say, how, when
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: you entered the realm of Linland, you are compelled to
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: manifest yourself to the king not as a square, but
• 2:49:27
  Speaker 1: as a line, because that linear realm had not dimensions
• 2:49:33
  Speaker 1: enough to represent the whole of you, but only a
• 2:49:35
  Speaker 1: slice or section of you. In precisely the same way,
• 2:49:41
  Speaker 1: your country of two dimensions is not spacious enough to
• 2:49:45
  Speaker 1: represent me, a being of three, but can only exhibit
• 2:49:50
  Speaker 1: a slice or section of me, which is what you
• 2:49:53
  Speaker 1: call a circle. The diminished brightness of your eye indicates incredulity,
• 2:50:00
  Speaker 1: But now prepare to receive proof positive of the truth
• 2:50:04
  Speaker 1: of my assertions. You cannot indeed see more than one
• 2:50:09
  Speaker 1: of my sections or circles at a time, for you
• 2:50:13
  Speaker 1: have no power to raise your eye out of the
• 2:50:15
  Speaker 1: plane of flat land. But you can at least see
• 2:50:19
  Speaker 1: that as I rise in space, so my section becomes smaller.
• 2:50:24
  Speaker 1: See now I will rise, and the effect upon your
• 2:50:28
  Speaker 1: eye will be that my circle will become smaller and smaller,
• 2:50:32
  Speaker 1: till it dwindles to a point and finally vanishes. Reader's note.
• 2:50:37
  Speaker 1: The following paragraph makes reference to a diagram. The diagram
• 2:50:42
  Speaker 1: shows a horizontal line cutting the line. There are three spheres.
• 2:50:48
  Speaker 1: The first, or leftmost, is half above and half below
• 2:50:52
  Speaker 1: the line, with its equator drawn at the level of
• 2:50:55
  Speaker 1: the line. To indicate the sphere's solid nature. It is
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 1: written the sphere with his section at full size. The second,
• 2:51:06
  Speaker 1: or central sphere is positioned about five sixths above the
• 2:51:10
  Speaker 1: line and one sixth below, with a circumference drawn at
• 2:51:15
  Speaker 1: the level of the line. This is labeled two, the
• 2:51:19
  Speaker 1: sphere rising. The third, or right hand sphere, is nearly
• 2:51:25
  Speaker 1: all above the line, with just a sliver below the
• 2:51:29
  Speaker 1: circumference being drawn at the level of the line. This
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 1: is labeled three, the sphere on the point of vanishing.
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 1: At the right hand end of the line. There is
• 2:51:40
  Speaker 1: an eye marked my eye looking towards the left end
• 2:51:45
  Speaker 1: of Reader's note. There was no rising that I could see,
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 1: but he diminished and finally vanished. I winked once or
• 2:51:55
  Speaker 1: twice to make sure that I was not dreaming. But
• 2:51:58
  Speaker 1: it was no dream, for from the depths of nowhere
• 2:52:02
  Speaker 1: came forth a hollow voice close to my heart. It seemed,
• 2:52:07
  Speaker 1: am I quite gone? Are you convinced?
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 2:52:11
  Speaker 1: Well? Now I will gradually return to flat land, and
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 1: you shall see my section become larger and larger. Every
• 2:52:21
  Speaker 1: reader in Spaceland will easily understand that my mysterious guest
• 2:52:25
  Speaker 1: was speaking the language of truth and even of simplicity.
• 2:52:30
  Speaker 1: But to me, proficient though I was in Flatland mathematics,
• 2:52:35
  Speaker 1: it was by no means a simple matter. The rough
• 2:52:39
  Speaker 1: diagram given above will make it clear to any Spaceland
• 2:52:43
  Speaker 1: child that the sphere ascending in the three positions indicated
• 2:52:48
  Speaker 1: there must needs have manifested himself to me, or to
• 2:52:52
  Speaker 1: any flat Lander, as a circle, at first of full size,
• 2:52:56
  Speaker 1: then small, and at last very small, indeed approaching to
• 2:53:00
  Speaker 1: a point. But to me, although I saw the facts
• 2:53:05
  Speaker 1: before me, the causes were as dark as ever. All
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: that I could comprehend was that the circle had made
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 1: himself smaller and vanished, and that he had now reappeared
• 2:53:17
  Speaker 1: and was rapidly making himself larger. When he had regained
• 2:53:22
  Speaker 1: his original size, he heaved a deep sigh, for he perceived,
• 2:53:27
  Speaker 1: by my silence that I had altogether failed to comprehend him,
• 2:53:32
  Speaker 1: and indeed I was now inclining to the beliefs that
• 2:53:36
  Speaker 1: he must be no circle at all, but some extremely
• 2:53:39
  Speaker 1: clever juggler, or else, that the old wide tales were true,
• 2:53:44
  Speaker 1: and that after all there were such people as enchanters
• 2:53:47
  Speaker 1: and magicians. After a long pause, he muttered to himself,
• 2:53:54
  Speaker 1: one resource alone remains. If I am not to resort
• 2:53:57
  Speaker 1: to action, I'm to try the method of analogy. Then
• 2:54:04
  Speaker 1: followed a still longer silence, after which he continued our dialogue. Sphere,
• 2:54:12
  Speaker 1: tell me, mister mathematician, if a point moves northward and
• 2:54:17
  Speaker 1: leaves a luminous wake, what name would you give to
• 2:54:21
  Speaker 1: the wake? I a straight line sphere, and a straight
• 2:54:28
  Speaker 1: line has how many extremities? I two sphere. Now conceive
• 2:54:36
  Speaker 1: the northward straight line moving parallel to itself east and west,
• 2:54:42
  Speaker 1: so that every point in it leaves behind it the
• 2:54:45
  Speaker 1: wake of a straight line. What name will you give
• 2:54:50
  Speaker 1: to the figure thereby formed? We will suppose that it
• 2:54:53
  Speaker 1: moves through a distance equal to the original straight line.
• 2:54:58
  Speaker 1: What name I say? I a square sphere, and how
• 2:55:04
  Speaker 1: many sides has a square and how many angles I
• 2:55:10
  Speaker 1: four sides and four angles sphere. Now stretch your imagination
• 2:55:16
  Speaker 1: a little and conceive a square in flatland moving parallel
• 2:55:22
  Speaker 1: to itself upward. I what northward, sphere. No, not northward
• 2:55:32
  Speaker 1: upward out of flatland altogether. If it moved northward, the
• 2:55:39
  Speaker 1: southern points in the square would have to move through
• 2:55:41
  Speaker 1: the positions previously occupied by the northern points. But that
• 2:55:46
  Speaker 1: is not my meaning. I mean that every point in you,
• 2:55:51
  Speaker 1: for you are a square, and will serve the purpose
• 2:55:53
  Speaker 1: of my illustration. Every point in you, that is to say,
• 2:55:58
  Speaker 1: in what you call your inn side, is to pass
• 2:56:02
  Speaker 1: upwards through space in such a way that no point
• 2:56:06
  Speaker 1: shall pass through the position previously occupied by any other point,
• 2:56:12
  Speaker 1: but each point shall describe a straight line of its own.
• 2:56:17
  Speaker 1: This is all in accordance with analogy. Surely it must
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 1: be clear to you. Restraining my impatience, for I was
• 2:56:25
  Speaker 1: now under a strong temptation to rush blindly at my
• 2:56:29
  Speaker 1: visitor and to precipitate him into space or out of
• 2:56:32
  Speaker 1: flat land anywhere, so that I could get rid of him,
• 2:56:35
  Speaker 1: I replied, And what may be the nature of the
• 2:56:38
  Speaker 1: figure which I am to shape out by this motion
• 2:56:41
  Speaker 1: which you are pleased to denote by the word upwards.
• 2:56:45
  Speaker 1: I presume it is describable in the language of flatland sphere. Oh, certainly,
• 2:56:52
  Speaker 1: it is all plain and simple and in strict accordance
• 2:56:56
  Speaker 1: with analogy. Only by the way, you must not speak
• 2:57:00
  Speaker 1: of the result as being a figure, but as a solid.
• 2:57:04
  Speaker 1: But I will describe it to you, or rather not I,
• 2:57:07
  Speaker 1: but analogy. We began with a single point, which, of course,
• 2:57:12
  Speaker 1: being itself a point, has only one terminal point. One
• 2:57:18
  Speaker 1: point produces a line with two terminal points. One line
• 2:57:24
  Speaker 1: produces a square with four terminal points. Now you can
• 2:57:30
  Speaker 1: yourself give the answer to your own question. One, two,
• 2:57:35
  Speaker 1: four are evidently in geometrical progression. What is the next number? I? Eight? Sphere? Exactly?
• 2:57:45
  Speaker 1: The one square produces a something which you do not
• 2:57:49
  Speaker 1: as yet know a name for, but which we call
• 2:57:51
  Speaker 1: a cube with eight terminal points. Now are you convinced
• 2:57:57
  Speaker 1: I and has this creature sides as well as angles
• 2:58:02
  Speaker 1: or what you call terminal points? Sphere? Of course, and
• 2:58:07
  Speaker 1: all according to analogy. But by the way, not what
• 2:58:12
  Speaker 1: you call sides, but what we call sides you would
• 2:58:17
  Speaker 1: call them solids. I And how many solids or sides
• 2:58:23
  Speaker 1: will appertain to this being whom I am to generate
• 2:58:26
  Speaker 1: by the motion of my inside in an upward direction,
• 2:58:30
  Speaker 1: and whom you call a cube sphere? How can you ask?
• 2:58:36
  Speaker 1: And you a mathematician, A side of anything is always,
• 2:58:41
  Speaker 1: if I may so, say, one dimension behind the thing. Consequently,
• 2:58:47
  Speaker 1: as there is no dimension behind a point, a point
• 2:58:50
  Speaker 1: has nought sides. A line, if I may so say,
• 2:58:55
  Speaker 1: has two sides. For the points of a line may
• 2:58:58
  Speaker 1: be called by courtesy its sides. A square has four sides,
• 2:59:04
  Speaker 1: not two. For what progression do you call that h
• 2:59:10
  Speaker 1: arithmetical sphere? And what is the next number? I six
• 2:59:18
  Speaker 1: sphere exactly? Then you see you have answered your own question.
• 2:59:24
  Speaker 1: The cube which you will generate will be bounded by
• 2:59:28
  Speaker 1: six sides, that is to say, six of your insides.
• 2:59:33
  Speaker 1: You see it all now, eh monster, I shrieked, be
• 2:59:39
  Speaker 1: thou juggler, enchanter, dream or devil. No more will I
• 2:59:44
  Speaker 1: endure thy mockeries. Either thou or I must perish. And
• 2:59:49
  Speaker 1: saying these words, I precipitated myself upon him. Section seventeen.
• 2:59:58
  Speaker 1: How the sphere, having in vain tried words, resorted to deeds.
