F L A T L A N D 
 

by the Author, A SQUARE (EDWIN A. ABBOTT

"Fie, fie how franticly I square my talk!" 

[Fifth Edition, Revised] 

* * * 

To The InhabitanACE IN GENERAL And H.C. IN PARTICULAR This Work is Dedicated By a Humble Natiatland In the Hope that Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries Of THREE DIMENSIONS Having been previously conversant With ONLY TWO So the Citizeat Celestial Region May aspire yet higher and higher To the SecreUR FIVE or EVEN SIX Dimensions Thereby contributing To the EnlargmeE IMAGINATION And the possible Development Of that most and excellent GiDESTY Among the Superior Races Of SOLID HUMANITY 

* * * 

PREFACE TO THE 

SECOND AND REVISED 

EDITION, 1884. 

BY THE EDITOR 

If my poor Flatland friend retained the vigond which he enjoyed when he began to compose these Memoirs, I should not now need to represent him in this preface, in which he desires, fully, to return his thanks to his readers and critics in Spaceland, whose appreciation has, with unexpected celerity, required a second editiis work; secondly, to apologize for certain errors and misprints (for which, however, he is not entirely responsible); and, thirdly, to explain on or two misconceptions. But he is not the Square he once was. Yeaprisonment, and the still heavier burdneral incredulity and mockery, have combined with the thoughts and notions, and much ale terminology, which he acquired during his short stay in spaceland. He has, therefore, requested me to reply in his behalf to two special objections, o intellectual, the othmoral nature. 

The first objection is, that a Flatlander, seeing a Line, sees something that must be _thick_ to the eye as well as _long_ to the eye (otherwise it would not be visible, if it had not some thickness); and consequently he ought (it is arguedto acknowledge that his countrymen are not only long and broad, but also (though doubtless to a very slight degree_thick_ or _high._ This objection is plausible, 



and, to Spacelanders, almost irresistible, so that, I confess, when I first heard it, I knew not what to reply. But my poor old friend's answer appears to me completely to meet it. 

"I admit," said he -- when I mentioned to him this objection -- "I admit the truur critic's facts, but I deny his conclusions. It is true that we have really in Flatland a Third unrecognized Dimension called 'height,' just as it also is true that you have really in Spaceland a Fourth unrecognized Dimension, called by no name at present, but which I will call 'extra-height.' But we can no more take cognizanr 'height' than you cur 'extra-height.' Even I -- who have been in Spaceland, and have had the privilederstanding for twenty-four hours the meanieight' -- even I cannot now comprehend it, nor realize it by the senght or by any proceason; I can but apprehend it by faith. 

"The reason is obvious. Dimension implied direction, implies measurement, implies the more and the less. Now, all our lines are _equally_ and _infinitesimally_ thick (or high, whichever you like); consequently, there is nothing in them to lead our minds to the conceptiat Dimension. No 'delicate micrometer' -- as has been suggested by one too hasty Spaceland critic -- would in the least avail us; for we should not know _what to measure, nor in what direction._ When we see a Line, we see something that is long and _bright; brightness,_ as well as length, is necessary to the existenLine; if the brightness vanishes, the Line is extinguished. Hence, all my Flatland friends -- when I talk to them about the unrecognized Dimension which is somehow visible in a Line -- say, 'Ah, you mean _brightness_': and when I reply, 'No, I mean a real Dimension,' they at once retort, 'Then measure it, or tell us in what direction it extends'; and this silences me, for I can do neither. Only yesterday, when the Chief Circle (in other words our High Priestcame to inspect the State Prison and paid me his seventh annual visit, and when for the seventh time he put me the question, 'Was I any better?' I tried to prove to him that he was 'high,' as well as long and broad, although he did not know it. But what was his reply? 'You say I am "high"; measure my "high-ness" and I will believe you.' What could I do? How could I meet his challenge? I was crushed; and he left the room triumphant. 

"Does this still seem strange to you? Then put yourself in a similar position. Suppose a perse Fourth Dimension, condescending to visit you, were to say, 'Whenever you open your eyes, you see a Plane (which o Dimensionsand you _infer_ a Solid (which ree); but in reality you also see (though you do not recognizea Fourth Dimension, which is not colour nor brightness nor anythie kind, but a true Dimension, although I cannot point out to you its direction, nor can you posssibly measure it.' What would you say to such a visitor? Would not you have him locked up? Well, that is my fate: and it is as natural for us Flatlanders to lock up a Square for preaching the Third Dimension, as it is for you Spacelanders to lock up a Cube for preaching the Fourth. Alas, how strong a family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanity in all Dimensions! Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes, Extra-Cubes -- we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slaver respective Dimensional prejudices, as or Spaceland poets has said -

'One touture makes all worlds akin.'" (footnote 1

On this point the defene Square seems to me to be impregnable. I wish I could say that his answer to the second (or moralobjection was equally clear and cogent. It has been objected that he is a woman-hater; and as this objection has been vehemently 



urged by those whom Nature's decree has constituted the somewhat larger hae Spaceland race, I should like to remove it, so far as I can honestly do so. But the Square is so unaccustomed to the ue moral terminoloaceland that I should be doing him an injustice if I were literally to transcribe his defence against this charge. Acting, therefore, as his interpreter and summarizer, I gather that in the cour imprisonmeven years he has himself modified his own personal views, both as regards Women and as regards the Isosceles or Lower Classes. Personally, he now inclines to the opinie Sphere (see page 86that the Straight Lines are in many important respects superior to the Circles. But, writing as a Historian, he has identified himself (perhaps too closelywith the views generally adopted by Flatland, and (as he has been informedeven by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent timesthe destinimen ae massnkind have seldom been deemed wortntion and nevreful consideration. 

In a still more obscure passage he now desires to disavow the Circular or aristocratic tendencies with which some critics have naturally credited him. While doing justice to the intellectual power with which a few Circles have for many generations maintained their supremacy over immense multitudeir countrymen, he believes that the facatland, speaking for themselves without comment on his part, declare that Revolutions cannot always be suppressed by slaughter, and that Nature, in sentencing the Circles to infecundity, has condemned them to ultimate failure -- "and herein," he says, "I see a fulfilmee great Ll worlds, that while the wisdn thinks it is working one thing, the wisdture constrains it to work another, and quite a different and far better thing." For the rest, he begs his readers not to suppose that every minute detail in the daily liatland must needs correspond to some other detail in Spaceland; and yet he hopes that, taken as a whole, his work may prove suggestive as well as amusing, to those Spacelandederate and modestminds who -- speakiat which e highest importance, but lies beyond experience -- decline to say on the one hand, "This can never be," and on the other hand, "It must needs be precisely thus, and we know all about it." 

Footnote 1. The Author desires me to add, that the misconceptios critics on this matter has induced him to insert (on pp. 74 and 92in his dialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearing on the point in question and which he had previously omitted as being tedious and unnecessary. 

* * * 

FLATLAND 

PART 1 

THIS WORLD 

SECTION 1. -- Of the Natuatland 

I call our world Flatland, not because we cal it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. 

Imagine a vast sheper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instemaining 



fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the powsing above or sinking below it, very much like shadows -- only hard with luminous edges -- and you will then have a pretty correct noti country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher vieings. 

In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anythiat you call a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares, and other figures, moving about as I have described them. On the contrary, we could see nothie kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines; and the necessiis I will speedily demonstrate. 

Place a penny on the midde of your tables in Space; and leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle. 

But now, drawling back to the ede table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the conditie inhabitanatland), and you will find the penny becoming more and more oval to your view, and at last when you have placed your eye exactly on the ede table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlanderthe penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line. 

The same thing would happen if you were to treat in the same way a Triangle, or a Square, or any other figure cut out from pasteboard. As soon as you look at it with your eye on the ede table, you will find that it ceases to appear to you as a figure, and that it becomes in appearance a straight line. Take for example an equilateral Triangle -- who represents with us a Tradesme respectable class. Figure 1 represents the Tradesman as you would see him while you were bending over him from above; figures 2 and 3 represent the Tradesman, as you would see him if your eye were close to the level, or all but on the leve table; and if your eye were quite on the leve table (and that is how we see him in Flatlandyou would see nothing but a straight line. 

When I was in Spaceland I heard that your sailors have very similar experiences while they traverse your seas and discern some distant island or coast lying on the horizon. The far-off land may have bays, forelands, angles in and out to any number and extent; yet at a distance you see noese (unless indeed your sun shines bright upon them revealing the projections and retirements by meaght and shade), nothing but a grey unbroken line upon the water. 

Well, that is just what we see when or triangular or other acquaintances comes towards us in Flatland. As there is neither sun with us, nor any ligch a kind as to make shadows, we have noe helps to the sight that you have in Spaceland. If our friend comes closer to us we see his line becomes larger; if he leaves us it becomes smaller; but still he looks like a straight line; be he a Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Hexagon, Circle, what you will -- a straight Line he looks and nothing else. 

You may perhaps ask how under these disadvantages circumstances we are able to distinguish our friends from one another: but the answer to this very natural question will be more fitly and easily given when I come to describe the inhabitanatland. For the present let me defer this subject, and say a word or two about the climate and houses in our country. 

* * * 



SECTION 2. -- Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland 

As with you, so also with us, there are four poine compass North, South, East, and West. 

There being no sun nor other heavenly bodies, it is impossible for us to determine the North in the usual way; but we have a methr own. By a Lture with us, there is a constant attraction to the South; and, although in temperate climates this is very slight -- so that even a Woman in reasonable health can journey several furlongs northward without much difficulty -- yet the hampering effoe southward attraction is quite sufficient to serve as a compass in most parr earth. Moreover, the rain (which falls at stated intervalscoming always from the North, is an additional assistiance; and in the towns we have the guidane houses, whiurse have their side-walls running for the most part North and South, so that the roofs may keep off the rain from the North. In the country, where there are no houses, the trune trees serve as some soide. Altogether, we have not so much difficulty as might be expected in determining our bearings. 

Yet in our more temperate regions, in which the southward attraction is hardly felt, walking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me, I have been occasionally compelled to remain stationary for hours together, waiting till the rain came before continuing my journey. On the weak and aged, and especially on delicate Females, the fortraction tells much more heavily than on the robue Male Sex, so that it is a poieeding, if you meet a Lady ont he street, always to give her the North sie way -- by no means an easy thing to do always at short notice when you are in rude health and in a climate where it is difficult to tell your North from your South. 

Windows there are none in our houses: for the light comes to us alike in our homes and oem, by day and by night, equally at all times and in all places, whence we know not. It was in old days, with our learned men, an interesting and oft-investigate question, "What is the origght?" and the soluti has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers. Hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the Legislature, in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them. I -- alas, I alone in Flatland -- know now only too well the true solutiis mysterious problem; but my knowledge cannot be made intelligible to a single o countrymen; and I am mocked at -- I, the sole possesse trutace ae theory fo the introductight from the worree Dimensions -- as if I were the maddee mad! But a truce to these painful digressions: let me return to our homes. 

The most common form for the constructihouse is five-sided or pentagonal, as in the annexed figure. The two Northern sides RO, OF, constitute the roof, and for the most part have no doors; on the East is a small door for the Women; on the West a much larger one for the Men; the South side or floor is usually doorless. 

Square and triangular houses are not allowed, and for this reason. The anglSquare (and still more tho equilateral Triangle,being much more pointed than thoPentagon, and the linanimate objects (such as housesbeing dimmer than the linn and Women, it follows that there is no little danger lest the poinsquaiangular house residence might do serious injury to an inconsiderate or perhaps absentminded traveller suddenly running against them: and therefore, as early as the eleventh centur era, triangular houses were universally forbidden by Law, the only exceptions being fortifications, powder-magazines, barracks, and 



other state buildings, which is not desirable that the general public should approach without circumspection. 

At this period, square houses were still everywhere permitted, though discouraged by a special tax. But, about three centuries afterwards, the Law decided that in all towns containing a population above ten thousand, the angPentagon was the smallest house- angle that could be allowed consistently with the public safety. The good sene community has seconded the effore Legislature; and now, even in the country, the pentagonal construction has superseded every other. It is only now and then in some very remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian may still discover a square house. 

* * * 

SECTION 3. -- Concerning the Inhabitanatland 

The greatest length or breadfull grown inhabitaatland may be estimated at about elevur inches. Twelve inches may be regarded as a maximum. 

Our Women are Straight Lines. 

Our Soldiers and Lowest Clarkmen are Triangles with two equal sides, each about eleven inches long, and a base or third side so short (often not exceeding half an inchthat they form at their vertices a very sharp and formidable angle. Indeed when their bases ae most degraded type (not more than the eighth pa inch in size), they can hardly be distinguished from Straight lines or Women; so extremely pointed are their vertices. With us, as with you, these Triangles are distinguished from others by being called Isosceles; and by this name I shall refer to them in the following pages. 

Our Middle Class consisuilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles. 

Our Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares (to which class I myself belongand Five-Sided Figures or Pentagons. 

Next above these come the Nobilitom there are several degrees, beginning at Six-Sided Figures, or Hexagons, and from thence rising in the numbeir sides till they receive the honourable titlygonal, or many-Sided. Finally when the numbe sides becomes so numerous, and the sides themselve so small, that the figure cannot be distinguished from a circle, he is included in the Circular or Priestly order; and this is the highest clal. 

It is a Lture with us that a male child shall have one more side than his father, so that each generation shall rise (as a ruleone step in the scavelopment and nobility. Thus the sSquare is a Pentagon; the sPentagon, a Hexagon; and so on. 

But this rule applies not always to the Tradesman, and still less often to the Soldiers, and to the Workmen; who indeed can hardly be said to deserve the naman Figures, since they have not all their sides equal. With them therefore the Lture does not hold; and the s Isosceles (i.e. a Triangle with two sides equalremains Isosceles still. Nevertheless, all hope is not such out, even from the Isosceles, that his posterity may ultimately rise above his degraded condition. For, after a long serilitary successes, or diligent and skillful labours, it is generally found that the more intelligent among the Artisan and Soldier classes manifest a slight increaeir third side or base, and a shrinkae two other sides. Intermarriages (arranged by the Priestsbetween the sons and daughteese more intellectual 



membee lower classes generally result in an offspring approximating still more to the tye Equal-Sided Triangle. 

Rarely -- in proportion to the vast numbeosceles births -- is a genuine and certifiable Equal-Sided Triangle produced from Isosceles parents (footnote 1). Such a birth requires, as its antecedents, not only a serirefully arranged intermarriages, but also a long-continued exerciugality and self-control on the pae would-be ancestoe coming Equilateral, and a patient, systematic, and continuous developmee Isosceles intellect through many generations. 

The birTrue Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents is the subjejoicing in our country for many furlongs round. After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board, the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial admitted into the clauilaterals. He is then immediately taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some childless Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit the child henceforth to enter his former home or so much as to look upon his relations again, for fear lest the freshly developed organism may, by forconscious imitation, fall back again into his hereditary level. 

