Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott (early reader books .TXT) 📗

Sphere: “have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the third person? But hush!”

“It fills all Space,” continued the little soliloquizing creature, “and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is thinker, utterer, hearer, thought, word, audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of being!”

“Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?” said I. “Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher.”

“That is no easy task,” said my master; “try you.”

Hereon, raising my voice to the uttermost, I addressed the Point as follows:

“Silence, silence, contemptible creature. You call yourself the All in All, but you are the nothing: your so-called Universe is a mere speck in a Line, and a Line is a mere shadow as compared with⁠—”

“Hush, hush, you have said enough,” interrupted the Sphere, “now listen, and mark the effect of your harangue on the King of Pointland.”

The lustre of the Monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon hearing my words, showed clearly that he retained his complacency; and I had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. “Ah, the joy, ah, the joy of thought! What can It not achieve by thinking! Its own thought coming to Itself, suggestive of Its disparagement, thereby to enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph! Ah, the divine creative power of the All in One! Ah, the joy, the joy of being!”

“You see,” said my teacher, “how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own⁠—for he cannot conceive of any other except himself⁠—and plumes himself upon the variety of ‘Its Thought’ as an instance of creative power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.”

After this, as we floated gently back to Flatland, I could hear the mild voice of my companion pointing the moral of my vision, and stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire. He had been angered at first⁠—he confessed⁠—by my ambition to soar to Dimensions above the Third; but, since then, he had received fresh insight, and he was not too proud to acknowledge his error to a pupil. Then he proceeded to initiate me into mysteries yet higher than those I had witnessed, showing me how to construct Extra-Solids by the motion of Solids, and Double Extra-Solids by the motion of Extra-Solids, and all “strictly according to Analogy,” all by methods so simple, so easy, as to be patent even to the female sex.

XXI How I Tried to Teach the Theory of Three Dimensions to My Grandson, and with What Success

I awoke rejoicing, and began to reflect on the glorious career before me. I would go forth, methought, at once, and evangelize the whole of Flatland. Even to women and soldiers should the Gospel of Three Dimensions be proclaimed. I would begin with my wife.

Just as I had decided on the plan of my operations, I heard the sound of many voices in the street commanding silence. Then followed a louder voice. It was a herald’s proclamation. Listening attentively, I recognized the words of the Resolution of the Council, enjoining the arrest, imprisonment, or execution of anyone who should pervert the minds of the people by delusions, and by professing to have received revelations from another world.

I reflected. This danger was not to be trifled with. It would be better to avoid it by omitting all mention of my Revelation, and by proceeding on the path of Demonstration⁠—which after all, seemed so simple and so conclusive that nothing would be lost by discarding the former means. “Upward, not Northward”⁠—was the clue to the whole proof. It had seemed to me fairly clear before I fell asleep; and when I first awoke, fresh from my dream, it had appeared as patent as arithmetic; but somehow it did not seem to me quite so obvious now. Though my wife entered the room opportunely just at that moment, I decided, after we had exchanged a few words of commonplace conversation, not to begin with her.

My Pentagonal sons were men of character and standing, and physicians of no mean reputation, but not great in mathematics, and, in that respect, unfit for my purpose. But it occurred to me that a young and docile Hexagon, with a mathematical turn, would be a most suitable pupil. Why therefore not make my first experiment with my little precocious grandson, whose casual remarks on the meaning of 33 had met with the approval of the Sphere? Discussing the matter with him, a mere boy, I should be in perfect safety; for he would know nothing of the Proclamation of the Council; whereas I could not feel sure that my sons⁠—so greatly did their patriotism and reverence for the Circles predominate over mere blind affection⁠—might not feel compelled to hand me over to the Prefect, if they found me seriously maintaining the seditious heresy of the Third Dimension.

But the first thing to be done was to satisfy in some way the curiosity of my wife, who naturally wished to know something of the reasons for which the Circle had desired that mysterious interview, and of the means by which he had entered the house. Without entering into the details of the elaborate account I gave her⁠—an account, I fear, not quite so consistent with truth as my readers in Spaceland might desire⁠—I must be content with saying that I succeeded at last in persuading her to return quietly to her household duties without eliciting from me any reference to the