• 3:00:04
  Speaker 1: It was in vain I brought my hardest right angle
• 3:00:08
  Speaker 1: into violent collision, with the stranger pressing on him with
• 3:00:11
  Speaker 1: a force sufficient to have destroyed any ordinary circle. But
• 3:00:16
  Speaker 1: I could feel him slowly and unarrestably slipping from my contact,
• 3:00:22
  Speaker 1: not edging to the right nor to the left, but
• 3:00:25
  Speaker 1: moving somehow out of the world and vanishing to nothing.
• 3:00:30
  Speaker 1: Soon there was a blank, but I still heard the
• 3:00:33
  Speaker 1: intruder's voice, sphere, Why will you refuse to listen to reason?
• 3:00:40
  Speaker 1: I had hoped to find in you as being a
• 3:00:43
  Speaker 1: man of sense and an accomplished mathematician, a fit apostle
• 3:00:47
  Speaker 1: for the Gospel of the Three Dimensions, which I am
• 3:00:49
  Speaker 1: allowed to preach once only in a thousand years. But
• 3:00:53
  Speaker 1: now I know not how to convince you stay. I
• 3:00:58
  Speaker 1: have it. Deeds and not words, shall proclaim the truth. Listen,
• 3:01:03
  Speaker 1: my friend, I have told you I can see from
• 3:01:07
  Speaker 1: my position in space the inside of all things that
• 3:01:11
  Speaker 1: you consider closed. For example, I see in yonder cupboard
• 3:01:16
  Speaker 1: near which you are standing, several of what you call boxes,
• 3:01:20
  Speaker 1: But like everything else in flatland, they have no tops
• 3:01:23
  Speaker 1: nor bottoms full of money. I also see two tablets
• 3:01:29
  Speaker 1: of accounts. I am about to descend into that cupboard
• 3:01:33
  Speaker 1: and to bring you one of those tablets. I saw
• 3:01:37
  Speaker 1: you lock the cupboard half an hour ago, and I
• 3:01:39
  Speaker 1: know you have the key in your possession. But I
• 3:01:42
  Speaker 1: descend from space. The doors you see remain unmoved. Now
• 3:01:48
  Speaker 1: I am in the cupboard and am taking the tablet.
• 3:01:51
  Speaker 1: Now I have it. Now I ascend with it. I
• 3:01:56
  Speaker 1: rushed to the closet and dashed the door open. One
• 3:02:00
  Speaker 1: of the tablets was gone. With a mocking laugh, the
• 3:02:04
  Speaker 1: stranger appeared in the other corner of the room, and
• 3:02:08
  Speaker 1: at the same time the tablet appeared upon the floor.
• 3:02:12
  Speaker 1: I took it up. There could be no doubt it
• 3:02:16
  Speaker 1: was the missing tablet. I groaned with horror, doubting whether
• 3:02:21
  Speaker 1: I was not out of my senses. But the stranger continued,
• 3:02:25
  Speaker 1: Surely you must now see that my explanation and no
• 3:02:29
  Speaker 1: other suits the phenomena. What you call solid things are
• 3:02:35
  Speaker 1: really superficial. What you call space is really nothing but
• 3:02:41
  Speaker 1: a great plane. I am in space and look down
• 3:02:45
  Speaker 1: upon the insides of the things of which you only
• 3:02:49
  Speaker 1: see the outsides. You could leave this plane yourself, if
• 3:02:54
  Speaker 1: you could but summon up the necessary volition. A slight
• 3:02:59
  Speaker 1: upward or onward motion would enable you to see all
• 3:03:02
  Speaker 1: that I can see. The higher I mount, and the
• 3:03:06
  Speaker 1: further I go from your plane, the more I can see,
• 3:03:11
  Speaker 1: though of course I see it on a smaller scale.
• 3:03:15
  Speaker 1: For example, I am ascending. Now I can see your neighbor,
• 3:03:19
  Speaker 1: the hexagon, and his family in their several apartments. Now
• 3:03:24
  Speaker 1: I see the inside of the theater, ten doors off
• 3:03:28
  Speaker 1: from which the audience is only just departing, and on
• 3:03:31
  Speaker 1: the other side a circle in his study, sitting at
• 3:03:34
  Speaker 1: his books. Now I shall come back to you, And
• 3:03:39
  Speaker 1: as a crowning proof, what do you say to my
• 3:03:42
  Speaker 1: giving you a touch, just the least touch in your stomach,
• 3:03:48
  Speaker 1: It will not seriously injure you, and the slight pain
• 3:03:52
  Speaker 1: you may suffer cannot be compared with the mental benefit
• 3:03:56
  Speaker 1: you will receive. Before I could utter a word of remonstrance,
• 3:04:02
  Speaker 1: I felt a shooting pain in my inside, and a
• 3:04:05
  Speaker 1: demoniacal laugh seemed to issue from within me. A moment afterwards,
• 3:04:11
  Speaker 1: the sharp agony had ceased, leaving nothing but a dull
• 3:04:14
  Speaker 1: ache behind, and the stranger began to reappear, saying, as
• 3:04:19
  Speaker 1: he gradually increased in size, there I had not hurt
• 3:04:23
  Speaker 1: you much, have I? If you are not convinced, now
• 3:04:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know what will convince you? What say you?
• 3:04:33
  Speaker 1: My resolution was taken. It seemed intolerable that I should
• 3:04:37
  Speaker 1: endure existence subject to the arbitrary visitations of a magician
• 3:04:42
  Speaker 1: who could thus play tricks with one's very stomach. If
• 3:04:46
  Speaker 1: only I could, in any way manage to pin him
• 3:04:49
  Speaker 1: against the wall till help came once more, I dashed
• 3:04:53
  Speaker 1: my hardest angle against him, at the same time, alarming
• 3:04:57
  Speaker 1: the whole household by my cries, aid, I believe at
• 3:05:02
  Speaker 1: the moment of my onset, the stranger had sunk below
• 3:05:05
  Speaker 1: our plane and really found difficulty in rising. In any case,
• 3:05:10
  Speaker 1: he remained motionless, while I, hearing as I thought the
• 3:05:14
  Speaker 1: sound of some help approaching, pressed against him with redoubled vigor,
• 3:05:19
  Speaker 1: and continued to shout for assistance. A convulsive shudder ran
• 3:05:24
  Speaker 1: through the sphere. This must not be, I thought. I
• 3:05:29
  Speaker 1: heard him say, either he must listen to reason, or
• 3:05:33
  Speaker 1: I must have recourse to the last resource of civilization. Then,
• 3:05:38
  Speaker 1: addressing me in a louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, listen,
• 3:05:44
  Speaker 1: no stranger must witness what you have witnessed. Send your
• 3:05:47
  Speaker 1: wife back at once before she enters the apartment. The
• 3:05:51
  Speaker 1: Gospel of Three dimensions must not be thus frustrated. Not
• 3:05:56
  Speaker 1: thus must the fruits of one thousand years of waiting
• 3:05:58
  Speaker 1: be thrown away. I hear her coming back back away
• 3:06:04
  Speaker 1: from me, Or you must go with me whither you
• 3:06:07
  Speaker 1: know not into the land of three dimensions. Fall madman, irregular,
• 3:06:15
  Speaker 1: I exclaimed, Never will I release thee Thou shalt pay
• 3:06:19
  Speaker 1: the penalty of thine impostures. A is it come to this,
• 3:06:24
  Speaker 1: thundered the stranger.
• 3:06:26
  Speaker 3: Then meet your fate. Out of your plane. You go
• 3:06:31
  Speaker 3: once twice thrice tis done. End of Section seventeen, Part two,
• 3:06:42
  Speaker 3: Section eighteen. How I came to spaceland and what I
• 3:06:46
  Speaker 3: saw there? An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness,
• 3:06:53
  Speaker 3: then a dizzy, sickening sensation of sight that was not
• 3:06:57
  Speaker 3: like seeing. I saw a line that was no line,
• 3:07:01
  Speaker 3: space that was not space. I was myself and not myself.
• 3:07:08
  Speaker 3: When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony.
• 3:07:12
  Speaker 3: Either this is madness or it is hell. It is neither,
• 3:07:17
  Speaker 3: calmly replied the voice of the sphere. It is knowledge.
• 3:07:22
  Speaker 3: It is three dimensions. Open your eye once again and
• 3:07:27
  Speaker 3: try to look steadily. I looked and behold a new
• 3:07:34
  Speaker 3: world there stood before me visibly incorporate all that I
• 3:07:41
  Speaker 3: had before inferred, conjectured, dreamed of perfect circular beauty. What
• 3:07:49
  Speaker 3: seemed the center of the Stranger's form lay open to
• 3:07:53
  Speaker 3: my view. Yet I could see no heart, nor lungs,
• 3:07:57
  Speaker 3: nor arteries, only a beautiful, harmonious something for which I
• 3:08:04
  Speaker 3: had no words. But you, my readers in Spaceland, would
• 3:08:09
  Speaker 3: call it the surface of the sphere. Prostrating myself mentally
• 3:08:15
  Speaker 3: before my guide, I cried, how is it, o divine
• 3:08:20
  Speaker 3: ideal of consummate loveliness and wisdom, that I see thy inside,
• 3:08:25
  Speaker 3: and yet cannot discern thy heart, thy lungs, thy arteries,
• 3:08:30
  Speaker 3: thy liver. What you think you see, you see not,
• 3:08:35
  Speaker 3: he replied. It is not given to you, nor to
• 3:08:38
  Speaker 3: any other being, to behold my internal parts. I am
• 3:08:43
  Speaker 3: of a different order of beings from those in Flatland.
• 3:08:48
  Speaker 3: Were I a circle, you could discern my intestines. But
• 3:08:52
  Speaker 3: I am a being composed, as I told you before,
• 3:08:55
  Speaker 3: of many circles, the many in the one called in
• 3:08:59
  Speaker 3: this country a sphere. And just as the outside of
• 3:09:04
  Speaker 3: a cube is a square, so the outside of a
• 3:09:07
  Speaker 3: sphere presents the appearance of a circle. Bewildered though I
• 3:09:13
  Speaker 3: was by my teacher's enigmatic utterance, I no longer chafed
• 3:09:18
  Speaker 3: against it, but worshiped him in silent adoration. He continued,
• 3:09:24
  Speaker 3: with more mildness in his voice. Distress not yourself. If
• 3:09:28
  Speaker 3: you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of spaceland
• 3:09:33
  Speaker 3: by degrees, they will dawn upon you. Let us begin
• 3:09:37
  Speaker 3: by casting back a glance at the region whence you came.
• 3:09:41
  Speaker 3: Return with me awhile to the plains of flatland, and
• 3:09:45
  Speaker 3: I will show you that which you have so often
• 3:09:48
  Speaker 3: reasoned and thought about, but never seen with the sense
• 3:09:51
  Speaker 3: of sight. A visible angle impossible, I cried, But the
• 3:09:59
  Speaker 3: sphere leading the way, I followed, as if in a dream,
• 3:10:03
  Speaker 3: till once more his voice arrested me. Look yonder, and
• 3:10:07
  Speaker 3: behold your own pentagonal house and all its inmates. Reader's Note.