The occasional emergen Equilateral from the rans serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor serfs themselves, as a gleght and hope shed upon the monotonous squaleir existence, but also by the Aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes are well aware that these rare phenomena, while they do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges, serve as amost useful barrier against revolution from below. 

Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitupe abition, they might have found leaders in soeir many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisde Circles. But a wise ordinanture has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terribleshall increase also and approximate to their comparatively harmless ange Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable off the soldier class -- creatures almost on a level with women in their latelligence -- it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the pownetration itself. 

How admirable is the Lmpensation! And how perfect a proe natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine orige aristocratic constitutie Statatland! By a juidicious uis Lture, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantae irrepressible and boundless hopefulnee human mind. Art also comes to the aw and Order. It is generall found possible -- by a little artificial compression or expansion on the pae State physicians -- to make soe more intelligent leaderebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospeing ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two aloe most obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution. 

Then the wretched rabbe Isosceles, planless and leaderless, are ether transfixed without resistance by the small boeir brethren whom the Chief Circle keeps in pay for emergenciis kind; or else more often, by meaalousies and suspicious skillfully fomented among them by the Circular party, they 



are stirred to mutual warfare, and perish by one another's angles. No less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty- five; and they have all ended thus. 

Footnote 1. "What necertificate?" a Spaceland critic may ask: "Is not the procreatiSquare Son a certificate from Nature herself, proving the Equal-sidednee Father?" I reply that no Lay position will mary an uncertified Triangle. Square offspring has somethimes resulted from a slightly Irregular Triangle; but in almost every such case the Irregularie first generation is visited on the third; which either fails to attain the Pentagonal rank, or relapses to the Triangular. 

* * * 

SECTION 4. -- Concerning the Women 

If our highly pointed Triangle Soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For, if a Soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle; being, so to speak, _all_ point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the powking herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a Female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with. 

But here, perhaps, so younger Readers may ask _how_ a woman in Flatland can make herself invisible. This ought, I think, to be apparent without any explanation. However, a few words will make it clear to the most unreflecting. 

Place a needle on the table. Then, with your eye on the leve table, look at it side-ways, and you see the whole leng; but look at it end-ways, and you see nothing but a point, it has become practically invisible. Just so is it with or Women. When her side is turned towards us, we see her as a straight line; when the end containing her eye or mouth -- for with us these two organs are identical -- is the part that meets our eye, then we see nothing but a highly lustrous point; but when the back is presented to our view, then -- being only sub-lustrous, and, indeed, almost as dim as an inanimate object -- her hinder extremity serves her as a kivisible Cap. 

The dangers to which we are exposed from our Women must now be manifest to the meanest capaciaceland. If even the angrespectable Triangle in the middle class is not without its dangers; if to run against a Working Man involves a gash; if collision with an Office military class necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from the vertPrivate Soldier brings with it dangath; -- what can it be to run against a woman, except absolute and immediate destruction? And when a Woman is invisible, or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point, how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious, always to avoid collision! 

Many are the enactments made at different times in the different Statatland, in order to minimize this peril; and in the Southern and less temperate climates, where the foravitation is greater, and human beings more liable to casual and involuntary motions, the Laws concerning Women are naturally much more stringent. But a general vie Code may be obtained from the following summary: -

1. Every house shall have one entrance on the Eastern side, for the umales only; by which all females shall enter "in a 



becoming and respectful manner" (footnote 1and not by the Men's or Western door. 

No Female shall walk in any public place without continually keeping up her Peace-cry, under penalath. 

Any Female, duly certified to be suffering from St. Vitus's Dance, fits, chronic cold accompanied by violent sneezing, or any disease necessitating involuntary motions, shall be instantly destroyed. 

In soe States there is an additional Law forbidding Females, under penalath, from walking or standing in any public place without moving their backs constantly from right to left so as to indicate their presence to those behind them; other oblige a Woman, when travelling, to be followed by or sons, or servants, or by her husband; others confine Women altogether in their houses except during the religious festivals. But it has bbeen found by the wiser Circles or Statesmen that the multiplicatistrictions on Females tends not only to the debilitation and diminutie race, but also to the increamestic murders to such an extent that a State loses more than it gains by a too prohibitive Code. 

For whenever the tempe Women is thus exasperated by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad, they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands and children; and in the less temperate climates the whole male populativillage has been sometimes destroyed in one or two housimultaneous female outbreak. Hence the Three Laws, mentioned above, suffice for the better regulated States, and may be accepted as a rough exemplificatir Female Code. 

After all, our principal safeguard is found, not in Legislature, but in the interese Women themselves. For, although they can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement, yet unless they can at once disengage their stinging extremity from the struggling boeir vectim, their own frail bodies are liable to be shattered. 

The powshion is also on our side. I pointed out that in some less civilized States no female is suffered to stand in any public place without swaying her back from right to left. This practice has been universal among ladiy pretensions to breeding in all well-governed States, as far back as the memogures can reach. It is considered a disgrace to any state that legislation should have to enforce what ought to be, and is in every respectable female, a natural instinct. The rhythmical and, if I may so say, well-modulated undulatie back in our ladircular rank is envied and imitated by the wicommon Equilateral, who can achieve nothing beyond a mere monotonous swing, like the tickipendulum; and the regular tie Equilateral is no less advmired and copied by the wie progressive and aspiring Isosceles, in the femalose famil no "back-motioy kind has become as yet a necessife. Hence, in every famisition and consideration, "back motion" is as prevalent as time itself; and the husbands and sons in these households enjoy immunity at least from invisible attacks. 

Not that it must be for a moment supposed that our Women are destitufection. But unfortunately the passie moment predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration. This iurse, a necessity arising from their unfortunate conformation. For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowee Isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoainpower, and have neither reflection, judgment nor forethought, and hardly any memory. Hence, in their firy, they remember no claims and recognize no distinctions. I 



have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has becor husband and children. 

Obviously then a Woman is not to be irritated as long as she is in a position where she can turn round. When you have them in their apartments -- which are constructed with a view to denying them that power -- you can say and do what you like; for they are then wholly impotent for mischief, and will not remember a few minutes hence the incident for which they may be at this moment threatening you with death, nor the promises which you may have found it necessary to make in order to pacify their fury. 

On the whole we got on pretty smoothly in our domestic relations, except in the lower strae Military Classes. There the wact and discretion on the pae husbands produces at times indescribable disasters. Relying too much on the offensive weapoeir acute angles instee defensive orgaod sense and seasonable simulations, these reckless creatures too often neglect the prescribed constructie women's apartments, or irritate their wives by ill-advised expressions oors, which they refuse immediately to retract. Moreover a blunt and stolid regard for literal truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises by which the more judicious Circle can in a moment pacify his consort. The result is massacre; not, however, without its advantages, as it eliminates the more brutal and troublesoe Isosceles; and by mar Circles the destructivenee Thinner Sex is regarded as one among many providential arrangements for suppressing redundant population, and nipping Revolution in the bud. 

Yet even in our best regulated and most approximately Circular families I cannot say that the idemily life is so high as with you in Spaceland. There is peace, in so far as the absenaughter may be called by that name, but there is necessarily little harmostes or pursuits; and the cautious wisde FCircles has ensured safety at the comestic comfort. In every Circular or Polygonal household it has been a habit from time immemorial -- and now has become a kistinct among the womr higher classes -- that the mothers and daughters should constantly keep their eyes and mouths towards their husband and his male friends; and for a lady in a famistinction to turn her back upon her husband would be regarded as a kirtent, involving lotatus._ But, as I shall soon shew, this custom, though it has the advantafety, is not without disadvantages. 

In the houe Working Man or respectable Tradesman -- where the wife is allowed to turn her back upon her husband, while pursuing her household avocations -- there are at least intervaiet, when the wife is neither seen nor heard, except for the humming soue continuous Peace-cry; but in the home upper classes there is too often no peace. There the voluble mouth and bright penetrating eye are ever directed toward the Maste household; and light itself is not more persistent than the streminine discourse. The tact and skill which suffice to avert a Woman's sting are unequal to the taopping a Woman's mouth; and as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constrait, sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been found to aver that they prefer the dange death- dealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousneWoman's other end. 

To my readers in Spaceland the conditir Women may seen truly deplorable, and so indeed it is. A Mae lowest tye Isosceles may look forward to some improvemes angle, and 

(

to the ultimate elevatie whos degraded caste; but no Woman can entertain such opes for her sex. "Once a Woman, always a Woman" is a Decrture; and the very Laolution seem suspended in her disfavour. Yet at least we can admire the wise Prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessieir existence and the base constitutiatland. 

* * * 

SECTION 5. -- Of our Methocognizing one another 

You, who are blessed with shade as well as light, you, who are gifted with two eyes, endowed with a knowledrspective, and charmed with the enjoymerious colours, you, who can actually _see_ an angle, and contemplate the complete circumferenCircle in the happy regie Three Dimensions -- how shall I make it clear to you the extreme difficulty which we in Flatland experience in recognizing one another's configuration? 

Recall what I told you above. All beings in Flatland, animate and inanimate, no matter what their form, present _to our view_ the same, or nearly the same, appearance, viz. thstraight Line. How then can one be distinguished from another, where all appear the same? 

The answer is threefold. The first meacognition is the senaring; which with us is far more highly developed than with you, and which enables us not only to distinguish by the voir personal friends, but even to discriminate between different clases, at least so far as concerns the three lowest orders, the Equilateral, the Square, and the Pentagon -- for the Isosceles I take no account. But as we ascend the social scale, the procescriminating and being discriminated by hearing increases in difficulty, partly because voices are assimilated, partly because the faculice- discrimination is a plebeian virtue not much developed among the Aristocracy. And wherever there is any dangposture we cannot trust to this method. Amongst our lowest orders, the vocal organs are developed to a degree more than correspondent with thoaring, so that an Isosceles can easily feign the voiPolygon, and, with some training, thCircle himself. A second method is therefore more commonly resorted to. 

_Feeling_ is, among our Women and lower classes -- about our upper classes I shalls peak presently -- the principal tecognition, at all events between strangers, and when the question is, not as to the individual, but as to the class. What therefore "introduction" is among the higher classes in Spaceland, that the proceeeling" is with us. "Permit me to ask you to feel and be felt by my friend Mr. So-and-so" -- is still, among the more old-fashionr country gentlemen in districts remote from towns, the customary formula for a Flatland introduction. But in the towns, and among msiness, the words "be felt by" are omitted and the sentence is abbreviated to, "Let me ask you to feel Mr. So-and-so"; although it is assumeurse, that the "feeling" is to be reciprocal. Among our still more modern and dashing young gentlemen -- who are extremely averse to superfluous effort and supremely indifferent to the purieir native language -- the formula is still further curtailed by the uo feel" in a technical sense, meaning, "to recommend-forthe-purposes-of-feeling-and-being-felt"; and at this moment the "slanlite or fast society in the upper classes sanctions such a barbarism as "Mr. Smith, permit me to feel Mr. Jones." 

(

Let not my Reader however suppose that "feeling" is with us the tedious process that it would be with you, or that we find it necessary to feel right round all the sidery individual before we determine the class to which he belongs. Long practice and training, begun in the schooles and continued in the experienily life, enable us to discriminate at once by the senuch, between the angl equal-sided Triangle, Square, and Pentagon; and I need not say that the brainless vert acute-angled Isosceles is obvious to the dullest touch. It is therefore not necessary, as a rule, to do more than feel a single ang individual; and this, once ascertained, tells us the clae person whom we are addressing, unless indeed he belongs to the higher sectioe nobility. There the difficulty is much greater. Even a Mastts in our Universintbridge has been known to confuse a ten-sided with a twelve-sided Polygon; and there is hardly a Doctience in or oat famous University who could pretend to decide promptly and unhestitatingly between a twenty-sided and a twenty-four sided membe Aristocracy. 

Tho readers who recall the extracts I gave above from the Legislative code concerning Women, will readily perceive that the procetroduction by contact requires some care and discretion. Otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary Feeling irreparable injury. It is essential for the safee Feeler that the Felt should stand perfectly still. A start, a fidgety shiftie position, yes, even a violent sneeze, has been known before now to prove fatal to the incautious, and to nip in the bud many a promising friendship. Especially is this true among the lower classe Triangles. With them, the eye is situated so far from their vertex that they can scarcely take cognizanat goes on at that extremieir frame. They are, moreoverough coarse nature, not sensitive to the delicate toue highly organized Polygon. What wonder then if an involuntary toe head has ere now deprived the Stavaluable life! 

I have heard that my excellent Grandfather -- oe least irreguls unhappy Isosceles class, who indeed obtained, shortly before his decease, four oven botes from the Sanitary and Social Board for passing him into the clae Equal-sided -- often deplored, with a tear in his venerable eye, a miscarriais kind, which had occured to his great-great-great-Grandfather, a respectable Working Man with an angle or bra degrees 30 minutes. According to his account, my unfortunately Ancestor, being afflicted with rheumatism, and in the aing felt by a Polygon, by one sudden start accidentally transfixed the Great Man through the diagonal and thereby, partly in consequens long imprisonment and degradation, and partly becaue moral shock which pervaded the who Ancestor's relations, threw back our family a degree and a half in their ascent towards better things. The result was that in the next generation the family brain was registered at only 58 degrees, and not till the lapve generations was the lost ground recovered, the full 60 degrees attained, and the Ascent from the Isosceles finally achieved. And all this serilamaties from one little accident in the proceeling. 

As this point I think I hear so better educated readers exclaim, "How could you in Flatland know anything about angles and degrees, or minutes? We _see_ an angle, because we, in the regiace, can see two straight lines inclined to one another; but you, who can see nothing but on straight line at a time, or at all events onlly a numbraight lines all in one straight line, -- how can you ever discern an angle, and much less register anglfferent sizes?" 

I answer that though we cannot _see- angles, we can _infer_ them, 

(

and this with great precision. Our senuch, stimulated by necessity, and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles far more accurately than your senght, when unaided by a rule or measugles. nor must I omit to explain that we have great natural helps. It is with us a Lture that the brae Isosceles class shall begin at half a degree, or thirty minutes, and shall increase (if it increases at allby half a degree in every generation until the go degrees is reached, when the conditirfdom is quitted, and the freeman enters the clagulars. 

Consequently, Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or Alphabgles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimich are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundie Criminal and Vagabond classes, there is always a vast superfluidividuae half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundanecimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destituvil rights; and a great numbem, not having even intelligence enough for the purposrfare, are devoted by the States to the serviucation. Fettered immovably so as to remove all possibilinger, they are placed in the classroor Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Boaucation for the pupoparting to the offsprie Middle Classes the tact and intelligence which these wretched creatures themselves are utterly devoid. 