• 3:10:13
  Speaker 3: The following paragraph refers to a detailed diagram. The diagram
• 3:10:18
  Speaker 3: shows the points of the compass, with north at the top.
• 3:10:22
  Speaker 3: Next to this, there is a large, equal sided pentagon
• 3:10:26
  Speaker 3: sitting on a horizontal base. Centrally placed on the lower
• 3:10:31
  Speaker 3: left edge of the pentagon, there is an opening labeled
• 3:10:34
  Speaker 3: men's door. The size of the opening being about a
• 3:10:38
  Speaker 3: quarter of the length of that edge. This door leads
• 3:10:42
  Speaker 3: into a large central space labeled the Hall, which is
• 3:10:46
  Speaker 3: otherwise surrounded by rooms. The position of these rooms will
• 3:10:50
  Speaker 3: now be described clockwise from the northern point. The upper
• 3:10:56
  Speaker 3: right edge is divided equally between two rooms labeled in order,
• 3:11:01
  Speaker 3: my study and my Bedroom. The left hand wall of
• 3:11:06
  Speaker 3: the study runs vertically down from the northern point, and
• 3:11:10
  Speaker 3: the right hand wall is parallel to the lower right
• 3:11:13
  Speaker 3: edge of the pentagon. The study has a door into
• 3:11:17
  Speaker 3: the hall, and there is an Isosceles triangle inside labeled
• 3:11:21
  Speaker 3: the page. Sharing a wall with the study is my
• 3:11:26
  Speaker 3: rhomboid shaped bedroom, the right hand wall of which is
• 3:11:30
  Speaker 3: the top quarter of the lower right hand edge of
• 3:11:33
  Speaker 3: the pentagon. It shares a wall and communicating door with
• 3:11:38
  Speaker 3: the room to the south labeled My wife's Apartment. About
• 3:11:45
  Speaker 3: three tenths down the lower right edge, there is a
• 3:11:48
  Speaker 3: narrow opening labeled Women's door. This leads into a long,
• 3:11:53
  Speaker 3: narrow room labeled my wife's apartment. This room has doorways
• 3:11:59
  Speaker 3: into my my bedroom above, into the hall to the left,
• 3:12:03
  Speaker 3: and into the room to the south, also long and narrow,
• 3:12:07
  Speaker 3: where a straight line is marked My daughter The only
• 3:12:11
  Speaker 3: door from my daughter's room is into my wife's apartment.
• 3:12:17
  Speaker 3: Continuing clockwise down the lower right edge of the pentagon,
• 3:12:21
  Speaker 3: the next room is a long and wide room with
• 3:12:24
  Speaker 3: two openings into the hall. Inside are three isosceles triangles
• 3:12:29
  Speaker 3: of varying acuteness. The uppermost and most acute is labeled
• 3:12:35
  Speaker 3: the scullion, the next and middle sized is labeled the footman,
• 3:12:40
  Speaker 3: and the lowest and least acute is labeled the butler.
• 3:12:46
  Speaker 3: At the bottom right point of the pentagon, a large
• 3:12:49
  Speaker 3: corner room is labeled the cellar and has a door
• 3:12:52
  Speaker 3: into the hall. Along the left half of the bottom
• 3:12:57
  Speaker 3: or southern edge, there are two small rooms, each with
• 3:13:00
  Speaker 3: a door into the hall and each with a hexagon inside,
• 3:13:04
  Speaker 3: labeled my Grandson's. Continuing clockwise up the left side of
• 3:13:10
  Speaker 3: the pentagon, between the men's door and the northern point,
• 3:13:15
  Speaker 3: there are four small rooms. Each of these rooms labeled
• 3:13:19
  Speaker 3: my Sons, has a pentagon inside it and a door
• 3:13:23
  Speaker 3: into the hall. In the middle of the central hall
• 3:13:27
  Speaker 3: is a straight line labeled my Wife. Outside the pentagon
• 3:13:33
  Speaker 3: one at each end of the bottom or southern edge,
• 3:13:36
  Speaker 3: are two very acute isosceles triangles, each labeled policeman end
• 3:13:42
  Speaker 3: of reader's note. I looked below and saw with my
• 3:13:47
  Speaker 3: physical eye all that domestic individuality which I had hitherto
• 3:13:52
  Speaker 3: merely inferred with the understanding, And how poor and shadowy
• 3:13:57
  Speaker 3: was the inferred conjecture in comparison with the reality which
• 3:14:01
  Speaker 3: I now beheld. My four sons calmly asleep in the
• 3:14:06
  Speaker 3: northwestern rooms, my two orphan grandsons to the south, the servants,
• 3:14:12
  Speaker 3: the butler, my daughter, all in their several apartments. Only
• 3:14:18
  Speaker 3: my affectionate wife, alarmed by my continued absence, had quitted
• 3:14:23
  Speaker 3: her room and was roving up and down in the hall,
• 3:14:25
  Speaker 3: anxiously awaiting my return. Also, the page, aroused by my cries,
• 3:14:31
  Speaker 3: had left his room, and under pretext of ascertaining whether
• 3:14:35
  Speaker 3: I had fallen somewhere in a faint, was prying into
• 3:14:39
  Speaker 3: the cabinet in my study. All this I could now
• 3:14:43
  Speaker 3: see not merely infer And as we came nearer and nearer,
• 3:14:49
  Speaker 3: I could discern even the contents of my cabinet, and
• 3:14:53
  Speaker 3: the two chests of gold, and the tablets of which
• 3:14:56
  Speaker 3: the sphere had made mention. Touched by my wife's distress,
• 3:15:01
  Speaker 3: I would have sprung downward to reassure her, But I
• 3:15:04
  Speaker 3: found myself incapable of motion. Trouble not to yourself about
• 3:15:09
  Speaker 3: your wife, said my guide. She will not be long
• 3:15:13
  Speaker 3: left in anxiety. Meantime, let us take a survey of
• 3:15:17
  Speaker 3: flat land. Once more, I felt myself rising through space.
• 3:15:23
  Speaker 3: It was even as the sphere had said. The further
• 3:15:27
  Speaker 3: we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became
• 3:15:31
  Speaker 3: the field of vision. My native city, with the interior
• 3:15:35
  Speaker 3: of every house and every creature therein lay open to
• 3:15:39
  Speaker 3: my view. In miniature, we mounted higher and lo the
• 3:15:45
  Speaker 3: secrets of the earth. The depths of mines, and inmost
• 3:15:49
  Speaker 3: caverns of the hills were bared before me. AWE struck
• 3:15:54
  Speaker 3: at the sight of the mysteries of the earth thus
• 3:15:57
  Speaker 3: unveiled before my unworthy eye. I said to my companion, behold,
• 3:16:03
  Speaker 3: I am become as a God. For the wise men
• 3:16:06
  Speaker 3: in our country say that to see all things, or
• 3:16:09
  Speaker 3: as they express it, omnividence, is the attribute of God alone.
• 3:16:16
  Speaker 3: There was something of scorn in the voice of my
• 3:16:19
  Speaker 3: teacher as he made answer, is it so? Indeed?
• 3:16:23
  Speaker 1: Then the very pickpockets and cutthroats of my country are
• 3:16:26
  Speaker 1: to be worshiped by your wise men as being gods,
• 3:16:31
  Speaker 1: for there is not one of them that does not
• 3:16:33
  Speaker 1: see as much as you see now. But trust me,
• 3:16:37
  Speaker 1: your wise men are wrong. I then is omnividence the
• 3:16:42
  Speaker 1: attribute of others beside God's sphere? I do not know.
• 3:16:49
  Speaker 1: But if a pickpocket or a cutthroat of our country
• 3:16:52
  Speaker 1: can see everything that is in your country, surely that
• 3:16:56
  Speaker 1: is no reason why the pickpocket or cutthroat should be
• 3:16:59
  Speaker 1: accepted you as a god. This omnividence, as you call it,
• 3:17:04
  Speaker 1: it is not a common word in Spaceland. Does it
• 3:17:07
  Speaker 1: make you more just, more merciful, less selfish, more loving?
• 3:17:13
  Speaker 1: Not in the least, then, how does it make you
• 3:17:16
  Speaker 1: more divine? I? More merciful, more loving? But these are
• 3:17:23
  Speaker 1: the qualities of women. And we know that a circle
• 3:17:26
  Speaker 1: is a higher being than a straight line, in so
• 3:17:29
  Speaker 1: far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed
• 3:17:32
  Speaker 1: than mere affection sphere. It is not for me to
• 3:17:38
  Speaker 1: classify human faculties according to merit. Yet many of the
• 3:17:42
  Speaker 1: best and wisest in Spaceland think more of the affections
• 3:17:45
  Speaker 1: than of the understanding, more of your despised straight lines
• 3:17:50
  Speaker 1: than of your belauded circles. But enough of this look yonder?
• 3:17:56
  Speaker 1: Do you know that building? I looked, and afar off
• 3:18:01
  Speaker 1: I saw an immense polygonal structure in which I recognized
• 3:18:05
  Speaker 1: the General Assembly Hall of the States of Flatland, surrounded
• 3:18:08
  Speaker 1: by dense lines of pentagonal buildings at right angles to
• 3:18:12
  Speaker 1: each other, which I knew to be streets, And I
• 3:18:15
  Speaker 1: perceived that I was approaching the great metropolis. Here we descend,
• 3:18:20
  Speaker 1: said my guide. It was now morning, the first hour
• 3:18:24
  Speaker 1: of the first day of the two thousandth year of
• 3:18:27
  Speaker 1: our era. Acting as was there wont, in strict accordance
• 3:18:32
  Speaker 1: with precedent, the highest circles of the realm were meeting
• 3:18:35
  Speaker 1: in solemn conclave, as they had met on the first
• 3:18:38
  Speaker 1: hour of the first day of the year one thousand,
• 3:18:42
  Speaker 1: and also on the first hour of the first day
• 3:18:45
  Speaker 1: of the year nought. The minutes of the previous meetings
• 3:18:50
  Speaker 1: were now read by one whom I at once recognized
• 3:18:53
  Speaker 1: as my brother, a perfectly symmetrical square, and the chief
• 3:18:57
  Speaker 1: Clerk of the High Council. It was found recorded on
• 3:19:01
  Speaker 1: each occasion that, whereas the states had been troubled by
• 3:19:05
  Speaker 1: divers ill intentioned persons pretending to have received revelations from
• 3:19:10
  Speaker 1: another world, and professing to produce demonstrations, whereby they had
• 3:19:15
  Speaker 1: instigated to frenzy both themselves and others. It had been
• 3:19:19
  Speaker 1: for this cause unanimously resolved by the Grand Council that
• 3:19:24
  Speaker 1: on the first day of each millinery, special injunctions be
• 3:19:28
  Speaker 1: sent to the prefects in the several districts of Flatland,
• 3:19:32
  Speaker 1: to make strict search for such misguided persons, and without
• 3:19:36
  Speaker 1: formality of mathematical examination, to destroy all such as were
• 3:19:41
  Speaker 1: isosceles of any degree, to scourge and imprison any regular triangle,
• 3:19:46
  Speaker 1: to cause any square or pentagon to be sent to
• 3:19:49
  Speaker 1: the district asylum, and to arrest any one of higher rank,
• 3:19:54
  Speaker 1: sending him straightway to the capital to be examined and
• 3:19:57
  Speaker 1: judged by the Council. You hear your fate, said the
• 3:20:02
  Speaker 1: sphere to me, while the Council was passing for the
• 3:20:05
  Speaker 1: third time the formal resolution death or imprisonment awaits the
• 3:20:10
  Speaker 1: apostle of the Gospel of three Dimensions. Not so, replied I.
• 3:20:16
  Speaker 1: The matter is now so clear to me, the nature
• 3:20:19
  Speaker 1: of real space so palpable, that methinks I could make
• 3:20:22
  Speaker 1: a child understand it. Permit me but to descend at
• 3:20:26
  Speaker 1: this moment and enlighten them. Not yet, said my guide.
• 3:20:32
  Speaker 1: The time will come. For that meantime I must perform
• 3:20:36
  Speaker 1: my mission. Stay thou there in thy place. Saying these words,
• 3:20:41
  Speaker 1: he leapt with great dexterity into the sea, if I
• 3:20:44
  Speaker 1: may so call it of flat land. Right in the
• 3:20:47
  Speaker 1: midst of the ring of counselors, I come, cried he
• 3:20:51
  Speaker 1: to proclaim that there is a land of three dimensions.
• 3:20:56
  Speaker 1: I could see many of the younger counselors start back
• 3:21:00
  Speaker 1: in manifest horror as the sphere's circular section widened before them.
• 3:21:06
  Speaker 1: But on a sign from the presiding circle, who showed
• 3:21:09
  Speaker 1: not the slightest alarm or surprise, six isosceles of a
• 3:21:13
  Speaker 1: lone type, from six different quarters, rushed upon the sphere.
• 3:21:18
  Speaker 1: We have him, they cried, No, yes, we have him.
• 3:21:22
  Speaker 1: Still he's going. He's gone, my lords, said the President
• 3:21:29
  Speaker 1: to the junior circles of the council. There is not
• 3:21:33
  Speaker 1: the slightest need for surprise. The secret archives, to which
• 3:21:37
  Speaker 1: I alone have access, tell me that a similar occurrence
• 3:21:40
  Speaker 1: happened on the last two millennial commencements. You will, of
• 3:21:45
  Speaker 1: course say nothing of these trifles outside the cabinet. Raising
• 3:21:50
  Speaker 1: his voice, he now summoned the guard, arrest the policemen,
• 3:21:55
  Speaker 1: gag them, you know your duty. After he had consigned
• 3:22:00
  Speaker 1: to their fate the wretched policeman, ill fated and unwilling
• 3:22:04
  Speaker 1: witnesses of a state secret which they were not to
• 3:22:07
  Speaker 1: be permitted to reveal, he again addressed to counselors, my lords,
• 3:22:13
  Speaker 1: the business of the Council being concluded, I have only
• 3:22:16
  Speaker 1: to wish you a happy new year. Before departing, he
• 3:22:21
  Speaker 1: expressed at some lengths to the Clerk, my excellent but
• 3:22:24
  Speaker 1: most unfortunate brother, his sincere regret that, in accordance with President,
• 3:22:30
  Speaker 1: and for the sake of secrecy, he must condemn him
• 3:22:34
  Speaker 1: to perpetual imprisonment, but added his satisfaction that unless some
• 3:22:39
  Speaker 1: mention were made by him of that day's incident, his
• 3:22:42
  Speaker 1: life would be spared Section nineteen. How though the sphere
• 3:22:50
  Speaker 1: showed me other mysteries of Spaceland, I still desired more,
• 3:22:55
  Speaker 1: and what came of it? When I saw my poor
• 3:23:00
  Speaker 1: brother led away to imprisonment. I attempted to leap down
• 3:23:03
  Speaker 1: into the council chamber, desiring to intercede on his behalf,
• 3:23:07
  Speaker 1: or at least bid him farewell. But I found that
• 3:23:10
  Speaker 1: I had no motion of my own. I absolutely depended
• 3:23:14
  Speaker 1: on the volition of my guide, who said, in gloomy tones,
• 3:23:19
  Speaker 1: heed not thy brother, haply, thou shalt have ample time
• 3:23:23
  Speaker 1: hereafter to condole with him. Follow me Reader's note. The
• 3:23:29
  Speaker 1: following paragraph makes reference to a diagram. Diagram one shows
• 3:23:35
  Speaker 1: a three dimensional cube with visible edges drawn and hidden
• 3:23:39
  Speaker 1: edges dotted, giving it a three dimensional appearance. Horizontal shading
• 3:23:46
  Speaker 1: makes it appear that the cube is made up of
• 3:23:48
  Speaker 1: many layers. Diagram two shows the same figure, but all
• 3:23:55
  Speaker 1: lines indicating perspective are missing, with the effect that it
• 3:23:59
  Speaker 1: no longer appears to be solid, but looks like a
• 3:24:02
  Speaker 1: two dimensional, irregular hexagonal figure. End of reader's note. Once
• 3:24:09
  Speaker 1: more we ascended into space. Hitherto said the sphere. I
• 3:24:14
  Speaker 1: have shown you nought save plain figures and their interiors.
• 3:24:19
  Speaker 1: Now I must introduce you to solids, and reveal to
• 3:24:22
  Speaker 1: you the plan upon which they are constructed. Behold this
• 3:24:26
  Speaker 1: multitude of moveable square cards. See I put one on another,
• 3:24:32
  Speaker 1: not as you supposed northward of the other, but on
• 3:24:36
  Speaker 1: the other. Now a second, now a third. See I
• 3:24:41
  Speaker 1: am building up a solid by a multitude of squares
• 3:24:45
  Speaker 1: parallel to one another. Now the solid is complete, being
• 3:24:49
  Speaker 1: as high as it is long and broad, and we
• 3:24:52
  Speaker 1: call it a cube. Pardon me, my lord, replied I,
• 3:24:58
  Speaker 1: But to my eye the appearance is as of an
• 3:25:01
  Speaker 1: irregular figure whose inside is laid open to the view.
• 3:25:05
  Speaker 1: In other words, methinks I see no solid but a plane,
• 3:25:09
  Speaker 1: such as we infer in flatland, only of an irregularity
• 3:25:13
  Speaker 1: which betokens some monstrous criminal, so that the very sight
• 3:25:17
  Speaker 1: of it is painful to my eyes. True, said the Sphere.
• 3:25:23
  Speaker 1: It appears to you a plane because you are not
• 3:25:26
  Speaker 1: accustomed to light and shade and perspective, just as in
• 3:25:31
  Speaker 1: flatland a hexagon would appear a straight line to one
• 3:25:35
  Speaker 1: who has not the art of sight recognition. But in
• 3:25:39
  Speaker 1: reality it is a solid, as you shall learn by
• 3:25:42
  Speaker 1: the sense of feeling. He then introduced me to the cube,
• 3:25:47
  Speaker 1: and I found that this marvelous being was indeed no plane,
• 3:25:51
  Speaker 1: but a solid, and that he was endowed with six
• 3:25:55
  Speaker 1: plain sides and eight terminal points called solid. And I
• 3:26:02
  Speaker 1: remembered the saying of the Sphere that just such a
• 3:26:05
  Speaker 1: creature as this would be formed by a square moving
• 3:26:08
  Speaker 1: in space parallel to himself. And I rejoice to think
• 3:26:14
  Speaker 1: that so insignificant a creature, as I could, in some
• 3:26:18
  Speaker 1: sense be called the progenitor of so illustrious an offspring.
• 3:26:24
  Speaker 1: But still I could not fully understand the meaning of
• 3:26:27
  Speaker 1: what my teacher had told me concerning light and shade
• 3:26:31
  Speaker 1: and perspective, and I did not hesitate to put my
• 3:26:36
  Speaker 1: difficulties before him. Were I to give the Sphere's explanation
• 3:26:42
  Speaker 1: of these matters, succinct and clear though it was, it
• 3:26:46
  Speaker 1: would be tedious to an inhabitant of space, who knows
• 3:26:49
  Speaker 1: these things already. Suffice it that by his lucid statements,
• 3:26:55
  Speaker 1: and by changing the position of objects and lights, and
• 3:26:59
  Speaker 1: by allowing me to feel the several objects and even
• 3:27:03
  Speaker 1: his own sacred person, he at last made all things
• 3:27:07
  Speaker 1: clear to me, so that I could now readily distinguish
• 3:27:11
  Speaker 1: between a circle and a sphere, a plain figure and
• 3:27:15
  Speaker 1: a solid This was the climax, the paradise of my strange,
• 3:27:22
  Speaker 1: eventful history. Henceforth I have to relate the story of
• 3:27:27
  Speaker 1: my miserable fall, most miserable, yet surely most undeserved. For
• 3:27:34
  Speaker 1: why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused only to
• 3:27:37
  Speaker 1: be disappointed and punished. My volition shrinks from the painful
• 3:27:43
  Speaker 1: task of recalling my humiliation. Yet, like a second Prometheus,
• 3:27:48
  Speaker 1: I will endure this and worse. If by any means
• 3:27:52
  Speaker 1: I may arouse in the interiors of plain and solid
• 3:27:55
  Speaker 1: humanity a spirit of rebellion against the conceit which would
• 3:27:59
  Speaker 1: limit our dimensions to two or three, or any number
• 3:28:04
  Speaker 1: short of infinity away, then with all personal considerations, let
• 3:28:10
  Speaker 1: me continue to the end as I began, without further
• 3:28:14
  Speaker 1: digressions or anticipations, pursuing the plain path of dispassionate history.
• 3:28:21
  Speaker 1: The exact facts, the exact words, and they are burnt
• 3:28:26
  Speaker 1: in upon my brain, shall be set down without alteration
• 3:28:30
  Speaker 1: of an iota, and let my readers judge between me
• 3:28:34
  Speaker 1: and destiny. The sphere would willingly have continued his lessons
• 3:28:40
  Speaker 1: by indoctrinating me in the conformation of all regular solids, cylinders, cones, pyramids, pentahedrons, hexahedrons,
• 3:28:50
  Speaker 1: dough decahedrons, and spheres. But I ventured to interrupt him,
• 3:28:57
  Speaker 1: not that I was wearied of knowledge. On the contrary,
• 3:29:01
  Speaker 1: I thirsted for yet deeper and fuller drafts than he
• 3:29:05
  Speaker 1: was offering to me. Pardon me, said I, O, thou
• 3:29:11
  Speaker 1: whom I must no longer addresses the perfection of all beauty.