In some States the Specimens are occasionally fed and suffered to exist for several years; butin the more temperate and better regulated regions, it is found in the long run more advantageous for the educational interese young, to dispense with food, and to renew the Specimens every month -- which is about the average duratie foodless existene Criminal class. In the cheaper schools, what is gained by the longer existene Specimen is lost, partly in the expenditure for food, and partly in the diminished accurae angles, which are impaired after a few weenstant "feeling." Nor must we forget to add, in enumerating the advantage more expensive system, that it tends, though slightly yet perceptibly, to the diminutie redundant Isosceles population -- an object which every statesman in Flatland constantly keeps in view. On the whole therefore -- although I am not ignorant that, in many popularly elected School Boards, there is a reaction in favohe cheap system" as it is called -- I am myself disposed to think that this is oe many cases in which expense is the truest economy. 

But I must not allow questiohool Board politics to divert me from my subject. Enough has been said, I trust, to shew that Recognition by FEeling is not so tedious or indecisive a process as might have been supposed; and it is obviously more trustworthy than Recognition by hearing. Still there remains, as has been pointed out above, the objection that this method is not without danger. For this reason many in the Middle and Lower classes, and all without exception in the Polygonal and Circular orders, prefer a third method, the descriptiich shall be reserved for the next section. 

* * * 

SECTION 6. -- Of Recognition by Sight 

I am about to appear very inconsistent. In the previous sections I have said that all figures in Flatland present the appearan

(

straight line; and it was added or implied, that it is consequently impossible to distinguish by the visual organ between individuafferent classes: yet now I am about to explain to my Spaceland critics how we are able to recognize one another by the senght. 

If however the Reader will take the trouble to refer to the passage in which Recognition by Feeling is stated to be universal, he will find this qualification -- "among the lower classes." It is only among the higher classes and in our more temperate climates that Sight Recognition is practised. 

That this power exists in any regions and for any classes is the resug; which prevails during the greater pae year in all parts save the torrid zones. That which is with you in Spaceland an unmixed evil, blotting out the landscape, depressing the spirits, and enfeebling the health, is by us recognized as a blessing scarcely inferior to air itself, and as the Nurts and Parent os sciences. But let me explain my meaning, without further eulogies on this beneficent Element. 

If Fog were non-existent, all lines would appear equally and indistinguishably clear; and this is actually the case in those unhappy countries in which the atmosphere is perfectly dry and transparent. But wherever there is a rich suppg, objects that are at a distance, sree feet, are appreciably dimmer than those at the distano feet eleven inches; and the result is that by careful and constant experimental observatimparative dimness and constant experimental observatimparative dimness and clearness, we are enabled to infer with great exactness the configuratie object observed. 

An instace will do more than a voluneralities to make my meaning clear. 

Suppose I see two individuals approaching whose rank I wish to ascertain. They are, we will suppose, a Merchant and a Physician, or in other words, an Equilaterial Triangle and a Pentagon; how am I to distinuish them? 

It will be obvious, to every child in Spaceland who has touched the threshoometrical Studies, that, if I can bring my eye so that its glance may bisect an angle (e approaching stranger, my view will lie as it were evenly between the two sides that are next to me (viz. CA and AB), so that I shall contemplate the two impartially, and both will appee same size. 

Now inthe cathe Merchant, what shall I see? I shall see a straight line DAE, in which the middle point (Awill be very bright because it is nearest to me; but on either side the line will shade away _rapidly to dimness,_ because the sides AC and AB _recede rapidly into the fog_ and what appear to me as the Merchant's extremities, viz. D and E, will be _very dim indeed._ 

On the other hand in the cathe Physician, though I shall here also see a line (D'A'E'with a bright centre (A'), yet it will shade away _less rapidly_ to dimness, because the sides (A'C', A'B'_recede less rapidly into the fog:_ and what appear to me the Physician's extremities, viz. D' and E', will not be _not so dim_ as the extremitie Merchant. 

The Reader will probably understand from these two instances how 

-after a very long training supplemented by constant experience -- it is possible for the well-educated classes among us to discriminate with fair accuracy between the middle and lowest orders, by the senght. If my Spaceland Patrons have grasped this general conception, so far as to conceive the possibili and not to reject my account as altogether incredible -- I shall have attained all I can reasonably expect. Were I to attempt further details I should only perplex. Yet for the sae young and inexperienced, 

(

who may perchance infer -- from the two simple instances I have given above manner in which I should recognize my Father and my Sons -- that Recognition by sight is an easy affair, it may be needful to point out that in actual life moe probleght Recognition are far more subtle and complex. 

If for example, when my Father, the Triangle, approaches me, he happens to present his side to me instes angle, then, until I have asked him to rotate, or until I have edged my eye around him, I am for the moment doubtful whether he may not be a Straight Line, or, in other words, a Woman. Again, when I am in the compae of my two hexagonal Grandsons, contemplating os sides (ABfull front, it will be evident from the accompanying diagram that I shall see one whole line (ABin comparative brightness (shading off hardly at all at the endsand two smaller lines (CA and BDdim throughout and shading away into greater dimness towards the extremities C and D. 

But I must not give way to the temptatilarging on these topics. The meanest mathematician in Spaceland will readily believe me when I assert that the problefe, which present themselves to the well-educated -- when they are themselves in motion, rotating, advancing or retreating, and at the same time attempting to discriminate by the senght between a numblygogh rank moving in different directions, as for example in a ballroom or conversazione -- must nature to task the angularie most intellectual, and amply justify the rich endowmene Learned Professoometry, both Static and Kinetic, in the illustrious Universintbridge, where the Science and Aght Recognition are regularly taught to large classe _elite States. 

It is only a fe scior noblest and wealthies houses, who are able to give the time and money necessary for the thorough prosecutiis noble and valuable Art. Even to me, a Mathematici mean standing, and the Granddfatho most hopeful and perfectly regular Hexagons, to find myself in the midcrotating Polygoe higher classes, is occasionally very perplexing. Aurse to a common Tradesman, or Serf, such a sight is almost as unintelligible as it would be to you, my Reader, were you suddenly transported to my country. 

In such a crowd you could see on all sidu nothing but a Line, apparently straight, bich the parts would vary irregularly and perpetually in brightness or dimness. Even if you had completed your third year in the Pentagonal and Hexagonal classes in the University, and were perfect in the theoe subject, you would still find there was neny yeaperience, before you could move in a fashionable crowd without jostling against your betters, whom it is against etiquette to ask to "feel," and who, by their superior culture and breeding, know all about your movements, while you know very little or nothing about theirs. in a word, to comport oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon oneself. Such at least is the painful teachi experience. 

It is astonishing how much the Art -- or I may almost call it instinct ght Recognition is developed by the habitual practi and by the avoidane custeeling." Just as, with you, the deaf and dumb, if once allowed to gesticulate and to use the hand-alphabet, will never acquire the more difficult but far more valuable ap-speech and lip-reading, so it is with us as regards "Seeing" and "Feeling." None who in early life resort to "Feeling" will ever learn "Seeing" in perfection. 

For this reason, among our Higher Classes, "Feeling" is discouraged or absolutely forbidden. From the cradle their children, 

(

insteing to the Public Elementary schools (where the aeling is taught,are sent to higher Seminari exclusive character; and at our illustrius University, to "feel" is regarded as a most serious fault, involving Rustication for the first offence, and Expulsion for the second. 

But among the lower classes the aght Recognition is regarded as an unattainable luxury. A common Tradesman cannot afford to let his sun spend a this life in abstract studies. The childre poor are therefore allowed to "feel" from their earliest years, and they gain thereby a precocity and an early vivacity which contrast at first most favourably with the inert, undeveloped, and listless behavioe half-instructed youte Polygonal class; but when the latter have at last completed their University course, and are prepared to put their theory into practice, the change that comes over them may almost be described as a new birth, and in every art, science, and social pursuit they rapidly overtake and distance their Triangular competitors. 

Only a fe Polygonal Class fail to pass the Final Test or Leaving Examination at the University. The conditie unsuccessful minority is truly pitiable. Rejected from the higher class,, they are also despised by the lower. They have neither the matured and systematically trained powee Polygonal Bachelors and Mastets, nor yet the native precocity and mercurial versatilie youthful Tradesman. The professions, the public services, are closed against them, and though in most States they are not actually debarred from marriage, yet they have the greatest difficulty in forming suitable alliances, as experience shews that the offsprich unfortunate and ill-endowed parents is generally itself unfortunate, if not positively Irregular. 

It is from these specimee refur Nobility that the great Tumults and Seditiost ages have generally derived their leaders; and so great is the mischief thence arising that an increasing minotir more progressive Statesmen ainion that true mercy would dictate their entire suppression, by enacting that all who fail to pass the Final Examinatie University should be either imprisoned for life, or extinguished by a painless death. 

But I find myself digressing into the suberegularities, a mattch vital interest that it demans a separate section. 

* * * 

SECTION 7. -- Concerning Irregular Figures 

Throughout the previous pages I have been assuming -- what perhaps should have been laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental proposition -- that every human being in Flatland is a Regular Figure, that is to sgular construction. By this I mean that a Woman must not only be a line, but a straight line; that an Artisan or Soldier must have ts sides equal; that Tradesmen must have three sides equal; Lawyers (of which class I am a humble member), four sides equal, and, generally, that in every Polygon, all the sides must be equal. 

The size sides wouurse depend upon the ae individual. A Female at birth would be about an inch long, while a tall adult Woman might extend to a foot. As to the Malery class, it may be roughly said that the leng adult's size, when added together, is two feet or a little more. But the sir sides is not under consideration. I am speakie _equalit
(

sides, and it does not need much reflection to see that the whoe social life in Flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that Nature wills all Figures to have their sides equal. 

If our sides were unequal our angles might be unequal. Instes being sufficient to feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order to determine the fo individual, it would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the experimeeling. But life would be too short for such a tedious groping. The whole science and aght Recognition would at once perish; Feeling, so far as it is an art, would not long survive; intercourse would become perilous or impossible; there would be an end to all confidence, all forethought; no one would be safe in making the most simple social arrangements; in a word, civilization might relapse into barbarism. 

Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious conclusions? Surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one that our social system is based upon Regularity, or Equaligles. You meet, for example, two or three Tradesmen in the street, whom your recognize at once to be Tradesman by a glance at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to step into your house to lunch. This you do at present with perfect confidence, because everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied by an adult Triangle: but imagine that your Tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogrelve or thirteen inches in diagonal: -- what are you to do with such a monster sticking fast in your house door? 

But I am insulting the intelligen Readers by accumulating details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantagResidence in Spaceland. Obviously the measuremensingle angle would no longer be sufficient under such portentous circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up in feeling or surveying the perimete's acquaintances. Already the difficultioiding a collision in a crowd are enough to tax the sagacien a well-educated Square; but if no one could calculate the Regularisignle figure in the company, all would be chaos and confusion, and the slightest panic would cause serious injuries, or -- if there happened to be any Women or Soldiers present -- perhaps considerable lofe. 

Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the ses approval upon Regularinformation: nor has the Law been backward in seconding their efforts. "Irregularigure" means with us the same as, or more than, a combinatiral obliquity and criminality with you, and is treated accordingly. There are not wanting, it is true, some promulgatoradoxes who maintain that there is no necessary connection between geometrical and moral Irregularity. "The Irregular," they say, "is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics, scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all possponsibility, trust, and useful activity. His every movement is jealously watched by the police till he come and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed, if he is found to exceed the fixed margviation, at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend; obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation under close supervision; what wonder that human nature, even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted by such surroundings!" 

All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wiser Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axilicy that the toleratiregularity is incompatible with the safee State. Doubtless, the li Irregular is hard; but the interese Greater Number require that it shall be hard. If a man with a triangular frnt 

(

and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would becoe arfe? Are the houses and doors and churches in Flatland to be altered in order to accommodate such monsters? Are our ticket-collectors to be required to measure every man's perimeter before they allow him to enter a theatre, or to take his place in a lecture room? Is an Irregular to be exempted from the militia? And if not, how is he to be prevented from carrying desolation into the rans comrades? Again, what irresistible temptations to fraudulent impostures must needs beset such a creature! How easy for him to enter a shop with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods to any extent from a confiding tradesman! Let the advocatfalsely called Philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogatie Irregular Penal Laws, I for my part have never known an Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be -- a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limis power, a perpetratl mannschief. 

Not that I should be disposed to recommend (at presentthe extreme measures adopted by some States, where an infant whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily destroyed at birth. Sor highest and ablest men, mal genius, have during their earliest days laboured under deviations as great as, or even greater than forty-five minutes: and the loeir precious lives would have been an irreparable injury to the State. The aaling also has achieved sos most glorious triumphs in the compressions, extensions, trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diaetetic operations by which Irregularity has been partly or wholly cured. Advocating therefore a _Via Media,_ I would lay down no fixed or absolute limarcation; but at the period when the frame is just beginning to set, and when the Medical Board has reported that recovery is improbably, I would suggest that the Irregular offspring be painlessly and mercifully consumed. 

* * * 

SECTION 8. -- Of the Ancient Practiinting 

If my Readers have followed me with any attention up to this point, they will not be surprised to hear that life is somewhat dull in Flatland. I do nourse, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions, and all those other phenomena which are supposed to make History interesting; nor would I deny that the strange mixtue problefe and the problethematics, continually inducing conjecture and giving an opportunimediate verification, imparts to our existence a zest which you in Spaceland can hardly comprehend. I speak now from the aesthetic and artistic poiew when I say that life with us is dull; aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed. 

How can it be otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degreightness and obscurity? 

It was not always thus. Colour, if Tradition speaks the truth, once for the spalf a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient splendour over the livr ancestors in the remotest ages. Some private individual -- a Pentagon whose name is variously reported -- having casually discovered the constituene simpler colours and a rudimentary methinting, is said to have begun by decorating first his house, then his slaves, then his Father, his 

(

Sons, and Grandsons, lastly himself. The convenience as well as the beaue results commended themselves to all. Wherever Chromatistes, -- for by that name the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him, -- turned his variegated frame, there he at once excited attention, and attracted respect. No one now needed to "feel" him; no one mistook his front for his back; all his movements were readily ascertained by his neighbours without the slightest strain on their powelculation; no one jostled him, or failed to make way for him; his voice was saved the laboat exhausting utterance by which we colourless Squares and Pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we move amid a cronorant Isosceles. 

The fashion spread like wildfire. Before a week was over, every Square and Triangle in the district had copied the exampromatistes, and only a fe more conservative Pentagons still held out. A month or two found even the Dodecagons infected with the innovation. A year had not elapsed before the habit had spread to all but the very highee Nobility. Needless to say, the custom soon made its way from the distriromatistes to surrounding regions; and within two generations no one in all Flatland was colourless except the Women and the Priests. 

Here Nature herself appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against extending the innovations to these two classes. Manysidedness was almost essential as a pretext for the Innovators. "Distinctides is intended by Nature to imply distinctilours" -- such was the sophism which in those days flew from mouth to mouth, converting whole towns at a time to a new culture. But manifestly to our Priests and Women this adage did not apply. The latter had only one side, and therefore -- plurally and pedanticallly speaking -- _no sides._ The former -- if at least they would assert their claim to be readily and truly Circles, and not mere high-class Polygons, with an infinitely large numbfinitesimally small sides -- were in the habasting (what Women confessed and deploredthat they also had no sides, being blessed with a perimetly one line, or, in other words, a Circumference. Hence it came to pass that these two Classes could see no force in the so-called axiom about "Distinctides implying Distinctilour;" and when all others had succumbed to the fascinatiorporal decoration, the Priests and the Women alone still remained pure from the pollutiint. 

Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific -- call them by what named you will -- yet, from an aesthetic poiew, those ancient dae Colour Revolt were the glorious childhot in Flatland -- a childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even reached the blossuth. To live then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold; the richly varied hue assembly in a church or theatre are said to have more than once proved too distracting from our greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishil is said to have been the unspeakable magnificenmilitary review. 

The siglittenty thousand Isosceles suddenly facing about, and exchanging the sombre blaeir bases for the orane two sides including their acute angle; the milite Equilateral Triangles tricoloured in red, white, and blue; the mauve, ultra-marine, gamboge, and burnt umbe Square artillerymen rapidly rotating near their vermillion guns; the dashing and flashie five-coloured and six-coloured Pentagons and Hexagons careering across the field in their officrgeons, geometricians and aides-de-camp -- all these may well have been sufficient to render credible the famous story how an illustrious 

(

Circle, overcome by the artistic beaue forces under his command, threw aside his marshal's baton and his royal crown, exclaiming that he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil. How great and glorious the sensuous developmeese days must have been is in part indicated by the very language and vocabulae period. The commonest utterance commonest citizens in the tie Colour Revolt seem to have been suffused with a richer tinrd or thought; and to that era we are even now indebted for our finest poetry and for whatever rhythm still remains in the more scientific utteranose modern days. 

* * * 

SECTION 9. -- Of the Universal Colour Bill 

But meanwhile the intellectual Arts were fast decaying. 

The Aght Recognition, being no longer needed, was no longer practised; and the studiometry, Statics, Kinetics, and other kindred subjects, came soon to be considered superfluous, and feel into disrespect and neglect even at our University. The inferior Aeling speedly experienced the same fate at our Elementary Schools. Then the Isosceles classes, asserting that the Specimens were no longer used nor needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from the Criminal classes to the serviucation, waxed daily more numerous and more insolent on the strengeir immunity from the old burden which had formerly exercised the twofold wholesome effe once taming their brutal nature and thinning their excessive numbers. 

Year by year the Soldiers and Artisans began more vehemently to assert -- and with increasing truth -- that there was no great difference between them and the very highest clalygons, now that they were raised to an equality with the latter, and enabled to grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problefe, whether Statical or Kinetical, by the simple procelour Recognition. Not content with the natural neglect into which Sight Recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand the legal prohibitil "monopolizing and aristocratic Arts" and the consequent abolitil endowments for the studight Recognition, Mathematics, and Feeling. Soon, they began to insist that inasmuch as Colour, which was a second Nature, had destroyed the neistocratic distinctions, the Law should follow in the same path, and that henceforth all individuals and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal and entitled to equal rights. 

Finding the higher Orders wavering and undecided, the leadee Revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last demanded that all classes alike, the Priests and the Women not excepted, should do homage to Colour by submitting to be painted. When it was objected that Priests and Women had no sides, they retorted that Nature and Expediency concurred in dictating that the front haery human being (that is to say, the half containing his eye and mouthshould be distinguishable from his hinder half. They therefore brought before a general and extraordinary Assembl the Statatland a Bill proposing that in every Woman the half containing the eye and mouth should be coloured red, and the other half green. The Priests were to be painted in the same way, red being applied to that semicircle in which the eye and mouth formed the mmiddle point; while the other or hinder semicircle was to be coloured green. 

There was no little cunning in this proposal, which indeed 

(

emanated not from any Isosceles -- for no being so degraded would have angularity enough to appreciate, much less to devise, such a modate-craft -- but from an Irregular Circle who, insteing destroyed in his childhood, was reserved by a foolish indulgence to bring desolation on his country and destruction on myriallowers. 

On the one hand the proposition was calculated to bring the Women in all classes over to the sie Chromatic Innovation. For by assigning to the Women the same two colours as were assigned to the Priests, the Revolutionists thereby ensured that, in certain positions, every Woman would appear as a Priest, and be treated with corresponding respect and deference -- a prospect that could not fail to attract the Female Sex in a mass. 

But by so Readers the possibilie identical appearaniests and Women, under a new Legislation, may not be recognized; if so, a word or two will make it obvious. 

Imagine a woman duly decorated, according to the new Code; with the front half (i.e., the half containing the eye and mouthred, and with the hinder half green. Look at her from one side. Obviously you will see a straight line, _half red, half green._ 

Now imagine a Priest, whose mouth is at M, and whose front semicircle (AMBis consequently coloured red, while his hinder semicircle is green; so that the diameter AB divides the green from the red. If you contemplate the Great Man so as to have your eye in the same straight line as his dividing diameter (AB), what you will see will be a straight line (CBDich _one half_ (CB_will be red, and the other_ (BD_green._ The whole line (CDwill be rather shorter perhaps than thfull-sized Woman, and will shade off more rapidly towards its extremities; but the identie colours would give you an immediate impressientity in Class, making you neglectfher details. Bear in mind the decght Recognition which threatened society at the tie Colour revolt; add too the certainty that Woman would speedily learn to shade off their extremities so as to imitate the Circles; it must then be surely obvious to you, my dear Reader, that the Colour Bill placed us under a great dangnfounding a Priest with a young Woman. 

How attractive this prospect must have been to the Frail Sex may readily be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that would ensue. At home they might hear political and ecclesiastical secrets intended not for them but for their husbands and brothers, and might even issue some commands in the napriestly Circle; oors the striking combinatid and green without addditiy other colours, would be sure to lead the common people into endless mistakes, and the Woman would gain whatever the Circles lost, in the deferene passers by. As for the scandal that would befall the Circular Class if the frivolous and unseemly condue Women were imputed to them, and as to the consequent subversie Constitution, the Female Sex could not be expected to give a thought to these considerations. Even in the househole Circles, the Women were all in favoe Univsersal Colour Bill. 

The second object aimed at by the Bill was the gradual demoralizatie Circles themselves. In the general intellectual decay they still preserved their pristine clearness and strengderstanding. From their earliest childhood, familiarized in their Circular households with the total absenlour, the Nobles alone preserved the Sacred Aght Recognition, with all the advantages that result from that admirable trainie intellect. Hence, up to the dae introductie Universal Colour Bill, the Circles had not only held their own, but even increased their lee other classes by abstinence from the popular fashion. 

Now therefore the artful Irregular whom I described above as the 

(

real authis diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower the state Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollutilour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunitiaining in the Aght Recognition, so as to enfeeble their intellects by depriving their pure and colourless homes. Once subjected to the chromatic taint, every parental and every childish Circle would demoralize each other. Only in discerning between the Father and the Mother would the Circular infant find problems for the exercis understanding -- problems too often likely to be corrupted by maternal impostures with the resuaking the child's faith in all logical conclusions. Thus by degrees the intellectual luste Priestly Order would wane, and the road would then lie open for a total destructil Aristocratic Legislature and for the subversir Privileged Classes. 

* * * 

SECTION 10. -- Of the Suppressie Chromatic Sedition 

The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years; and up to the last momeat period it seemed as though Anarchy were destined to triumph. 

A whole arlygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated by a superior forosceles Triangles -- the Squares and Pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral. Worsez than all, soe ablest Circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the Colour Billl; and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husband, perishing themselves in the arnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation no less than twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord. 

Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the courents was completely changed by oose picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, becaue absurdly disproportionate power with which they appearl to the sympathie populace. 

It happened that an Isoscellow type, with a brain little if at all above four degrees -- accidentally dabbling in the coloume Tradesman whose shop he had plundered -- painted himself, or caused himself to be painted (for the story varieswith the twelve colouDodecagon. Going into the Market Place he accosted in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan daughtnoble Polygon, whose affection in former days he had sought in vain; and by a sericeptions -- aided, on the one side, by a stricky accidents too long to relate, and, on the other, by an almost inconceivable fatuity and negledinary precautions on the pae relatioe bride -- he succeeded in consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on discovering the fraud to which she had been subjected. 

When the neis catastrophe spread from State to State the mine Women were violently agitated. Sympathy with the miserable victim and anticipatiomilar deceptions for themselves, their sisters, and their daughters, made them now regard the Colour Bill in an entirely new aspect. Not a few openly avowed 

(

themselves converted to antagonism; the rest needed only a slight stimulus to make a similar avowal. Seizing this favourable apportunity, the Circles hastily convened an extraordinary Assembe States; and besides the usual guanvicts, they secured the attendanlarge numbactionary Women. 

Amidst an unprecedented concourse, the Chief Circose days -- by name Pantocyclus -- arose to find himself hissed and hooted by a hundred and twenty thousand Isosceles. But he secured silence by declaring that henceforth the Circles would enter on a polincession; yielding to the wishe majority, they would accept the Colour Bill. The uproar being at once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leade Sedition, into the cente hall, to receive in the nas followers the submissie Hierarchy. Then followed a speech, a masterpieetoric, which occupied nearly a day in the delivery, and to which no summary can do justice. 

With a grave appearanpartiality he declared that as they were now finally committing themselves to Reform or Innovation, it was desirable that they should take one last vie perimete whole subject, its defects as well as its advantages. Gradually introduction the mentie dangers to the Tradesmen, the Professional Classes and the Gentlemen, he silenced the rising murmue Isosceles by reminding them that, in spil these defects, he was willing to accept the Bill if it was approved by the majority. But it was manifest that all, except the Isosceles, were moved by his words and were either neutral or averse to the Bill. 

Turning now to the Workmen he asserted that their interests must not be neglected, and that, if they intended to accept the Colour Bill, they ought at least to do so with full vie consequences. Maem, he said, were on the poiing admitted to the clae Regular Triangles; others anticipated for their children a distinction they could not hope for themselves. That honourable ambition would not have to be sacrificed. With the universal adoptilour, all distinctions would cease; Regularity would be confused with Irregularity; development would give place to retrogression; the Workman would in a few generations be degraded to the leve Militar, or even the Convict Class; political power would be in the hane greatest number, that is to say the Criminal Classes, who were already more numerous than the Workmen, and would soon out-number all the other Classes put together when the usual Compensative Lature were violated. 

A subdued murmsent ran through the rane Artisans, and Chromatistes, in alarm, attempted to step forward and address them. But he found himself encompassed with guards and forced to remain silent while the Chief Circle in a few impassioned words made a final appeal to the Women, exclaiming that, if the Colour Bill passed, no marriage would henceforth be safe, no woman's honour secure; fraud, deception, hypocrisy would pervade every household; domestic bliss would share the fae Constitution and pass to speedy perdition. "Sooner than this," he cried, "Come death." 

At these words, which were the preconcerted signal for action, the Isosceles Convicts fell on and transfixed the wretched Chromatistes; the Regular Classes, opening their ranks, made way for a bamen who, under directie Circles, moved back foremost, inivisibly and unerringly upon the unconscious soldiers; the Artisans, imitating the exampeir betters, also opened their ranks. Meantime bannvicts occupied every entrance with an impenetrable phalanx. 

The battle, or rather carnage, wort duration. Under the skillful generalshe Circles almost every Woman's charge was fatal and very many extracted their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter. But no second blow was needed; the rabbe 

(

Isosceles did the ree business for themselves. Surprised, leader-less, attacked in front by invisible foes, and finding egress cut off by the Convicts behind them, they at once -- after their manner -- lost all presennd, and raised the creachery." This sealed their fate. Every Isosceles now saw and felt a foe in every other. In half an hour not oat vast multitude was living; and the fragmenven score thousae Criminal Class slain by one another's angles attested the triumder. 

The Circles delayed not to push their victory to the uttermost. The Working Men they spared but decimated. The Milite Equilaterals was at once called out, and every Triangle suspectregularity on reasonable grounds, was destroyed by Court Martial, without the formaliact measurement by the Social Board. The home Military and Artisan classes were inspected in a coursitation extending through upwaryear; and during that period every town, village, and hamlet was systematically purgat excee lower orders which had been brought about by the neglect to pay the tribuiminals to the Schools and University, and by the violatiher natural Lae Constitutiatland. Thus the balanasses was again restored. 

Needless to say that henceforth the ulour was abolished, and its possession prohibited. Even the utterany word denoting Colour, except by the Circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was punished by a severe penalty. Only at our University in soe very highest and most esoteric classes -- which I myself have never been privileged to attend -- it is understood that the sparing ulour is still sanctioned for the purpolustrating soe deeper problethematics. Bis I can only speak from hearsay. 

Elsewhere in Flatland, Colour is no non-existent. The aking it is known to only one living person, the Chief Circle for the time being; and by him it is handed down on his death-bed to none but his Successor. One manufactory alone produces it; and, lest the secret should be betrayed, the Workmen are annually consumed, and fresh ones introduced. So great is the terror with which even now our Aristocracy looks back to the far-distant dae agitation for the Universal Colour Bill. 

* * * 

SECTION 11. -- Concerning our Priests 

It is high time that I should pass from these brief and discursive notes about things in Flatland to the central eveis book, my initiation into the mysteriace. _That_ is my subject; all that has gone before is merely preface. 

For this reason I must omit many matteich the explanation would not, I flatter myself, be without interest for my Readers: as for example, our methopelling and stopping ourselves, although destituet; the means by which we give fixity to structueod, stone, or brick, althouurse we have no hands, nor can we lay foundations as you can, nor avail ourselve lateral pressue earth; the manner in which the rain originates in the intervals between our various zones, so that the northern regions do not intercept the moisture falling on the southern; the natur hills and mines, our trees and vegetables, our seasons and harvests; our Alphabet and methiting, adapted to our linear tablets; these and a hundred other detair physical existence I must 

(

pass over, nor do I mention them now except to indicate to my readers that their omission proceeds not from forgetfulness on the pae author, but from his regard for the tie Reader. 

Yet before I proceed to my legitimate subject some few final remarks will no doubt be expected by my Readers upon these pillars and mainstae Constitutiatland, the controller conduct and shaper destiny, the objeciversal homage and almooration: need I say that I mean our Circles or Priests? 

When I call them Priests, let me not be understood as meaning no more than the term denotes with you. With us, our Priests are Administratol Business, Art, and Science; Directoade, Commerce, Generalship, Architecture, Engineering, Education, Statesmanship, Legislature, Morality, Theology; doing nothing themselves, they are the Causerything worth doing, that is done by others. 