• 3:29:16
  Speaker 1: But let me beg THEE to vouchsafe thy servant a
• 3:29:19
  Speaker 1: sight of thine interior sphere. My what I thine interior,
• 3:29:27
  Speaker 1: thy stomach, thy intestines sphere? Whence this ill timed, impertinent request?
• 3:29:36
  Speaker 1: Then what mean you by saying that I am no
• 3:29:39
  Speaker 1: longer the perfection of all beauty? I, my Lord, your
• 3:29:44
  Speaker 1: own wisdom has taught me to aspire to one even
• 3:29:48
  Speaker 1: more great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate to perfection
• 3:29:53
  Speaker 1: than yourself. As you, yourself superior to all flatland forms,
• 3:29:59
  Speaker 1: come thine many circles in one. So doubtless there is
• 3:30:04
  Speaker 1: one above you who combines many spheres in one supreme existence,
• 3:30:10
  Speaker 1: surpassing even the solids of spaceland. And even as we
• 3:30:15
  Speaker 1: who are now in space look down on flat land
• 3:30:19
  Speaker 1: and see the insides of all things, so of a
• 3:30:22
  Speaker 1: certainty there is yet above us, some higher, purer region,
• 3:30:27
  Speaker 1: whither thou dost surely purpose to lead me. O, thou
• 3:30:31
  Speaker 1: whom I shall always call everywhere and in all dimensions,
• 3:30:35
  Speaker 1: my priest philosopher and friend, some yet more spacious space,
• 3:30:41
  Speaker 1: some more dimensionable dimensionality, from the vantage ground of which
• 3:30:47
  Speaker 1: we shall look down together upon the revealed insides of
• 3:30:51
  Speaker 1: solid things, and where thine own intestines and those of
• 3:30:55
  Speaker 1: thy kindred spheres will lie exposed to the view of
• 3:30:59
  Speaker 1: the poor one wondering exile from flatland, to whom so
• 3:31:03
  Speaker 1: much has already been vouchsafed sphere woof stuff. Enough of
• 3:31:10
  Speaker 1: this trifling. The time is short, and much remains to
• 3:31:15
  Speaker 1: be done before you are fit to proclaim the Gospel
• 3:31:18
  Speaker 1: of three Dimensions to your blind, benighted countrymen in flatland.
• 3:31:23
  Speaker 1: I nay, gracious teacher, Deny me not what I know
• 3:31:28
  Speaker 1: it is in thy power to perform. Grant me but
• 3:31:31
  Speaker 1: one glimpse of thine interior, and I am satisfied forever
• 3:31:35
  Speaker 1: remaining henceforth, thy docile pupil, thy unemancipable slave, ready to
• 3:31:41
  Speaker 1: receive all thy teachings and to feed upon the words
• 3:31:45
  Speaker 1: that fall from thy lips. Sphere well then to content
• 3:31:51
  Speaker 1: and silence. You let me say at once, I would
• 3:31:54
  Speaker 1: show you what you wish if I could, but I cannot.
• 3:31:57
  Speaker 1: Would you have me turn my stomach inside out to
• 3:32:00
  Speaker 1: oblige you? I, but my Lord has shown me the
• 3:32:05
  Speaker 1: intestines of all my countrymen in the land of two dimensions,
• 3:32:09
  Speaker 1: by taking me with him into the land of three
• 3:32:13
  Speaker 1: What therefore more easy than now to take his servant
• 3:32:16
  Speaker 1: on a second journey into the blessed region of the
• 3:32:19
  Speaker 1: fourth dimension, where I shall look down with him once
• 3:32:23
  Speaker 1: more upon this land of three dimensions, and see the
• 3:32:27
  Speaker 1: inside of every three dimensioned house, the secrets of the
• 3:32:31
  Speaker 1: solid earth, the treasures of the minds in spaceland, and
• 3:32:35
  Speaker 1: the intestines of every solid living creature, even of the
• 3:32:39
  Speaker 1: noble and adorable spheres sphere. But where is this land
• 3:32:46
  Speaker 1: of four dimensions? I I know not, But doubtless my
• 3:32:52
  Speaker 1: teacher knows sere not I there is no such land.
• 3:32:57
  Speaker 1: The very idea of it is utterly in conceivable. I
• 3:33:03
  Speaker 1: your lordship tempts his servant to see whether he remembers
• 3:33:07
  Speaker 1: the revelations imparted to him. Trifle not with me, my lord,
• 3:33:12
  Speaker 1: I crave I thirst for more knowledge. Doubtless we cannot
• 3:33:17
  Speaker 1: see that other higher spaceland now, because we have no
• 3:33:22
  Speaker 1: eye in our stomachs. But just as there was the
• 3:33:25
  Speaker 1: realm of flat land, though that poor puny lineland monarch
• 3:33:30
  Speaker 1: could neither turn to left nor right to discern it.
• 3:33:34
  Speaker 1: And just as there was close at hand and touching
• 3:33:38
  Speaker 1: my frame the land of three dimensions, though I blind,
• 3:33:43
  Speaker 1: senseless wretch, had no power to touch it, no eye
• 3:33:47
  Speaker 1: in my interior to discern it. So of a surety
• 3:33:51
  Speaker 1: there is a fourth dimension, which my Lord perceives with
• 3:33:55
  Speaker 1: the inner eye of thought, And that it must exist.
• 3:34:00
  Speaker 1: My Lord himself has taught me, or can he have
• 3:34:04
  Speaker 1: forgotten what he himself imparted to his servant In one dimension?
• 3:34:11
  Speaker 1: Did not a moving point produce a line with two
• 3:34:15
  Speaker 1: terminal points? In two dimensions? Did not a moving line
• 3:34:21
  Speaker 1: produce a square with four terminal points? In three dimensions?
• 3:34:27
  Speaker 1: Did not a moving square produce did not this eye
• 3:34:32
  Speaker 1: of mine? Behold it, that blessed being a cube with
• 3:34:38
  Speaker 1: eight terminal points and in four dimensions? Shall not a
• 3:34:44
  Speaker 1: moving cube? Alas for analogy, and alas for the progress
• 3:34:49
  Speaker 1: of truth? If it be not so, shall not I
• 3:34:52
  Speaker 1: say the motion of a divine cube result in a
• 3:34:57
  Speaker 1: still more divine organization with sixteen terminal points? Behold the
• 3:35:05
  Speaker 1: infallible confirmation of the series two, four, eight, sixteen? Is
• 3:35:12
  Speaker 1: not this a geometrical progression? Is not this? If I
• 3:35:16
  Speaker 1: might quote my Lord's own words strictly according to analogy? Again,
• 3:35:24
  Speaker 1: was I not taught by my lord that as in
• 3:35:26
  Speaker 1: a line there are two bounding points, and in a
• 3:35:30
  Speaker 1: square there are four bounding lines, so in a cube
• 3:35:34
  Speaker 1: there must be six bounding squares. Behold once more, the
• 3:35:39
  Speaker 1: confirming series two, four six. Is not this an arithmetical progression?
• 3:35:48
  Speaker 1: And consequently, does it not of necessity follow that the
• 3:35:53
  Speaker 1: more divine offspring of the divine cube in the land
• 3:35:56
  Speaker 1: of four dimensions must have eight cubes? And is not
• 3:36:02
  Speaker 1: this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe
• 3:36:06
  Speaker 1: strictly according to analogy. Oh, my lord, my lord, behold,
• 3:36:12
  Speaker 1: I cast myself in faith upon conjecture, not knowing the facts,
• 3:36:19
  Speaker 1: and I appeal to your lordship to confirm or deny
• 3:36:23
  Speaker 1: my logical anticipations. If I am wrong, I yield and
• 3:36:28
  Speaker 1: will no longer demand a fourth dimension. But if I
• 3:36:32
  Speaker 1: am right, my Lord will listen to reason. I ask, therefore,
• 3:36:38
  Speaker 1: is it or is it not the fact that ere
• 3:36:42
  Speaker 1: now your countrymen also have witnessed the descent of beings
• 3:36:46
  Speaker 1: of a higher order than their own, entering closed rooms,
• 3:36:51
  Speaker 1: even as your lordship entered mine without the opening of
• 3:36:55
  Speaker 1: doors or windows, and appearing and vanishing at will. On
• 3:37:00
  Speaker 1: the reply to this question, I am ready to stake everything,
• 3:37:05
  Speaker 1: deny it, and I am henceforth silent only that safe
• 3:37:10
  Speaker 1: an answer sphere after a pause, it is reported so,
• 3:37:17
  Speaker 1: But men are divided in opinion as to the facts,
• 3:37:22
  Speaker 1: and even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways.
• 3:37:26
  Speaker 1: And in any case, however great may be the number
• 3:37:30
  Speaker 1: of different explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the
• 3:37:34
  Speaker 1: theory of a fourth dimension. Therefore, pray, have done with
• 3:37:40
  Speaker 1: this trifling and let us return to business. I I
• 3:37:45
  Speaker 1: was certain of it. I was certain that my anticipations
• 3:37:50
  Speaker 1: would be fulfilled. And now have patience with me and
• 3:37:54
  Speaker 1: answer me yet one more question, best of teachers, those
• 3:37:59
  Speaker 1: who have appeared, no one knows whence, and have returned.
• 3:38:04
  Speaker 1: No one knows whither Have they also contracted their sections
• 3:38:09
  Speaker 1: and vanished somehow into that more spacious space. Whither I
• 3:38:14
  Speaker 1: now entreat you to conduct me sphere moodily. They have vanished, certainly,
• 3:38:22
  Speaker 1: if they ever appeared. But most people say that these
• 3:38:26
  Speaker 1: visions arose from the thought you will not understand me,
• 3:38:31
  Speaker 1: from the brain, from the perturbed angularity of the seer.
• 3:38:37
  Speaker 1: I say they so, who believe them not? Or if
• 3:38:41
  Speaker 1: it indeed be so, that this other space is really
• 3:38:45
  Speaker 1: thought land. Then take me to that blessed region where I,
• 3:38:49
  Speaker 1: in thought shall see the insides of all solid things.
• 3:38:54
  Speaker 1: There before my ravished eye, a cube moving in some
• 3:38:59
  Speaker 1: altogether new direction, but strictly according to analogy, so as
• 3:39:04
  Speaker 1: to make every particle of his interior pass through a
• 3:39:07
  Speaker 1: new kind of space with a wake of its own,
• 3:39:11
  Speaker 1: shall create a still more perfect perfection than himself, with
• 3:39:16
  Speaker 1: sixteen terminal extra solid angles and eight solid cubes for
• 3:39:22
  Speaker 1: his perimeter. And once there shall we stay our upward
• 3:39:26
  Speaker 1: course In that blessed region of four dimensions? Shall we
• 3:39:31
  Speaker 1: linger on the threshold of the fifth and not enter therein? Ah? No,
• 3:39:37
  Speaker 1: Let us rather resolve that our ambition shall soar with
• 3:39:41
  Speaker 1: our corporal ascent. Then, yielding to our intellectual onset, the
• 3:39:47
  Speaker 1: gates of the sixth dimension shall fly open, after that
• 3:39:51
  Speaker 1: a seventh, and then an eighth. How long I should
• 3:39:55
  Speaker 1: have continued, I know not In vain did the Sphere,
• 3:39:59
  Speaker 1: in his voice of thunder, reiterate his commands of silence
• 3:40:04
  Speaker 1: and threaten me with the direst penalties. If I persisted,
• 3:40:09
  Speaker 1: nothing could stem the flood of my ecstatic aspirations. Perhaps
• 3:40:15
  Speaker 1: I was to blame, but indeed I was intoxicated with
• 3:40:19
  Speaker 1: the recent drafts of truth to which he himself had
• 3:40:22
  Speaker 1: introduced me. However, the end was not long in coming.
• 3:40:29
  Speaker 1: My words were cut short by a crash outside and
• 3:40:33
  Speaker 1: a simultaneous crash inside me, which impelled me through space
• 3:40:37
  Speaker 1: with a velocity that precluded speech. Down, Down, Down, I
• 3:40:43
  Speaker 1: was rapidly descending, and I knew that return to flatland
• 3:40:47
  Speaker 1: was my doom. One glimpse, one last and never to
• 3:40:53
  Speaker 1: be forgotten glimpse I had of that dull level wilderness
• 3:40:57
  Speaker 1: which was now to become my universe again spread out
• 3:41:01
  Speaker 1: before my eye, then a darkness, then a final, all
• 3:41:07
  Speaker 1: consummating thunder peel, And when I came to myself, I
• 3:41:12
  Speaker 1: was once more a common creeping square in my study
• 3:41:17
  Speaker 1: at home, listening to the peace cry of my approaching
• 3:41:21
  Speaker 1: wife Section twenty. How the sphere encouraged me in a vision.
• 3:41:30
  Speaker 1: Although I had less than a minute for reflection, I felt,
• 3:41:34
  Speaker 1: by a kind of instinct that I must conceal my
• 3:41:38
  Speaker 1: experiences from my wife. Not that I apprehended at the
• 3:41:43
  Speaker 1: moment any danger from her divulging my secret, but I
• 3:41:47
  Speaker 1: knew that to any woman in flat Land the narrative
• 3:41:50
  Speaker 1: of my adventures must needs be unintelligible, so I endeavored
• 3:41:55
  Speaker 1: to reassure her by some story invented for the occasion,
• 3:41:59
  Speaker 1: that I had accidentally fallen through the trap door of
• 3:42:02
  Speaker 1: the cellar, and had there lane stunned. The southward attraction
• 3:42:07
  Speaker 1: in our country is so slight that even to a
• 3:42:10
  Speaker 1: woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and wellnigh incredible. But
• 3:42:17
  Speaker 1: my wife, whose good sense far exceeds that of the
• 3:42:20
  Speaker 1: average of her sex, and who perceived that I was
• 3:42:23
  Speaker 1: unusually excited, did not argue with me on the subject,
• 3:42:27
  Speaker 1: but insisted that I was ill and required repose. I
• 3:42:32
  Speaker 1: was glad of an excuse for retiring to my chamber
• 3:42:35
  Speaker 1: to think quietly over what had happened. When I was
• 3:42:39
  Speaker 1: at last by myself, a drowsy sensation fell on me.
• 3:42:43
  Speaker 1: But before my eyes closed, I endeavored to reproduce the
• 3:42:47
  Speaker 1: third dimension, and especially the process by which a cube
• 3:42:51
  Speaker 1: is constructed through the motion of a square. It was
• 3:42:56
  Speaker 1: not so clear as I could have wished, but I
• 3:42:59
  Speaker 1: remembered that but it must be upward and yet not northward.
• 3:43:04
  Speaker 1: And I determined steadfastly to retain these words as the
• 3:43:08
  Speaker 1: clue which if firmly grasped, could not fail to guide
• 3:43:12
  Speaker 1: me to the solution. So mechanically repeating like a charm,
• 3:43:17
  Speaker 1: the words upward, yet not northward, I fell into a
• 3:43:22
  Speaker 1: sound refreshing sleep. During my slumber I had a dream.
• 3:43:29
  Speaker 1: I thought I was once more by the side of
• 3:43:31
  Speaker 1: the sphere, whose lustrous hue betokened that he had exchanged
• 3:43:35
  Speaker 1: his wrath against me for perfect placability. We were moving
• 3:43:41
  Speaker 1: together towards a bright but infinitesimally small point to which
• 3:43:46
  Speaker 1: my master directed my attention. As we approached, methought, their
• 3:43:52
  Speaker 1: issued from it a slight, humming noise, as from one
• 3:43:56
  Speaker 1: of your spaceland blue bottles, only less resonant by far.
• 3:44:01
  Speaker 1: So slight, indeed, that even in the perfect stillness of
• 3:44:04
  Speaker 1: the vacuum through which we soared, the sound reached not
• 3:44:08
  Speaker 1: our ears, till we checked our flight at a distance
• 3:44:11
  Speaker 1: from it of something under twenty human diagonals. Look yonder,
• 3:44:17
  Speaker 1: said my guide in flat land, thou hast lived of
• 3:44:21
  Speaker 1: line land. Thou hast received a vision. Thou hast soared
• 3:44:26
  Speaker 1: with me to the heights of spaceland. Now, in order
• 3:44:29
  Speaker 1: to complete the range of thy experience, I conduct thee
• 3:44:34
  Speaker 1: downward to the lowest depths of existence, even to the
• 3:44:39
  Speaker 1: realm of point land, the abyss of no dimensions. Behold,
• 3:44:45
  Speaker 1: yon miserable creature, that point is a being like ourselves,
• 3:44:50
  Speaker 1: but confined to the non dimensional gulf. He is himself,
• 3:44:55
  Speaker 1: his own world, his own universe. Any other than himself,
• 3:45:01
  Speaker 1: he can form no conception. He knows not length, nor breadth,
• 3:45:07
  Speaker 1: nor height, for he has had no experience of them.
• 3:45:11
  Speaker 1: He has no cognizance even of the number two. Nor
• 3:45:16
  Speaker 1: has he a thought of plurality, for he is himself,
• 3:45:20
  Speaker 1: his one and all being, really nothing yet mark his
• 3:45:25
  Speaker 1: perfect self contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to
• 3:45:31
  Speaker 1: be self contented is to be vile and ignorant, and
• 3:45:35
  Speaker 1: that to aspire is better than to be blindly and
• 3:45:39
  Speaker 1: impotently happy. Now listen, he ceased, and there arose from
• 3:45:46
  Speaker 1: the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous but distinct tinkling,
• 3:45:53
  Speaker 1: as from one of your space and phonographs, from which
• 3:45:56
  Speaker 1: I caught these words. Infinite be attitude of existence. It is,
• 3:46:03
  Speaker 1: and there is none else beside it. What said I,
• 3:46:09
  Speaker 1: does the puny creature mean by it? He means himself,
• 3:46:15
  Speaker 1: said the sphere have you not noticed before now that
• 3:46:19
  Speaker 1: babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the
• 3:46:23
  Speaker 1: world speak of themselves in the third person. But hush,
• 3:46:29
  Speaker 1: it fills all space, continued, the little soliloquising creature, and
• 3:46:35
  Speaker 1: what it feels. It is, what it thinks, that it utters,
• 3:46:41
  Speaker 1: and what it utters that it hears, And it itself
• 3:46:48
  Speaker 1: is thinker, utterer, hearer, thought, word, audition. It is the
• 3:46:55
  Speaker 1: one and yet the all in all Ah, the happiness, ah,
• 3:47:03
  Speaker 1: the happiness of being. Can you not startle the little
• 3:47:09
  Speaker 1: thing out of its complacency? Said I Tell it what
• 3:47:13
  Speaker 1: it really is, as you told me, Reveal to it
• 3:47:17
  Speaker 1: the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to
• 3:47:21
  Speaker 1: something higher. That is no easy task, said my master,
• 3:47:27
  Speaker 1: try you hereon, raising my voice to the uttermost, I
• 3:47:32
  Speaker 1: addressed the point as follows. Silence, silence, contemptible creature. You
• 3:47:39
  Speaker 1: call yourself the all in all, but you are the nothing.
• 3:47:43
  Speaker 1: Your so called universe is a mere speck in a line,
• 3:47:48
  Speaker 1: and a line is a mere shadow. As compared with hush, hush,
• 3:47:52
  Speaker 1: You have said enough interrupted the sphere. Now listen and
• 3:47:57
  Speaker 1: mark the effect of your harangue. The king of Pointland,
• 3:48:02
  Speaker 1: the luster of the monarch, who beamed more brightly than
• 3:48:06
  Speaker 1: ever upon hearing my words, showed clearly that he retained
• 3:48:10
  Speaker 1: his complacency, and I had hardly ceased when he took
• 3:48:14
  Speaker 1: up his strain again.
• 3:48:16
  Speaker 2: Ah the joy, ah, the joy of thought. What can
• 3:48:21
  Speaker 2: it not achieve by thinking its own thought, coming to
• 3:48:26
  Speaker 2: itself suggestive of its disparagement, thereby to enhance its happiness.
• 3:48:34
  Speaker 2: Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph, Ah, the
• 3:48:39
  Speaker 2: divine creative power of the all in one, Ah, the joy,
• 3:48:45
  Speaker 2: the joy of being.
• 3:48:49
  Speaker 1: You see, said my teacher, how little your words have
• 3:48:53
  Speaker 1: done so far as the monarch understands them at all.
• 3:48:58
  Speaker 1: He accepts them as his own, for he cannot conceive
• 3:49:03
  Speaker 1: of any other except himself, and plumes himself upon the
• 3:49:08
  Speaker 1: variety of its thought as an instance of creative power.
• 3:49:15
  Speaker 1: Let us leave this god of Pointland to the ignorant
• 3:49:19
  Speaker 1: fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience. Nothing that you or
• 3:49:24
  Speaker 1: I can do can rescue him from his self satisfaction.
• 3:49:29
  Speaker 1: After this, as we floated gently back to flatland, I
• 3:49:33
  Speaker 1: could hear the mild voice of my companion pointing the
• 3:49:37
  Speaker 1: moral of my vision and stimulating me to aspire and
• 3:49:42
  Speaker 1: to teach others to aspire. He had been angered at first,
• 3:49:47
  Speaker 1: he confessed by my ambition to soar to dimensions above
• 3:49:52
  Speaker 1: the third. But since then he had received fresh insight,
• 3:49:56
  Speaker 1: and he was not too proud to acknowledge his error
• 3:50:00
  Speaker 1: to a pupil. Then he proceeded to initiate me into
• 3:50:04
  Speaker 1: mysteries yet higher than those I had witnessed, showing me
• 3:50:08
  Speaker 1: how to construct extra solids by the motion of solids,
• 3:50:13
  Speaker 1: and double extra solids by the motion of extra solids,
• 3:50:17
  Speaker 1: and all strictly according to analogy, all by methods so simple,
• 3:50:24
  Speaker 1: so easy as to be patent even to the female sex.