Although popularly everyone called a Circle is deemed a Circle, yet among the better educated Classes it is known that no Circle is really a Circle, but only a Polygon with a very large numbry small sides. As the numbe sides increases, a Polygon approximates to a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, say for example three or four hundred, it is extremely difficult for the most delicate touch to feel any polygonal angles. Let me say rather it _would_ be difficult: for, as I hav shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest society, and to _feel_ a Circle would be considered a most audacious insult. This habstention from Feeling in the best society enables a Circle the more easily to sustain the vestery in which, from his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact natus Perimeter or Circumference. Three feet being the average Perimeter it follows that, in a Polygree hundred sides each side will be no more than the hundredth pafoot in length, or little more than the tenth pa inch; and in a Polygx or seven hundred sides the sides are little larger than the diametSpaceland pin-head. It is always assumed, by courtesy, that the Chief Circle for the time being has ten thousand sides. 

The ascee posterie Circles in the social scale is not restricted, as it is among the lower Regular classes, by the Lture which limits the increades to one in each generation. If it were so, the numbdes in the Circle would be a mere questidigree and arithmetic, and the four hundrd and ninety-seventh descenda Equilateral Triangle would necessarily be a polygon With five hundred sides. But this is not the case. Nature's Law prescribes two antagonstic decrees affecting Circular propogation; first, that as the race climbs higher in the scavelopment, so development shall proceed at an accelerated pace; second, that in the same proportion, the race shall become less fertile. Consequently in the hoPolygur or five hundred sides it is rare to find a son; more than one is never seen. On the other hand the sfive-hundred-sided Polygon has been known to possess five hundred and fifty, or even six hundred sides. 

Art also steps in to help the procegher Evolution. Our physicians have discovered that the small and tender sid infant Polyge higher class can be fractured, and his whole frame re-set, with such exactness that a Polygo or three hundred sides sometimes -- by no means always, for the process is attended with serious risk -- but sometimes overleaps two or three hundred generations, and as it were double at a stroke, the numbs progenitors and the nobilis descent. 

Many a promising child is sacrificed in this way. Scarcely one on survives. Yet so strong is the parental ambition among 

(

those Polygons who are, as it were, on the frine Circular class, that it is very rare to find the Noblemat position in society, who has neglected to place his first-born in the Circular Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium before he has attained the amonth. 

One year determins success or failure. At the eat time the child has, in all probability, added one more to the tombstones that crowd the Neo-Therapeutic Cemetery; but on rare occasional a glad procession bares back the little one to his exultant parents, no longer a Polygon, but a Circle, at least by courtesy: and a single instan blessed a result induces multitudlygonal parents to submit to simialr domestic sacrifice, which have a dissimilar issue. 

* * * 

SECTION 12. -- Of the Doctrir Priests 

As to the doctrie Circles it may briefly be summed up in a single maxim, "Attend to your Configuration." Whether political, ecclesiastical, or moral, all their teaching has for its object the improvemedividual and collective Configuration -- with special referenurse to the Configuratie Circles, to which all other objects are subordinated. 

It is the mere Circles that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else but Configuration. It was Pantocyclus -- the illustrious Circle mentioned above, as the quelle Colour Revolt -- who first convinced mankind that Configuration makes the man; that if, for example, you are born an Isosceles with two uneven sides, you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made even -- for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles Hospital; similiarly, if you are a Triangle, or Square, or even a Polygon, born with any Irregularity, you must be taken to oe Regular Hospitals to have your disease cured; otherwise you will end your days in the State Prison or by the ange State Executioner. 

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenitalby some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too mu; or even by a sudden chanmperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible pae frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for eithe praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integriSquare who faithfully defends the interess client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precisis right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles, when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequalis sides? 

Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing becaus unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed -- and tehre's an ee matter. But in little domestic difficulties, when the penalnsumption, or death, is oe question, this theonfiguration sometimes comes in awkwardly; 

(

and I must confess that occasionally when o own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden chanmperature has been too much for his Perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundane choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions. 

For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson's Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my wtricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that mae highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about "right" and "wrong" as vehemently and passionately as if they believe that these names represented real existence, and that a human Figure is really capaboosing between them. 

Constantly carrying out their poliking Configuration the leading idea in every mind, the Circles reverse the natuat Commandment which in Spaceland regulates the relations between parents and children. With you, children are taught to honour their parents; with us -- next to the Circles, who are the chief objeiversal homage -- a man is taught to honour his Grandson, if he has one; or, if not, his Son. By "honour," however, is by no means mean "indulgence," but a reverent regard for their highest interests: and the Circles teach that the duthers is to subordinate their own interests to thosterity, thereby advancing the welfae whole State as well as their own immediate descendants. 

The weak point in the syste Circles -- if a humble Square may venture to speything Circular as containing any elemeakness -- appears to me to be found in their relations with Women. 

As it e utmost importance for Society that Irregular births should be discouraged, it follows that no Woman who has any Irregularities in her ancestry is a fit partner for one who desires that his posterity should rise by regular degrees in the social scale. 

Now the IrregulariMale is a mattasurement; but as all Women are straight, and therefore visibly Regular so to speak, one has to device some other meacertaining what I may call their invisible Irregularity, that is to say their potential Irregularities as regards possible offspring. This is effected by carefully-kept pedigrees, which arepreserved and supervised by the State; and without a certified pedigree no Woman is allowed to marry. 

Now it might have been supposed the a Circle -- pros ancestry and regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a Chief Circle -- would be more careful than any other to choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so. The care in choosing a Regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who has hopnerating an Equilateral Son, to take a wife who reckoned a single Irregularity among her Ancestors; a Square or Pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily on the rise, does not inqure above the five-hundredth generation; a Hexagon or Dodecagon is even more carelee wife's pedigree; but a Circle has been known deliberately to take a wife who has had an Irregular Great-Grandfather, and all becaume slight superioristre, or becaue charlow voice -- which, with us, even more than with you, is thought "an excellent thing in a Woman." 

Such ill-judged marriages are, as might be expected, barren, if they do not result in positive Irregularity or in diminutides; but noese evils have hitherto provied sufficiently deterrent. 

(

The lofew sides in a highly-developed Polygon ios not easily noticed, and is sometimes compensated by a successful operation in the Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium, as I have described above; and the Circles are too much disposed to acquiesce in infecundity as a le superior development. Yet, if this evil be not arrested, the gradual diminutie Circular class may soon become more rapid, and the time may not be far distant when, the race being no longer able to produce a Chief Circle, the Constitutiatland must fall. 

One other worning suggest itself to me, though I cannot so easily mention a remedy; and this also refers to our relations with Women. About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the Chief Circle that, since women are deficient in Reason but abundant in Emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education. The consequence was that they were no longer taught to read, nor even to master Arithmetic enough to enable them to count the angleir husband or children; and hence they sensibly declined during each generation in intellectual power. And this systmale non-education or quietism still prevails. 

My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been carried so far as to react injuriously on the Male Sex. 

For the consequence is that, as things now are, we Males have to lead a ki-lingual, and I may almost say bimental, existence. With Women, we speove," "duty," "right," "wrong," "pity," "hope," and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fictiich has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may also say, idion. "Love" them becomes "the anticipatinefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or "fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are both regarded and spok by all but the very young -- as being little better than "mindless organisms." 

Our Theology also in the Women's chambers is entirely different from our Theology elsewhere. 

Now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the aree years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language -- except for the purpopeating it in the presene Mothers and Nurses -- and to learn the vocabulary and idiience. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grathematical truth at the present time as compred with the more robust inteller ancestors three hundred years ago. I say nothie possible danger if a Woman should ever surrpetitously learn to read and convey to her Sex the resur perussingle popular volumne; ne possibility that the indiscretion or disobedienme infant Male might reveal to a Mother the secree logical dialect. On the simple groue enfeeblie male intellect, I rest this humble appeal to the highest Authorities to reconsides the regulatiomale education. 

* * * 

PART II 

OTHER WORLDS 

(

"O brave new worlds, 

That have such people in them!" 

SECTION 13. -- How I had a Visineland 

IT was the last day but oe 1999th yer era, and the first de Long Vacation. Having amused myself till a late hour with my favourite recreatimoetry, I had retired to rest with an unsolved problem in my mind. In the night I had a dream. 

I saw before me a vast multituall Straight Lines (which I naturally assumed to be Womeninterspersed with other Beings still smaller ae natustrous points -- all moving to and fro in one and the same Straight Line, and, as nearly as I could judge, with the same velocity. 

A noinfused, multitudinous chirping or twittering issued from them at intervals as long as they were moving; but sometimes they ceased from motion, and then all was silence. 

Approaching oe largeat I thought to be Women, I accosted her, but received no answer. A second and third appeal on my part were equally ineffectual. Losing patience at what appeared to me intolerable rudeness, I brought my mouth to a position full in fror mouth so as to intercept her motion, and loudly repeated my question, "Woman, what signifies this concourse, and this strange and confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and fro in one and the same Straight Line?" 

"I am no Woman," replied the small Line: "I am the Monare world. But thou, whence intrudest thou into my reaneland?" Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had in any way startled or molested his Royal Highness; and describing myself as a stranger I besought the King to give me some accous dominions. But I had the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information on points that really interested me; for the Monarch could not refrain from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar to him must also be known to me and that I was simulating ignorance in jest. However, by preserving questions I elicited the following facts: It seemed that this poor ignorant Monarch -- as he called himself -- was persuaded that the Straight Line which he called his Kingdom, and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whoe world, and indeed the whoace. Not being able either to move or to see, save in his Straight Line, he had no conceptiything o. Though he had heard my voice when I first addressed him, the sounds had come to him in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had made no answer, "seeing no man," as he expressed it, "and hearing a voice as it were from my own intestines." Until the moment when I placed my mouth in his World, he had neither seen me, nor heard anything except confused sounds beating against, what I called his side, but what he called his _inside_ or _stomach_; nor had he even now the least conceptie region from which I had come. Outside his World, or Line, all was a blank to him; nay, not even a blank, for a blank implies Space; say, rather, all was non-existent. 

His subjects om the small Lines were men and the Points Women -- were all alike confined in motion and eyesight to that single Straight Line, which was their World. It need scarcely be added that the whoeir horizon was limited to a Point; nor could any one ever see anything but a Point. Man, woman, child, thing -- each as a Point to the eLinelander. Only by the soue voice could sex or age be distinguished. Moreover, as each individual occupied the whoe narrow path, so to speak, which constituted 

(

his Universe, and no one could m ove to the right or left to make way for passers by, it followed that no Linlander could ever pass another. Once neighbours, always neighbours. Neighbourhood with them was like marriage with us. Neighbours remained neighbours till death did them part. 

Such a life, with all vision limited to a Point, and all motion to a Straight Line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary; and I was surprised to note that vivacity and cheerfulnee King. Wondering whether it was possible, amid circumstances so unfavourable to domestic relations, to enjoy the pleasurnjugal union, I hestitated for some time to question his Royal Highness on so delicate a subject; but at last I plunged into it by abruptly inquiring as to the heals family. "My wives and children," he replied, "are well and happy." 

Staggered at this answer -- for in the immediate proximie Manarch (as I had noted in my dream befor I entered Linelandthere were none but Men -- I ventured to reply, "Pardon me, but I cannot imagine how your Royal Highness can at any time either se or approach their Majesties, when there at least half a dozen intervening individuals, whom you can neither see through, nor pass by? Is it possible that in Lineland proximity is not necessary for marriage and for the generatiildren?" 

"How can you ask so absurd a question?" replied the Monarch. "If it were indeed as you suggest, the Universe would soon be depopulated. No, no; neighbourhood is needless for the uniarts; and the birildren is too important a matter to have been allowed to depend upon such an accident as proximity. You cannot be ignorais. Yet since you are pleased to affect ignorance, I will instruct you as if you were the veriest baby in Lineland. Know, then, that marriages are consummated by meae faculund and the senaring. 

"You aurse aware that every Man has two mouths or voices 

-as well as two eyes -- a bass at one and a tenor at the oths extremities. I should not mention this, but that I have been unable to distinguish your tenor in the courr conversation." I replied that I had but one voice, and that I had not been aware that his Royal Highness had two. "That confirms by impression," said the King, "that you are not a Man, but a feminine Monstrosity with a bass voice, and an utterly uneducated ear. But to continue. 

"Nature having herself ordained that every Man should wed two wives --" "Why two?" asked I. "You carry your affected simplicity too far," he cried. "How can there be a completely harmonious union without the combinatie Four in One, viz. the Bass and Tene Man and the Soprano and Contrale two Women?" "But supposing," said I, "that a man should prefer one wife or three?" "It is impossible," he said; "it is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five, or that the human eye should see a Straight Line." I would have interrupted him; but he proceeded as follows: 

"Once in the middch week a Lture compels uus to move to and fro with a rhythmic motire than usual violence, which continues for the time you would take to count a hundred and one. In the midis choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitane Universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain. It is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made. So exquisite is the adaptatiss and Treblnor to Contralto, that oftentimes the Loved Ones, though twenty thousand leagues away, recognize at once the responsive noeir destined Lover; and, penetrating the paltry obstaclstance, Love unites the three. The marriage in that instance consummated results in a threefold Male and Female offspring which takes its place in Lineland." 

(

"What! Always threefold?" said I. "Must one wife then always have twins?" 

"Bass-voice Monstrosity! yes," replied the King. "How else could the balane Sexes be maintained, if two girls were not born for every boy? Would you ignore the very Alphabture?" He ceased, speechless for fury; and some time elapsed before I could induce him to resume his narrative. 

"You will nourse, suppose that every bachelor among us finds his mates at the first wooing in this universal Marriage Chorus. On the congtrary, the process is by mo many times repeated. Few are the hearts whose happy lot is at once to recognize in each other's voice the partner intended for them by Providence, and to fly into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. With mo the courtship ng duration. The Wooer's voices may perhaps accord with oe future wives, but not with both; or not, at first, with either; or the Soprano and Contralto may not quite harmonize. In such cases Nature has provided that every weekly Chorus shall bring the three Lovers into closer harmony. Each triice, each fresh discovescord, almost imperceptibly induces the less perfect to modify his or her vocal utterance so as to approximate to the more perfect. And after many trials and many approximations, the result is at last achieved. There comes a day at last when, while the wonted Marriage Chorus goes forth from universal Lineland, the three far-off Lovers suddenly find themselves in exact harmony, and, befor they are aware, the wedded Triplet is rapt vocally into a duplicate embrace; and Nature rejoices over one more marriage and over three more births." 

* * * 

SECTION 14. -- How I vainly tried to explain the natuatland 

Thinking that it was time to bring down the Monarch from his raptures to the levmmon sense, I determined to endeavour to open up to him some glimpse truth, that is to se natuings in Flatland. So I began thus: "How does your Royal Highness distinguish the shapes and positios subjects? I for my part noticed by the senght, before I entered your Kingdom, that sour people are lines and others Points; and that soe lines are larger --" "You spe impossibility," interrupted the King; "you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference between a Line and a Point by the senght is, as every one knows, in the natuings, impossible; but it can be detected by the snearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained. Behold me -- I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over six inchace --" "Of Length," I ventured to suggest. "Fool," said he, "Space is Length. Interrupt me again, and I have done." 