• 3:50:33
  Speaker 1: End of Section twenty Section twenty one. How I tried
• 3:50:38
  Speaker 1: to teach the theory of three dimensions to my grandson,
• 3:50:42
  Speaker 1: and with what success I awoke rejoicing, and began to
• 3:50:48
  Speaker 1: reflect on the glorious career before me. I would go forth,
• 3:50:53
  Speaker 1: me thought at once, and evangelize the whole of flatland,
• 3:50:58
  Speaker 1: even to women and soldiers. Should the Gospel of three
• 3:51:02
  Speaker 1: dimensions be proclaimed, I would begin with my wife, just
• 3:51:08
  Speaker 1: as I had decided on the plan of my operations.
• 3:51:12
  Speaker 1: I heard the sound of many voices in the street
• 3:51:15
  Speaker 1: commanding silence. Then followed a louder voice. It was a
• 3:51:21
  Speaker 1: herald's proclamation. Listening attentively, I recognized the words of the
• 3:51:27
  Speaker 1: resolution of the Council in joining the arrest, imprisonment, or
• 3:51:32
  Speaker 1: execution of anyone who should pervert the minds of the
• 3:51:35
  Speaker 1: people by delusions and by professing to have received revelations
• 3:51:40
  Speaker 1: from another world. I reflected this danger was not to
• 3:51:46
  Speaker 1: be trifled with. It would be better to avoid it
• 3:51:50
  Speaker 1: by omitting all mention of my revelation, and by proceeding
• 3:51:54
  Speaker 1: on the path of demonstration, which after all, seemed so
• 3:51:58
  Speaker 1: simple and so conclusive, that nothing would be lost by
• 3:52:02
  Speaker 1: discarding the former.
• 3:52:04
  Speaker 2: Means.
• 3:52:05
  Speaker 1: Upward, not northward, was the clue to the whole proof.
• 3:52:11
  Speaker 1: It had seemed to me fairly clear before I fell asleep,
• 3:52:15
  Speaker 1: and when I first awoke fresh from my dream, it
• 3:52:18
  Speaker 1: had appeared as patent as arithmetic. But somehow it did
• 3:52:24
  Speaker 1: not seem to me quite so obvious now. Though my
• 3:52:29
  Speaker 1: wife entered the room opportunely, just at that moment, I decided,
• 3:52:34
  Speaker 1: after we had interchanged a few words of commonplace conversation,
• 3:52:38
  Speaker 1: not to begin with her. My pentagonal sons were men
• 3:52:43
  Speaker 1: of character, and standing, and physicians of no mean reputation,
• 3:52:48
  Speaker 1: but not great in mathematics, and in that respect unfit
• 3:52:53
  Speaker 1: for my purpose. But it occurred to me that a
• 3:52:58
  Speaker 1: young and docile hexagon with a mathematical turn would be
• 3:53:02
  Speaker 1: a most suitable pupil. Why therefore, not make my first
• 3:53:08
  Speaker 1: experiment with my little precocious grandson, whose casual remarks on
• 3:53:13
  Speaker 1: the meaning of three cubed had met with the approval
• 3:53:16
  Speaker 1: of the sphere. Discussing the matter with him a mere boy,
• 3:53:21
  Speaker 1: I should be in perfect safety, for he would know
• 3:53:24
  Speaker 1: nothing of the proclamation of the Council, Whereas I could
• 3:53:28
  Speaker 1: not feel sure that my sons so greatly did their
• 3:53:31
  Speaker 1: patriotism and reverence that the circles predominate over mere blind affection,
• 3:53:37
  Speaker 1: might not feel compelled to hand me over to the
• 3:53:40
  Speaker 1: Prefect if they found me seriously maintaining the seditious heresy
• 3:53:45
  Speaker 1: of the third dimension. But the first thing to be
• 3:53:50
  Speaker 1: done was to satisfy in some way the curiosity of
• 3:53:54
  Speaker 1: my wife, who naturally wished to know something of the
• 3:53:58
  Speaker 1: reasons for which the Circle had desired that mysterious interview,
• 3:54:03
  Speaker 1: and of the means by which he had entered our
• 3:54:05
  Speaker 1: house without entering into the details of the elaborate account,
• 3:54:11
  Speaker 1: I gave her an account I fear not quite so
• 3:54:15
  Speaker 1: consistent with truth as my readers in Spaceland might desire.
• 3:54:20
  Speaker 1: I must be content with saying that I succeeded at
• 3:54:23
  Speaker 1: last in persuading her to return quietly to her household
• 3:54:27
  Speaker 1: duties without eliciting from me any reference to the world
• 3:54:31
  Speaker 1: of three dimensions. This done, I immediately sent for my
• 3:54:36
  Speaker 1: grandson for to confess the truth. I felt that all
• 3:54:40
  Speaker 1: I had seen and heard was, in some strange way
• 3:54:44
  Speaker 1: slipping away from me, like the image of a half grasped,
• 3:54:48
  Speaker 1: tantalizing dream, and I longed to essay my skill in
• 3:54:52
  Speaker 1: making a first disciple. When my grandson entered the room,
• 3:54:58
  Speaker 1: I carefully secured the door. Then, sitting down by his
• 3:55:02
  Speaker 1: side and taking our mathematical tablets or as you would
• 3:55:07
  Speaker 1: call them, lines, I told him we would resume the
• 3:55:10
  Speaker 1: lesson of yesterday. I taught him once more how a
• 3:55:15
  Speaker 1: point by motion in one dimension produces a line, and
• 3:55:20
  Speaker 1: how a straight line in two dimensions produces a square.
• 3:55:25
  Speaker 1: After this, forcing a laugh, I said, and now, you scamp,
• 3:55:31
  Speaker 1: you wanted to make me believe that a square may
• 3:55:33
  Speaker 1: in the same way, by motion upward not northward, produce
• 3:55:38
  Speaker 1: another figure, a sort of extra square in three dimensions.
• 3:55:43
  Speaker 1: Say that again, you young rascal. At this moment we
• 3:55:48
  Speaker 1: heard once more the heralds oh yes, oh yes, outside
• 3:55:53
  Speaker 1: in the street, proclaiming the resolution of the council. Young,
• 3:55:58
  Speaker 1: though he was my grandson, who was unusually intelligent for
• 3:56:03
  Speaker 1: his age and bred up in perfect reverence for the
• 3:56:06
  Speaker 1: authority of the circles, took in the situation with an
• 3:56:11
  Speaker 1: acuteness for which I was quite unprepared. He remained silent
• 3:56:16
  Speaker 1: till the last words of the proclamation had died away,
• 3:56:20
  Speaker 1: and then bursting into tears, Dear Grandpapa, he said, that
• 3:56:26
  Speaker 1: was only my fun, and of course I meant nothing
• 3:56:29
  Speaker 1: at all by it. And we did not know anything
• 3:56:32
  Speaker 1: then about the new law. And I don't think I
• 3:56:35
  Speaker 1: said anything about the third dimension. And I am sure
• 3:56:38
  Speaker 1: I did not say one word about upward not northward,
• 3:56:41
  Speaker 1: for that would be such nonsense. You know, how could
• 3:56:45
  Speaker 1: a thing move upward and not northward, outward and not northward?
• 3:56:50
  Speaker 1: Even if I were a baby, I could not be
• 3:56:52
  Speaker 1: so absurd as that. How silly it is, ha ha,
• 3:56:56
  Speaker 1: not at all silly, said I losing my temper. Here,
• 3:57:00
  Speaker 1: for example, I'd take this square, and at the word,
• 3:57:03
  Speaker 1: I grasped a movable square which was lying at hand,
• 3:57:07
  Speaker 1: And I move it, you see, not northward, but yes,
• 3:57:11
  Speaker 1: I move it upward, that is to say, not northward,
• 3:57:16
  Speaker 1: but I move it somewhere, not exactly like this, but
• 3:57:21
  Speaker 1: somehow here I brought my sentence to an inane conclusion,
• 3:57:26
  Speaker 1: shaking the square about in a purposeless manner, much to
• 3:57:30
  Speaker 1: the amusement of my grandson, who burst out laughing louder
• 3:57:35
  Speaker 1: than ever, and declared that I was not teaching him,
• 3:57:38
  Speaker 1: but joking with him, And so saying, he unlocked the
• 3:57:42
  Speaker 1: door and ran out of the room. Thus ended my
• 3:57:47
  Speaker 1: first attempt to convert a pupil to the Gospel of
• 3:57:50
  Speaker 1: three Dimensions Section twenty two. How I then tried to
• 3:57:58
  Speaker 1: diffuse the theory of three dimensions by other means, and
• 3:58:03
  Speaker 1: of the result my failure with my grandson did not
• 3:58:08
  Speaker 1: encourage me to communicate my secret to others of my household.
• 3:58:13
  Speaker 1: Yet neither was I led by it to despair of success.
• 3:58:18
  Speaker 1: Only I saw that I must not wholly rely on
• 3:58:21
  Speaker 1: the catch phrase upward, not northward, but must rather endeavor
• 3:58:26
  Speaker 1: to seek a demonstration by setting before the public a
• 3:58:30
  Speaker 1: clear view of the whole subject. And for this purpose
• 3:58:34
  Speaker 1: it seemed necessary to resort to writing. So I devoted
• 3:58:40
  Speaker 1: several months in privacy to the composition of a treatise
• 3:58:44
  Speaker 1: on the Mysteries of three Dimensions, only with the view
• 3:58:48
  Speaker 1: of evading the law if possible. I spoke not of
• 3:58:52
  Speaker 1: a physical dimension, but of a thought land. Whence, in
• 3:58:57
  Speaker 1: theory a figure could look down upon flat land and
• 3:59:01
  Speaker 1: see simultaneously the insides of all things, And where it
• 3:59:06
  Speaker 1: was possible that there might be supposed to exist a
• 3:59:10
  Speaker 1: figure environed, as it were, with six squares and containing
• 3:59:16
  Speaker 1: eight terminal points. But in writing this book I found
• 3:59:22
  Speaker 1: myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing such diagrams
• 3:59:26
  Speaker 1: as were necessary for my purpose. For, of course, in
• 3:59:30
  Speaker 1: our country of flat land, there are no tablets but lines,
• 3:59:35
  Speaker 1: and no diagrams but limes, all in one straight line,
• 3:59:40
  Speaker 1: and only distinguishable by difference of size and brightness. So
• 3:59:45
  Speaker 1: that when I had finished my treaties, which I entitled
• 3:59:49
  Speaker 1: Through flat Land to Thoughtland, I could not feel certain
• 3:59:53
  Speaker 1: that many would understand my meaning. Meanwhile, my life was
• 3:59:58
  Speaker 1: under a cloud. All pleasures palled upon me. All sights
• 4:00:04
  Speaker 1: tantalized and tempted me to outspoken treason, because I could
• 4:00:09
  Speaker 1: not but compare what I saw in two dimensions with
• 4:00:13
  Speaker 1: what it really was if seen in three, and could
• 4:00:16
  Speaker 1: hardly refrain from making my comparisons. Allowed, I neglected my
• 4:00:22
  Speaker 1: clients and my own business to give myself to the
• 4:00:25
  Speaker 1: contemplation of the mysteries which I had once beheld, yet
• 4:00:29
  Speaker 1: which I could impart to no one, and found daily
• 4:00:33
  Speaker 1: more difficult to reproduce even before my own mental vision.
• 4:00:39
  Speaker 1: One day, about eleven months after my return from Spaceland,
• 4:00:44
  Speaker 1: I tried to see a cube with my eye closed,
• 4:00:48
  Speaker 1: but failed, And though I succeeded afterwards, I was not
• 4:00:53
  Speaker 1: then quite certain, nor have I been ever afterwards, that
• 4:00:58
  Speaker 1: I had exactly realized the original. This made me more
• 4:01:03
  Speaker 1: melancholy than before, and determined me to take some step.
• 4:01:09
  Speaker 1: Yet what I knew not. I felt that I would
• 4:01:13
  Speaker 1: have been willing to sacrifice my life for the cause
• 4:01:17
  Speaker 1: if thereby I could have produced conviction. But if I
• 4:01:21
  Speaker 1: could not convince my grandson, how could I convince the
• 4:01:26
  Speaker 1: highest and most developed circles in the land. And Yet
• 4:01:32
  Speaker 1: at times my spirit was too strong for me, and
• 4:01:35
  Speaker 1: I gave vent to dangerous utterances. Already I was considered heterodox,
• 4:01:41
  Speaker 1: if not treasonable, and I was keenly alive to the
• 4:01:45
  Speaker 1: dangers of my position. Nevertheless, I could not at times
• 4:01:50
  Speaker 1: refrain from bursting out into suspicious or half seditious utterances,
• 4:01:56
  Speaker 1: even among the highest polygonal and circular society. When, for example,
• 4:02:02
  Speaker 1: the question arose about the treatment of those lunatics who
• 4:02:05
  Speaker 1: said that they had received the power of seeing the
• 4:02:08
  Speaker 1: insides of things, I would quote the saying of an
• 4:02:12
  Speaker 1: ancient circle who declared that profits and inspired people are
• 4:02:16
  Speaker 1: always considered by the majority to be mad. And I
• 4:02:20
  Speaker 1: could not help occasionally dropping such expressions as the eye
• 4:02:25
  Speaker 1: that discerns the interiors of things and the all seeing land.
• 4:02:31
  Speaker 1: Once or twice I even let fall the forbidden terms
• 4:02:35
  Speaker 1: the third and fourth dimensions. At last, to complete a
• 4:02:41
  Speaker 1: series of minor indiscretions, at a meeting of our local
• 4:02:44
  Speaker 1: speculative society held at the palace of the Prefect himself,
• 4:02:48
  Speaker 1: some extremely silly person, having read an elaborate paper exhibiting
• 4:02:53
  Speaker 1: the precise reasons why Providence has limited the number of
• 4:02:57
  Speaker 1: dimensions to two, and why the atture beauty of omnividence
• 4:03:01
  Speaker 1: is assigned to the Supreme alone. I so far forgot
• 4:03:05
  Speaker 1: myself as to give an exact account of the whole
• 4:03:08
  Speaker 1: of my voyage with the Sphere into space and to
• 4:03:11
  Speaker 1: the assembly hall in our metropolis, and then to space again,
• 4:03:15
  Speaker 1: and of my return home, and of everything that I
• 4:03:18
  Speaker 1: had seen and heard in fact or vision. At first, indeed,
• 4:03:24
  Speaker 1: I pretended that I was describing the imaginary experiences of
• 4:03:28
  Speaker 1: a fictitious person. But my enthusiasm soon forced me to
• 4:03:32
  Speaker 1: throw off all disguise, and finally, in a fervent peroration,
• 4:03:37
  Speaker 1: I exhorted all my hearers to divest themselves of prejudice
• 4:03:41
  Speaker 1: and to become believers in the third dimension. Need I
• 4:03:47
  Speaker 1: say that I was at once arrested and taken before
• 4:03:50
  Speaker 1: the Council next morning, standing in the very place where
• 4:03:56
  Speaker 1: but a very few months ago, the Sphere had stood
• 4:03:59
  Speaker 1: in my company. I was allowed to begin and to
• 4:04:02
  Speaker 1: continue my narration unquestioned and uninterrupted. But from the first
• 4:04:08
  Speaker 1: I foresaw my fate for the President, noting that a
• 4:04:12
  Speaker 1: guard of the better sort of policemen was in attendance
• 4:04:16
  Speaker 1: of Angularity little if at all, under fifty five degrees,
• 4:04:20
  Speaker 1: ordered them to be relieved before I began my defense
• 4:04:23
  Speaker 1: by an inferior class of two or three degrees. I
• 4:04:28
  Speaker 1: knew only too well what that meant. I was to
• 4:04:31
  Speaker 1: be executed or imprisoned, and my story was to be
• 4:04:35
  Speaker 1: kept secret from the world by the simultaneous destruction of
• 4:04:38
  Speaker 1: the officials who had heard it. And this being the case,
• 4:04:43
  Speaker 1: the President desired to substitute the cheaper for the more
• 4:04:48
  Speaker 1: expensive victims. After I had concluded my defense, the President,
• 4:04:55
  Speaker 1: perhaps perceiving that some of the junior circles had been
• 4:04:58
  Speaker 1: moved by my ever and earnestness, asked me two questions.
• 4:05:05
  Speaker 1: One whether I could indicate the direction which I meant
• 4:05:10
  Speaker 1: when I used the words upward, not northward. Two whether
• 4:05:16
  Speaker 1: I could, by any diagrams or descriptions other than the
• 4:05:21
  Speaker 1: enumeration of imaginary sides and angles, indicate the figure I
• 4:05:26
  Speaker 1: was pleased to call a cube. I declared that I
• 4:05:30
  Speaker 1: could say nothing more, and that I must commit myself
• 4:05:33
  Speaker 1: to the truth, whose cause would surely prevail in the end.
• 4:05:38
  Speaker 1: The President replied that he quite concurred in my sentiment,
• 4:05:42
  Speaker 1: and that I could not do better. I must be
• 4:05:46
  Speaker 1: sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. But if the truth intended that
• 4:05:51
  Speaker 1: I should emerge from prison and evangelize the world. The
• 4:05:55
  Speaker 1: truth might be trusted to bring that result to pass. Meanwhile,
• 4:06:00
  Speaker 1: while I should be subjected to no discomfort, that was
• 4:06:03
  Speaker 1: not necessary to preclude escape, and unless I forfeited the
• 4:06:07
  Speaker 1: privilege by misconduct, I should be occasionally permitted to see
• 4:06:12
  Speaker 1: my brother, who had preceded me to my prison. Seven
• 4:06:17
  Speaker 1: years have elapsed and I am still a prisoner. And
• 4:06:21
  Speaker 1: if I accept the occasional visits of my brother, debarred
• 4:06:25
  Speaker 1: from all companionship save that of my jailers. My brother
• 4:06:30
  Speaker 1: is one of the best of squares, just sensible, cheerful,
• 4:06:35
  Speaker 1: and not without fraternal affection. Yet I must confess that
• 4:06:39
  Speaker 1: my weekly interviews, at least in one respect, caused me
• 4:06:43
  Speaker 1: the bitterest pain. He was present when the sphere manifested
• 4:06:48
  Speaker 1: himself in the council chamber. He saw the spheres changing sections.
• 4:06:54
  Speaker 1: He heard the explanation of the phenomena then given to
• 4:06:57
  Speaker 1: the circles that time. Scarcely a week has passed during
• 4:07:03
  Speaker 1: seven whole years without his hearing from me. A repetition
• 4:07:07
  Speaker 1: of the part I played in that manifestation, together with
• 4:07:11
  Speaker 1: ample descriptions of all the phenomena in Spaceland, and the
• 4:07:15
  Speaker 1: arguments for the existence of solid things derivable from analogy.
• 4:07:21
  Speaker 1: Yet I take shame to be forced to confess it.
• 4:07:25
  Speaker 1: My brother has not yet grasped the nature of the
• 4:07:29
  Speaker 1: third dimension, and frankly avows his disbelief in the existence
• 4:07:33
  Speaker 1: of a sphere. Hence I am absolutely destitute of converts,
• 4:07:40
  Speaker 1: and for aught that I can see. The millennial revelation
• 4:07:44
  Speaker 1: has been made to me for nothing. Prometheus up in
• 4:07:48
  Speaker 1: Spaceland was bound for bringing down fire for mortals, but I,
• 4:07:53
  Speaker 1: poor flat Land, Prometheus, lie here in prison for bringing
• 4:07:58
  Speaker 1: down nothing to my countrymen. Yet I exist in the
• 4:08:04
  Speaker 1: hope that these memoirs, in some manner I know not how,
• 4:08:09
  Speaker 1: may find their way to the minds of humanity in
• 4:08:12
  Speaker 1: some dimension, and may stir up a race of rebels
• 4:08:16
  Speaker 1: who shall refuse to be confined to limited dimensionality. That
• 4:08:23
  Speaker 1: is the hope of my brighter moments. Alas it is
• 4:08:27
  Speaker 1: not always so heavily weighs on me at times, the
• 4:08:32
  Speaker 1: burdensome reflection that I cannot honestly say I am confident
• 4:08:37
  Speaker 1: as to the exact shape of the once seen oft
• 4:08:40
  Speaker 1: regretted cube, And in my nightly visions. The mysterious precept upward,
• 4:08:48
  Speaker 1: not northward, haunts me like a soul devouring sphinx. It
• 4:08:55
  Speaker 1: is part of the martyrdom which I endure for the
• 4:08:57
  Speaker 1: cause of the truth. That there are seasons of mental weakness,
• 4:09:01
  Speaker 1: when cubes and spheres flit away into the background of
• 4:09:05
  Speaker 1: scarce possible existences, when the land of three dimensions seems
• 4:09:11
  Speaker 1: almost as visionary as the land of one or none. Nay,
• 4:09:17
  Speaker 1: when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom,
• 4:09:21
  Speaker 1: these very tablets on which I am writing, and all
• 4:09:25
  Speaker 1: the substantial realities of flatland itself, appear no better than
• 4:09:30
  Speaker 1: the offspring of a diseased imagination or the baseless fabric
• 4:09:35
  Speaker 1: of a dream. The end of flatland are amants of
• 4:09:41
  Speaker 1: many dimensions by Edwin Abbot. Abbot