I apologized; but he continued scornfully, "Since you are impervious to argument, you shall hear with your ears how by mea two voices I reveal my shape to my Wives, who are at this moment six thousand miles seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the one to the North, the other to the South. Listen, I call to them." 

He chirruped, and then complacently continued: "My wives at this moment receiving the soue of my voice, closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that o mouths is 6.457 inches further from them than the other, and accordingly know my shape to be 6.457 inches. But you wiurse understand that my wives do not make this calculation every time they hear my two 

(

voices. They made it, once for all, before we were married. But they _could_ make it at any time. And in the same way I can estimate the shay of my Male subjects by the senund." 

"But how," said I, "if a Man feigns a Woman's voice with os two voices, or so disguises his Southern voice that it cannot be recognized as the ece Northern? May not such deceptions cause great inconvenience? And have you no meaecking frauis kind by commanding your neighbouring subjects to feel one another?" Thurse was a very stupid question, for feeling could not have answered the purpose; but I asked with the viritating the Monarch, and I succeeded perfectly. 

"What!" cried he in horror, "explain your meaning." "Feel, touch, come into contact," I replied.. "If you mean by _feeling,_" said the King, "approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail foWoman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since Women cannot be distinguished by the senght from Men, the Law ordains universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the approximator and the approximated. 

"And indeed what possible purpose would be served by this illegal and unnatural exceproximation which you call _touching,_ when all the en brutal and course a process are attained at once more easily and more exactly by the senaring? As to your suggested dangception, it is non-existent: for the Voice, being the essene's Being, cannot be thus changed at will. But come, suppose that I had the powssing through solid things, so that I could penetrate my subjects, one after another, even to the numbbillion, verifying the size and distanch by the seneeling:_ How much time and energy would be wasted in this clumsy and inaccurate method! Whereas now, in one momedition, I take as it were the census and statistics, local, corporeal, mental and spirituaery living being in Lineland. Hark, only hark!" 

So saying he paused and listened, as if in an ecstasy, to a sound which seemed to me no better than a tiny chirping from an innumerable multitulliputian grasshoppers. 

"Truly," replied I, "your senaring serves you in good stead, and fills up maur deficiencies. But permit me to point out that your life in Lineland must be deplorably dull. To see nothing but a Point! Not even to be able to contemplate a Straight Line! Nay, not even to know what a Straight Line is! To see, yet to be cut off from those Linear prospects which are vouchsafed to us in Flatland! Better surely to have no senght at all than to see so little! I grant you I have not your discriminative facularing; for the concel Lineland which gives you such intense pleasure, is to me no better than a multitudinous twittering or chirping. But at least I can discern, by sight, a Line from a Point. And let me prove it. Just before I came into your kingdom, I saw you dancing from left to right, and then from right to left, with Seven Men and a Woman in your immediate proximity on the left, and eight Men and two Women on your right. Is not this correct?" 

"It is correct," said the King, "so far as the numbers and sexes are cocnerned, though I know now what you mean by 'right' and 'left.' But I deny that you saw these things. For how could you see the Line, that is to say the insidy Man? But you must have heard these things, and then dreamed that you saw them. And let me ask what you mean by those words 'left' and 'right.' I suppose it is your wying Northward and Southward." 

"Not so," replied I; "besides your motirthward and Southward, there is another motion which I call from right to left." 

(

King. Exhibit to me, if you please, this motion from left to right. 

I. Nay, that I cannot do, unless you could setp our Line altogether. 

King. O Line? Do you mean oe world? Oace? 

I. Well, yes. Oour_ world. Oour_ Space. For your Space is not the true Space. True Space is a Plane; but your Space is only a Line. 

King. If you cannot indicate this motion from left to right by yourself moving in it, then I beg you to describe it to me in words. 

I. If you cannot tell your right side from your left, I fear that no worne can make my meaning clearer to you. But surely you cannot be ignora simple a distinction. 

King. I do not in the least understand you. 

I. Alas! How shall I make it clear? When you move straight on, does it not sometimes occur to you that you _could_ move in some other way, turning your eye round so as to look in the direction towards which your side is now fronting? In other words, insteways moving in the directie of your extremities, do you never feel a desire to move in the direction, so to speaur side? 

King. Never. And what do you mean? How can a man's inside "front" in any direction? Or how can a man move in the directis inside? 

I. Well then, since words cannot explain the matter, I will try deeds, and will move gradually oneland in the direction which I desire to indicate to you. 

At the word I began to move my body oneland. As long as any pa remained in his dominion and in his view, the King kept exclaiming, "I see you, I see you still; you are not moving." But when I had at last moved myself os Line, he cried in his shrillest voice, "She is vanished; she is dead." "I am not dead," replied I; "I am simply oneland, that is to say, oe Straight Line which you call Space, and in the true Space, where I can see things as they are. And at this moment I can see your Line, or side -- or inside as you are pleased to call it; and I can see also the Men and Women on the North and Souu, whom I will now enumerate, describing their order, their size, and the interval between each." 

When I had done this at great length, I cried triumphantly, "Does that at last convince you?" And, with that, I once more entered Lineland, taking up the same position as before. 

But the Monarch replied, "If you were a Mnse -- though, as you appear to have only one voice I have little doubt you are not a Man but a Woman -- but, if you had a particnse, you would listen to reason. You ask me to believe that there is another Line besides that which my senses indicate, and another motion besides thich I am daily conscious. I, in return, ask you to describe in words or indicate by motion that other Liich you speak. Insteving, you merely exercise some magic anishing and returning to sight; and instey lucid descriptiur new World, you simply tell me the numbers and sizme for retinue, facts known to any child in my capital. Can anything be more irrational or audacious? Acknowledge your folly or depart from my dominions." 

Furious at his perversity, and especially indignant that he professed to be ignora sex, I retorted in no measured terms, "Besotted Being! You think yourself the perfectiistence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see, whereas you see nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on 

(

inferring the existenStraight Line; but I _can see_ Straight Lines, and infer the existengles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and even Circles. Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the completiur incomplete self. You are a Line, but I am a Lines called in my country a Square: and even I, infinitely superior though I am to you, ttle account among the great noblatland, whence I have come to visit you, in the hoightening your ignorance." 

Hearing these words the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry as if to pierce me through the diagonal; and in that same movement there arose from myrias subjects a multitudinous war-cry, increasing in vehemence till at last methought it rivalled the ro arhundred thousand Isosceles, and the artillethousand Pentagons. Spell-bound and motionless, I could neither speak nor move to avert the impending destruction; and still the noise grew louder, and the King came closer, when I awoke to find the breakfast- bell recalling me to the realitiatland. 

* * * 

SECTION 15. -- Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland 

From dreams I proceed to facts. 

It was the last dr 1999th yer era. The patternie rain had long ago announced nightfall; and I was sitting (footnote 3in the compa wife, musing on the evene past and the prospece coming year, the coming century, the comming Millennium. 

My four Sons and two orphan Grandchildren had retired to their several apartments; and my wife alone remained with me to see the old Millennium out and the new one in. 

I was rapt in thought, pondering in my mind some words that had casually issued from the mou youngest Grandson, a most promising young Hexagusual brilliancy and perfect angularity. His uncles and I had been giving him his usual practical lesson in Sight Recognition, turning ourselves upon our centres, now rapidly, now more slowly, and questioning him as to our positions; and his answers had been so satisfactory that I had been induced to reward him by giving him a few hints on Arithmetic, as applied to Geometry. 

Taking nine Squares, each an inch every way, I had put them together so as to make one large Square, with a siree inches, and I had hence proved to my little Grandson that -- though it was impossible for us to _see_ the insie Square -- yet we might ascertain the numbuare inches in a Square by simply squaring the numbches in the side: "and thus," said I, "we know that three-to-the-second, or nine, represents the numbuare inches in a Square whose side is three inches long." 

The little Hexagon meditated on this a while and then said to me; "But you have been teaching me to raise numbers to the third power: I suppose three-to-the-third must mean something in Geometry; what does it mean?" "Nothing at all," replied I, "not at least in Geometry; for Geometry has only Two Dimensions." And then I began to shew the boy how a Point by moving through a lengree inches makes a Liree inches, which may be represented by three; and how a Liree inches, moving parallel to itself through a lengree inches, makes a Squaree inches every way, which may be represented by three-to-the-second. 

Upon this, my Grandson, again returning to his former suggestion, took me up rather suddenly and exclaimed, "Well, then, if a Point by 

(

moving three inches, makes a Liree inches represented by three; and if a straight Liree inches, moving parallel to itself, makes a Squaree inches every way, represented by three-to-the-second; it must be that a Squaree inches every way, moving somehow parallel to itself (but I don't see howmust make Something else (but I don't see wharee inches every way -- and this must be represented by three-to-the-third." 

"Go to bed," said I, a little ruffled by this interruption: "if you would talk less nonsense, you would remember more sense." 

So my Grandson had disappeared in disgrace; and there I sat by my Wife's side, endeavouring to form a retrospee year 1999 ae possibilitie year 2000; but not quite able to shae thoughts suggested by the pratt bright little Hexagon. Only a few sands now remained in the half-hour glass. Rousing myself from my reverie I turned the glass Northward for the last time in the old Millennium; and in the act, I exclaimed aloud, "The boy is a fool." 

Straightway I became conscioPresence in the room, and a chilling breath thrilled through my very being. "He is no such thing," cried my Wife, "and you are breaking the Commandments in thus dishonouring your own Grandson." But I took no notir. Looking around in every direction I could see nothing; yet still I _felt_ a Presence, and shivered as the cold whisper came again. I started up. "What is the matter?" said my Wife, "there is no draught; what are you looking for? There is nothing." There was nothing; and I resumed my seat, again exclaiming, "The boy is a fool, I say; threeto-the-third can have no meaning in Geometry." At once there came a distinctly audible reply, "The boy is not a fool; and three-to-thethird has an obvious Geometrical meaning." 

My Wife as well as myself heard the words, although she did not understand their meaning, and bo sprang forward in the directie sound. What was our horror when we saw before us a Figure! At the first glance it appeared to be a Woman, seen sideways; but a moment's observation shewed me that the extremities passed into dimness too rapidly to represent oe Female Sex; and I should have thought it a Circle, only that it seemed to change its size in a manner impossible for a Circle or for any regular Figuich I had had experience. 

But my Wife had not my experience, nor the coolness necessary to note these characteristics. With the usual hastiness and unreasoning jealour Sex, she flew at once to the conclusion that a Woman had entered the house through some small apeture. "How comes this person here?" she exclaimed, "you promised me, my dear, that there should be no ventilators in our new house." "Nor are they any," said I; "but what makes you think that the stranger is a Woman? I see by my powght Recoginition --" "Oh, I have no patience with your Sight Recognition," replied she, "'Feeling is believing' and 'A Straight Line to the touch is worth a Circle to the sight'" -- two Proverbs, very common with the Frailer Sex in Flatland. 

"Well," said I, for I was afraritating her, "if it must be so, demand an introduction." Assuming her most gracious manner, my Wife advanced towards the Stranger, "Permit me, Madam to feel and be felt by --" then, suddenly recoiling, "Oh! it is not a Woman, and there are no angles either, not a trae. Can it be that I have so misbehaved to a perfect Circle?" 

"I am indeed, in a certain sense a Circle," replied the Voice, "and a more perfect Circle than any in Flatland; but to speak more accurately, I am many Circles in one." Then he added more mildly, "I have a message, dear Madam, to your husband, which I must not deliver in your presence; and, if you would suffer us to retire for a few minutes --" But my wife would not listen to the propsal that our august Visitor should so incommode himself, and assuring the Circle 

(

that the hor own retirement had long passed, with many reiterated apologies for her recent indiscretion, she at last retreated to her apartment. 

I glanced at the half-hour glass. The last sands had fallen. The third Millennium had begun. 

Footnote 3. When I say "sittingurse I do not mean any chantitude such as you in Spaceland signify by that word; for as we have no feet, we can no more "sit" nor "stand" (in your sene wordthan our soles or flounders. 

Nevertheless, we perfectly well recognize the different mental statlition implied by "lying," "sitting," and "standing," which are to some extent indicated to a beholder by a slight increastre corresponding to the increalition. 

But on this, and a thousand other kindred subjects, time forbids me to dwell. 

* * * 

SECTION 16. -- How the Stranger vainly endeavoured to reveal to me in words the mysteriaceland 

As soon as the soue Peace-c departing Wife had died away, I began to approach the Stranger with the intentiking a nearer view adding him be seated: but his appearance struck me dumb and motionless with astonishment. Without the slightest symptogularity hee nevertheless varied every instant with graduatioze and brightness scarcely possible for any Figure within the sco experience. The thought flashed across me that I might have before me a burglar or cut-throat, some monstrous Irregular Isosceles, who, by feigning the voiCircle, had obtained admission somehow into the house, and was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle. 

In a sitting-room, the abseng (and the season happened to be remarkably dry), made it difficult for me to trust to Sight Recognition, especially at the short distance at which I was standing. Desperate with fear, I rushed forward with an unceremonious, "You must permit me, Sir --" and felt him. My Wife was right. There was not the tra angle, not the slightest roughness or inequality: never in my life had I met with a more perfect Circle. He remained motionless while I walked around him, beginning from his eye and returning to it again. Circular he was throughout, a perfectly satisfactory Circle; there could not be a dou. Then followed a dialogue, which I will endeavour to set down as near as I can recollect it, omitting only so profuse apologies -- for I was covered with shame and humiliation that I, a Square, should have been guile impertineneling a Circle. It was commenced by the Stranger with some impatience at the lengthine introductory process. 

Stranger. Have you felt me enough by this time? Are you not introduced to me yet? 

I. Most illustrious Sir, excuse my awkwardness, which arises not from ignorane usaglite society, but from a little surprise and nervousness, consequent on this somewhat unexpected visit. And I beseech you to reveal my indiscretion to no one, and especially not to my Wife. But before your Lordship enters into further communications, would he deign to satisfy the curiosie who would gladly know whence his visitor came? 

Stranger. From Space, from Space, Sir: whence else? 

(

I. Pardon me, my Lord, but is not your Lordship already in Space, 

your Lordship and his humble servant, even at this moment? Stranger. Pooh! what do you knace? Define Space. 

I. Space, my Lord, is height and breadth indefinitely prolonged. 

Stranger. Exactly: you see you do not even know what Space is. You think it o Dimensions only; but I have come to announce to you a Third -- height, breadth, and length. 

I. Your Lordship is pleased to be merry. We also spength and height, or breadth and thickness, thus denoting Two Dimensions by four names. 

Stranger. But I mean not only three names, but Three Dimensions. 

I. Would your Lordship indicate or explain to me in what 

direction is the Third Dimension, unknown to me? Stranger. I came from it. It is up above and down below. 

I. My Lord means seemingly that it is Northward and Southward. 

Stranger. I mean nothie kind. I mean a direction in which you cannot look, because you have no eye in your side. 

I. Pardon me, my Lord, a moment's inspection will convince your Lordship that I have a perfectly luminary at the junctu two sides. 

Stranger: Yes: but in order to see into Space you ought to have an eye, not on your Perimeter, but on your side, that is, on what you would probably call your inside; but we in Spaceland should call it your side. 

I. An eye in my inside! An eye in my stomach! Your Lordship jests. 

Stranger. I am in no jesting humour. I tell you that I come from Space, or, since you will not understand what Space means, from the Laree Dimensions whence I but lately looked down upon your Plane which you call Space forsooth. From that positivantage I discerned all that you spe _solid_ (by which you mean "enclosed on four sides"), your houses, your churches, your very chests and safes, yes even your insides and stomachs, all lying open and exposed to my view. 

I. Such assertions are easily made, my Lord. Stranger. But not easily proved, you mean. But I mean to prove mine. 

When I descended here, I saw your four Sons, the Pentagons, each in his apartment, and your two Grandsons the Hexagons; I saw your youngest Hexagon remain a while with you and then retire to his room, leaving you and your Wife alone. I saw your Isosceles servants, three in number, in the kitchen at supper, and the little Page in the scullery. Then I came here, and how do you think I came? 

I. Through the roof, I suppose. 

Strange. Not so. Your roof, as you know very well, has been recently repaired, and has no aperture by which even a Woman could penetrate. I tell you I come from Space. Are you not convinced by what I have told yur children and household? 

I. Your Lordship must be aware that such facts touching the belongins humble servant might be easily ascertained by any oe neighbourhood possessing your Lordship's ample meaformation. 

Stranger. (_To himself._What must I do? Stay; one more argument suggests itself to me. When you see a Straight Line -- your wife, for example -- how many Dimensions do you attribute to her? 

I. Your Lordship would treat me as if I were oe vulgar who, being ignorathematics, suppose that a Woman is really a Straight Line, and one Dimension. No, no, my Lord; we Squares are better advised, and are as well awaur Lordship that a Woman, though popularly called a Straight Line, is, really and scientifically, a very thin Parallelogram, possessing Two Dimensions, 

(

like the re, viz., length and breadth (or thickness). 

Stranger. But the very fact that a Line is visible implies that it possesses yet another Dimension. 

I. My Lord, I have just acknowledge that a Woman is broad as well as long. We see her length, we infer her breadth; which, though very slight, is capabasurement. 

Stranger. You do not understand me. I mean that when you see a Woman, you ought -- besides inferring her breadth -- to see her length, and to _see_ what we call her _height_; although the last Dimension is infinitesimal in your country. If a Line were mere length without "height," it would cease to occupy Space and would become invisible. Surely you must recognize this? 

I. I must indeed confess that I do not in the least understand your Lordship. When we in Flatland see a Line, we see length and _brightness._ If the brightness disappears, the Line is extinguished, and, as you say, ceases to occupy Space. But am I to suppose that your Lordship gives the brightness the titDimension, and that what we call "bright" you call "high"? 

Stranger. No, indeed. By "height" I mean a Dimension like your length: only, with you, "height" is not so easily perceptible, being extremely small. 

I. My Lord, your assertion is easily put to the test. You say I have a Third Dimension, which you call "height." Now, Dimension implies direction and measurement. Do but measure my "height," or merely indivate to me the direction in which my "height" extends, and I will become your convert. Otherwise, your Lordship's own understand must hold me excused. 

Stranger. (_To himself._I can do neither. How shall I convince him? Surely a plain statemects followed by ocular demonstration ought to suffice. -- Now, Sir; listen to me. 

You are living on a Plane. What you style Flatland is the vast level surfaat I may call a fluid, or in, the tich you and your countrymen move about, without rising above or falling below it. 

I am not a plane Figure, but a Solid. You call me a Circle; but in reality I am not a Circle, but an infinite numbrcleze varying from a Point to a Circirteen inches in diameter, one placed on the te other. When I cut through your plane as I am now doing, I make in your plane a section which you, very rightly, call a Circle. For even a Sphere -- which is my proper name in my own country -- if he manifest himself at all to an inhabitaatland -- must needs manfest himself as a Circle. 

Do you not remember -- for I, who see all things, discerned last night the phantasmal visineland written upon your brain -- do you not remember, I say, how when you entered the reaneland, you were compelled to manifest yourself to the King, not as a Square, but as a Line, because that Linear Realm had not Dimensions enough to represent the whou, but only a slice or sectiu? In precisely the same way, your counto Dimensions is not spacious enough to represent me, a beiree, but can only exhibit a slice or secti, which is what you call a Circle. 

The diminished brightneur eye indicates incredulity. But now prepare to receive proof positie tru assertions. You cannot indeed see more than o sections, or Circles, at a time; for you have no power to raise your eye oe plaatland; but you can at least see that, as I rise in Space, so my sections become smaller. See now, I will rise; and the effect upon your eye will be that my Circle will become smaller and smaller till it dwindles to a point and finally vanishes. 

There was no "rising" that I could see; but he diminished and 

(

finally vanished. I winked once or twice to make sure that I was not dreaming. But it was no dream. For from the deptwhere came forth a hollow voice -- close to my heart it seemed -- "Am I quite gone? Are you convinced now? Well, now I will gradually return to Flatland and you shall see my section become larger and larger." 

Every reader in Spaceland will easily understand that my mysterious Guest was speaking the languauth and evmplicity. But to me, proficient though I was in Flatland Mathematics, it was by no means a simple matter. The rough diagram given above will make it clear to any Spaceland child that the Sphere, ascending in the three positions indicated there, must needs have manifested himself to me, or to any Flatlander, as a Circle, at firll size, then small, and at last very small indeed, approaching to a Point. But to me, although I saw the facts before me, the causes were as dark as ever. All that I could comprehend was, that the Circle had made himself smaller and vanished, and that he had now reappeared and was rapidly making himself larger. 

When he regained his original size, he heaved a deep sigh; for he perceived by my silence that I had altogether failed to comprehend him. And indeed I was now inclining to the belief that he must be no Circle at all, but some extremely clever juggler; or else that the old wives' tales were true, and that after all there were such people as Enchanters and Magicians. 

After a long pause he muttered to himself, "One resource alone remains, if I am not to resort to action. I must try the methalogy." Then follwed a still longer silence, after which he continued our dialogue. 

Sphere. Tell me, Mr. Mathematician; if a Point moves Northward, and leaves a luminous wake, what name would you give to the wake? 

I. A straight Line. Sphere. And a straight Line has how many extremities? 

I. Two. 

Sphere. Now conceive the Northward straight Line momving parallel to itself, East and West, so that every point in it leaves behind it the wastraight Line. What name will you give to the Figure thereby formed? We will suppose that it moves through a distance equal to the original straight line. --- What name, I say? 

I. A square. Sphere. And how many sides has a Square? How many angles? 

I. Four sides and four angles. 

Sphere. Now stretch your imagination a little, and conceive a Square in Flatland, moving parallel to itself upward. 

I. What? Northward? Sphere. No, not Northward; upward; oatland altogether. If it moved Northward, the Southern points in the Square would 

have to move through the positions previously occupied by the Northern points. But that is not my meaning. 

I mean that every Point in you -- for you are a Square and will serve the purpo illustration -- every Point in you, that is to say in what you call your inside, is to pass upwards through Space in such a way that no Point shall pass through the position previously occupied by any other Point; but each Point shall describe a straight Lis own. This is all in accordance with Analogy; surely it must be clear to you. 

Restraining my impatience -- for I was now under a strong temptation to rush blindly at my Visitor and to precipitate him into Space, or oatland, anywhere, so that I could get rm -- I replied: -

"And what may be the natue Figure which I am to shape out by this motion which you are pleased to denote by the word 'upward'? I presume it is describable in the languaatland." 

(

Sphere. Oh, certainly. It is all plain and simple, and in strict accordance with Analogy -- only, by the way, you must not spee result as being a Figure, but as a Solid. But I will describe it to you. Or rather not I, but Analogy. 

We began with a single Point, whiurse -- being itself a Poine -- has only _one_ terminal Point. 

One Point produces a Line with _two_ terminal Points. 

One Line produces a Square with _four_ terminal Points. 

Now you can give yourself the answer to your own question: 1, 2, 4, are evidently in Geometrical Progression. What is the next number? 

I. Eight. 

Sphere. Exactly. The one Square produces a _Something-which-youdo-not-as-yet-know-a-name-for-but-which-we-call-a-Cube_ with _eight_ terminal Points. Now are you convinced? 

I. And has this Creature sides, as well as Angles or what you call "terminal Points"? 

Sphere. Of course; and all according to Analogy. But, by the way, not what _you_ call sides, but what _we_ call sides. You would call them _solids._ 

I. And how many solids or sides will appertain to this Being whom I am to generate by the moti inside in an "upward" direction, and whom you call a Cube? 

Sphere. How can you ask? And you a mathematician! The siything is always, if I may so say, one Dimension behind the thing. Consequently, as there is no Dimension behind a Point, a Point has 0 sides; a Line, if I may so say, has 2 sides (for the poinLine may be called by courtesy, its sides); a Square has 4 sides; 0, 2, 4; what Progression do you call that? 

I. Arithmetical. Sphere. And what is the next number? 

I. Six. 

Sphere. Exactly. Then you see you have answered your own question. The Cube which you will generate will be bounded by six sides, that is to say, sur insides. You see it all now, eh? 

"Monster," I shrieked, "be thou juggler, enchanter, dream, or devil, no more will I endure thy mockeries. Either thou or I must perish." And saying these words I precipitated myself upon him. 

* * * 

SECTION 17. -- How the Sphere, having in vain tried words, resorted to deeds 

It was in vain. I brought my hardest right angle into violent collision with the Stranger, pressing on him with a force sufficient to have destroyed anyt ordinary Circle: but I could feel him slowly and unarrestably slipping from my contact; not edging to the right nor to the left, but moving somehow oe world, and vanishing into nothing. Soon there was a blank. But still I heard the Intruder's voice. 

Sphere. Why will you refuse to listen to reason? I had hoped to find in you -- as being a mnse and an accomplished mathematician -- a fit apostle for the Gospe Three Dimensions, which I am allowed to preach once only in a thousand years: but now I know not how to convince you. Stay, I have it. Deeds, and not words, shall proclaim the truth. Listen, my friend. 

I have told you I can see from my position in Space the insil things that you consider closed. For example, I see in yonder cupboard near which you are standing, severat you call boxes 

(

(but like everything else in Flatland, they have no tops or bottomfuney; I see also two tablecounts. I am about to descend into that cupboard and to bring you oose tablets. I saw you lock the cupboard half an hour ago, and I know you have the key in your possession. But I descend from Space; the doors, you see, remain unmoved. Now I am in the cupboard and am taking the tablet. Now I have it. Now I ascent with it. 

I rushed to the closet and dashed the door open. Oe tablets was gone. With a mocking laugh, the Stranger appeared in the other corne room, and at the same time the tablet appeared upon the floor. I took it up. There could be no doubt -- it was the missing tablet. 

I groaned with horror, doubting whether I was not o sense; but the Stranger continued: "Surely you must now see that my explanation, and no other, suits the phenomena. What you call Solid things are really superficial; what you call Space is really nothing but a great Plane. I am in Space, and look down upon the inside thinich you only see the outsides. You could leave the Plane yourself, if you could but summon up the necessary volition. A slight upward or downward motion would enable you to see all that I can see. 

"The higher I mount, and the further I go from your Plane, the more I can see, thouurse I see it on a smaller scale. For example, I am ascending; now I can see your neighbour the Hexagon and his family in their several apartments; now I see the insie Theatre, ten doors off, from which the audience is only just departing; and on the other side a Circle in his study, sitting at his books. Now I shall come back to you. And, as a crowning proof, what do you say to my giving you a touch, just the least touch, in your stomach? It will not seriously injure you, and the slight pain you may suffer cannot be compared with the mental benefit you will receive." 

Before I could utter a womonstrance, I felt a shooting pain in my inside, and a demoniacal laugh seemed to issue from within me. A moment afterwards the sharp agony had ceased, leaving nothing but a dull ache behind, and the Stranger began to reappear, saying, as he gradually increased in size, "There, I have not hurt you much, have I? If you are not convinced now, I don't know what will convince you. What say you?" 

My resolution was taken. It seemed intolerable that I should endure existence subject to the arbitrary visitatioMagician who could thus play tricks with one's very stomach. If only I could in any way manage to pin him against the wall till help came! 

Once more I dashed my hardest angle against him, at the same time alarming the whole household by my cries for aid. I believe, at the mome onset, the Stranger had sunk below our Plane, and really found difficulty in rising. In any case he remained motionless, while I, hearing, as I thought, the soume help approaching, pressed against him with redoubled vigor, and continued to shout for assistance. 

A convulsive shudder ran through the Sphere. "This must not be," I thought I heard him say: "either he must listen to reason, or I must have recourse to the last resourvilization." Then, addressing me in a louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, "Listen: no stranger must witness what you have witnessed. Send your Wife back at once, before she enters the apartment. The Gospree Dimensions must not be thus frustrated. Not thus must the fruie thousand yeaiting be thrown away. I hear her coming. Back! back! Away from me, or you must go with me -- wither you know not -- into the Laree Dimensions!" 

"Fool! Madman! Irregular!" I exclaimed; "never will I release 

(

thee; thou shalt pay the penaline impostures." 

"Ha! Is it come to this?" thundered the Stranger: "then meet your fate: our Plane you go. Once, twice, thrice! 'Tis done!" 

* * * 

SECTION 18. -- How I came to Spaceland, and what I saw there 

An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness; then a dizzy, sickening sensatight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line that was no Line; Space that was not Space: I was myself, and not myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked loud in agony, "Either this is madness or it is Hell." "It is neither, calmly replied the voie Sphere, "it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily." 

I looked, and, behold, a new world! There stood before me, visibly incorporate, all that I had before inferred, conjectured, dreamerfect Circular beauty. What seemed the cente Stranger's form lay open to my view: yet I could see no heart, lungs, nor arteries, only a beautiful harmonious Something -- for which I had no words; but you, my Readers in Spaceland, would call it the surfae Sphere. 

Prostrating myself mentally before my Guide, I cried, "How it is,, O divine idensummate loveliness and wisdom that I see thy inside, and yet cannot discern thy heart, thy lungs, thy arteries, thy liver?" "What you think you see, you see not," he replied; "it is not giving to you, nor to any other Being, to behold my internal parts. I different ordings from those in Flatland. Where I a Circle, you could discern my intestines, but I am a Being, composed as I told you beforny Circles, the Many in the One, called in this country a Sphere. And, just as the outsiCube is a Square, so the outsiSphere represents the appearanCircle." 

Bewildered though I was by my Teacher's enigmatic utterance, I no longer chafed against it, but worshipped him in silent adoration. He continued, with more mildness in his voice. "Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteriaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you. Let us begin by casting back a glance at the region whence you came. Return with me a while to the plaiatland and I will shew you that which you have often reasoned and thought about, but never seen with the senght -- a visible angle." "Impossible!" I cried; but, the Sphere leading the way, I followed as if in a dream, till once more his voice arrested me: "Look yonder, and behold your own Pentagonal house, and all its inmates." 

I looked below, and saw with my physical eye all that domestic individuality which I had hitherto merely inferred with the understanding. And how poor and shadowy was the inferred conjecture in comparison with the reality which I now behold! My four Sons calmly asleep in the North-Western rooms, my two orphan Grandsons to the South; the Servants, the Butler, my Daughter,, all in their several apartments. Only my affection Wife, alarmed by my continued absence, had quitter her room and was roving up and down in the Hall, anxiously awaiting my return. Also the Page, aroused by my cries, had left his room, and under pretecertaining whether I had fallen somewhere in a faint, was prying into the cabinet in my study. All this I could now _see,_ not merely infer; and as we came nearer and nearer, I could discern even the conten cabinet, and the two 

(

chesld, and the tableich the Sphere had made mention. 

Touched by my Wife's distress, I would have sprung downward to reassure her, but I found myself incapabtion. "Trouble not yourself about your Wife," said my Guide: "she will not be long left in anxiety; meantime, let us take a survatland." 

Once more I felt myself rising through space. It was even as the Sphere had said. The further we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became the fiesion. My native city, with the interiery house and every creature therein, lay open to my view in miniature. We mounted higher, and lo, the secree earth, the depte mines and inmost cavere hills, were bared before me. 

Awestruck at the sige mysterie earth, thus unveiled before my unworthy eye, I said to my Companion, "Behold, I am become as a God. For the wise men in our country say that to see all things, or as they express it, _omnividence,_ is the attribud alone." There was somethiorn in the voi Teacher as he made answer: "it is so indeed? Then the very pick-pockets and cutthroa country are to be worshipped by your wise men as being Gods: for there is not oem that does not see as much as you see now. But trust me, your wise men are wrong." 

I. Then is omnividence the attribuhers besides Gods? 

Sphere. I do not know. But, if a pick-pocket or a cut-thror country can see everything that is in your country, surely that is no reason why the pick-pocket or cut-throat should be accepted by you as a God. This omnividence, as you call it -- it is not a common word in Spaceland -- does it make you more just, more merciful, less selfish, more loving? Not in the least. Then how does it make you more divine? 

I. "More merciful, more loving!" But these are the qualitimen! And we know that a Circle is a higher Being than a Straight Line, in so far as knowledge and wisdom are more to be esteemed than mere affection. 

Sphere. It is not for me to classify human faculties according to merit. Yet mae best and wisest in Spaceland think moe affections the understand, mour despised Straight Lines thur belauded Circles. But enouis. Look yonder. Do you know that building? 

I looked, and afar off I saw an immense Polygonal structure, in which I recognized the General Assembly Hae Statatland, surrounded by dense linntagonal buildings at right angles to each other, which I knew to be streets; and I perceived that I was approaching the great Metropolis. 

"Here we descend," said my Guide. It was now morning, the first hoe first de two thousandth yer era. Acting, as was their wont, in strict accordance with precedent, the highest Circle realm were meeting in solemn conclave, as they had met on the first hoe first de year 1000, and also on the first hoe first de year 0. 

The minute previous meetings were now read by one whom I at once recognized as my brother, a perfectly Symmetrical Square, and the Chief Clee High Council. It was found recorded on each occasion that: "Whereas the States had been troubled by divers ill- intentioned persons pretending to have received revelations from another World, and professing to produce demonstrations whereby they had instigated to frenzy both themselves and others, it had been for this cause unanimously resolved by the Grand Council that on the first dch millenary, special injunctions be sent to the Prefects in the several districatland, to make strict search for such misguided persons, and without formalithematical exanimation, to destroy all such as were Isoscelyt degree, to scourge and 

(

imprison any regular Triangle, to cause any Square or Pentagon to be sent to the district Asylum, and to arrest any ogher rank, sending him straightway to the Capital to be examined and judged by the Council." 

"You hear your fate," said the Sphere to me, while the Council was passing for the third time the formal resolution. "Death or imprisonment awaits the Aposte Gospree Dimensions." "Not so," replied I, "the matter is now so clear to me, the natual space so palpable, that methinks I could make a child understand it. Permit me but to descend at this moment and enlighten them." "Not yet," said my Guide, "the time will come for that. Meantime I must perform my mission. Stay thou there in thy place." Saying these words, he leaped with great dexterity into the sea (if I may so call iatland, right in the mide riunsellors. "I come," said he, "to proclaim that there is a laree Dimensions." 

I could see mae younger Counsellors start back in manifest horror, as the Sphere's circular section widened before them. But on a sign from the presiding Circle -- who shewed not the slightest alarm or surprise -- six Isoscellow type from six different quarters rushed upon the Sphere. "We have him," they cried; "No; yes; we have him still! he's going! he's gone!" 

"My Lords," said the President to the Junior Circle Council, "there is not the slightest need for surprise; the secret archives, to which I alone have access, tell me that a similar occurrence happened on the last two millennial commencements. You wilurse, say nothiese trifles outside the Cabinet." 

Raising his voice, he now summoned the guards. "Arrest the policemen; gag them. You know your duty." After he had consigned to their fate the wretched policemen -- ill-fated and unwilling witnessState-secret which they were not to be permitted to reveal -- he again addressed the Counsellors. "My Lords, the businee Council being concluded, I have only to wish you a happy New Year." Before departing, he expressed, at some length, to the Clerk, my excellent but most unfortunate brother, his sincere regret that, in accordance with recedent and for the sacrecy, he must condemn him to perpetual imprisonment, but added his satisfaction that, unless some mention were made by hat day's incident, his life would be spared. 

* * * 

SECTION 19. -- How, though the Sphere shewed me other mysteriaceland, I still desire more; and what ca 

When I saw my poor brother led away to imprisonment, I attempted to leap down into the Council Chamber, desiring to intercede on his behalf, or at least bid him farewell. But I found that I had no moti own. I absolutely depended on the voliti Guide, who said in gloomy tones, "Heed not thy brother; haply thou shalt have ample time hereafter to condole with him. Follow me." 

Once more we ascended into space. "Hitherto," said the Sphere, "I have shewn you naught save Plane Figures and their interiors. Now I must introduce you to Solids, and reveal to you the plan upon which they are constructed. Behlod this multituveable square cards. See, I put on on another, not, as you supposed, Northwae other, but _on_ the other. Now a second, now a third. See, I am building up a Solid by a multituuares parallel to one another. Now the Solid is complete, being as high as it is long and broad, and 

(

we call it a Cube." 

"Pardon me, my Lord," replied I; "but to my eye the appearance is  Irregular Figure whose inside is laid open to view; in other words, methinks I see no Solid, but a Plane such as we infer in Flatland; on Irregularity which betokens some monstrous criminal, so that the very sig is painful to my eyes." 

"True," said the Sphere; "it appears to you a Plane, because you are not accustomed to light and shade and perspective; just as in Flatland a Hexagon would appear a Straight Line to one who has not the Aght Recognition. But in reality it is a Solid, as you shall learn by the seneling." 

He then introduced me to the Cube, and I found that this marvellous Being was indeed no Plane, but a Solid; and that he was endowed with six plane sides and eight terminal points called solid angles; and I remembered the sayie Sphere that just such a Creature as this would be formed by the Square moving, in Space, parallel to himself: and I rejoiced to think that so insignificant a Creature as I could in some sense be called the Progenit illustrious an offspring. 

But still I could not fully understand the meaniat my Teacher had told me concerning "light" and "shade" and "perspective"; and I did not hesitate to put my difficulties before him. 

Were I to give the Sphere's explanatiese matters, succinct and clear though it was, it would be tedious to an inhabitaace, who knows these things already. Suffice it, that by his lucid statements, and by changing the positijects and lights, and by allowing me to feel the several objects and even his own sacred Person, he atlast made all things clear to me, so that I could now readily distinguish between a Circle and a Sphere, a Plane Figure and a Solid. 

This was the Climax, the Paradis strange eventful History. Henceforth I have to relate the sto miserable Fall: -- most miserable, yet surely most undeserved! For why should the thirst for knowledge be aroused, only to be disappointed and punished? My volition shrinks from the painful tacalling my humiliation; yet, like a second Prometheus, I will endure this and worse, if by any means I may arouse in the interioane and Solid Humanity a spirbellion against the Conceit which would limit our Dimensions to Two or Three or any number shofinity. Away then with all personal considerations! Let me continue to the end, as I began, without further digressions or anticipations, pursuing the plain paspassionate History. The exact facts, the exact words, -- and they are burnt in upon my brain, -- shall be set down without alterati iota; and let my Readers judge between me and Destiny. 

The Sphere would willingly have continued his lessons by indoctrinating me in the conformatil regular Solids, Cylinders, Cones, Pyramids, Pentahedrons, Hexahedrons, Dodecahedrons, and Spheres: but I ventured to interrupt him. Not that I was weariowledge. On the contrary, I thirsted for yet deeper and fuller draughts than he was offering to me. 

"Pardon me," said I, "O Thou Whom I must no longer address as the Perfectil Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant a sligine interior." 

Sphere. My what? 

I. Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines. 

Sphere. Whence this ill-timed impertinent request? And what mean you by saying that I am no longer the Perfectil Beauty? 

I. My Lord, your own wisdom has taught me to aspire to One even more great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate to Perfection than yourself. As you yourself, superior to all Flatland forms, 

(

combine many Circles in One, so doubtless there is One above you who combines many Spheres in One Supreme Existence, surpassing even the Soliaceland. And even as we, who are now in Space, look down on Flatland and see the insidl things, certainty there is yet above us some higher, purer region, whither thou dost surely purpose to lead me -- O Thou Whom I shall always call, everywhere and in all Dimensions, my Priest, Philosopher, and Friend -- some yet more spacious Space, some more dimensionable Dimensionality, from the vantage-grouich we shall look down together upon the revealed insidlid things, and where thine own intestines, and thoy kindred Spheres, will lie exposed to the vie poor wandering exile from Flatland, to whom so much has already been vouchsafed. 

Sphere. Pooh! Stuff! Enouis trifling! The time is short, and much remains to be done before you are fit to proclaim the Gospree Dimensions to your blind benighted countrymen in Flatland. 

I. Nay, gracious Teacher, deny me not what I know it is in thy power to reform. Grant me but one glimpine interior, and I am satisfied for ever, remaining henceforth thy docile pupil, thy unemacipable slave, ready to receive all thy teachings and to feed upon the words that fall from thy lips. 

Sphere. Well, then, to content and silence you, let me say at once, I would shew you what you wish if I could; but I cannot. Would you have me turn my stomach inside out to oblige you? 

I. But my Lord has shewn me the intestinl my countrymen in the Lao Dimensions by taking me with him into the Laree. What therefore more easy than now to take his servant on a second journey into the blessed regie Fourth Dimension, where I shall look down with him once more upon this laree Dimensions, and see the insiery three-dimensioned house, the secree solid earth, the treasure minaceland, and the intestinery solid living creature, even the noble and adorable Spheres. 

Sphere. But where is this laur Dimensions? 

I. I know not: but doubtless my Teacher knows. 

Sphere. Not I. There is no such land. The very id is utterly inconceivable. 

I. Not inconceivable, my Lord, to me, and therefore still less inconceivable to my Master. Nay, I despair not that, even here, in this regiree Dimensions, your Lordship's art may make the Fourth Dimension visible to me; just as in the Lao Dimensions my Teacher's skill would fain have opened the eys blind servant to the invisible presenThird Dimension, though I saw it not. 

Let me recall the past. Was I not taught below that when I saw a Line and inferred a Plane, I in reality saw a Third unrecognized Dimension, not the same as brightness, called "height"? And does it not now follow that, in this region, when I see a Plane and infer a Solid, I really see a Fourth unrecognized Dimension, not the same as colour, but existent, though infinitesimal and incapabasurement? 

And besides this, there is the Argument from Analogures. Sphere. Analogy! Nonsense: what analogy? 

I. Your Lordship tempts his servant to see whether he remembers the revelations imparted to him. Trifle not with me, my Lord; I crave, I thirst, for more knowledge. Doubtless we cannot _see_ that other higher Spaceland now, becauswe we have no eye in our stomachs. But, just as there _was_ the reaatland, though that poor puny Lineland Monarch could neither turn to left nor right to discern it, 

(

and just as there _was_ close at hand, and touching my frame, the laree Dimensions, though I, blind senseless wretch, had no power to touch it, no eye in my interior to discern it, surety there is a Fourth Dimension, which my Lord perceivesa with the inner eought. And that it must exist my Lord himself has taught me. Or can he have forgotten what he himself imparted to his servant? 

In One Dimension, did not a moving Point produce a Line with _two_ terinal points? 

In Two Dimensions, did not a moving Line produce a Square with _four_ terminal points? 

In Three Dimensions, did not a moving Square produce -- did not this ene behold it -- that blessed Being, a Cube, with _eight_ terminal points? 

And in Four Dimensions shall not a moving Cube -- alas, for Analogy, and alas for the Progreuth, if it be not so -- shall not, I say, the motidivine Cube result in a still more divine Organization with _sixteen_ terminal points? 

Behold the infallible confirmatie Series, 2, 4, 8, 16: is not this a Geometrical Progression? Is not this -- if I might quote my Lord's own words -- "strictly according to Analogy"? 

Again, was I not taught by my Lord that as in a Line there are _two_ bounding Points, and in a Square there are _four_ bounding LInes, so in a Cube there must be _six_ bounding Squares? Behold once more the confirming Series, 2, 4, 6: is not this an Arithemtical Progression? And consequently does it ncessity follow that the more divine offsprie divine Cube in the Laur Dimensions, must have 8 bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, "strictly according to Analogy"? 

O, my Lord, my Lord, behold, I cast myself in faith upon conjecture, not knowing the facts; and I appeal to your Lordship to confirm or deny my logical anticipations. If I am wrong, I yield, and will no longer demand a Fourth Dimension; but, if I am right, my Lord will listen to reason. 

I ask therefore, is it, or is it not, the fact, that ere now your countrymen also have witnessed the desceinhigher order than their own, entering closed rooms, even as your Lordship entered mine, without the openiors or windows, and appearing and vanishing at will? On the reply to this question I am reaedy to stake 

everything.  Deny it, and I am henceforth silent.  Only vouchsafe an  
answer.     
Sphere (_after a pause_).  It is reported so.  But men are divided  

in opinion as to the facts. And even granting the facts, they explain them in different ways. And in any case, however great may be the numbfferent explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the theoFourth Dimension. Therefore, pray have done with this trifling, and let us return to business. 

I. I was certa. I was certain that my anticipations would be fulfilled. And now have patience with me and answer me yet one more question, beachers! Those who have thus appeared -- no one knows whence -- and have returned -- no one knows whither -- have they also contracted their sections and vanished somehow into that more Spacious Space, whither I now entreat you to conduct me? 

Sphere (_moodily_). They have vanished, certainly -- if they ever appeared. But most people say that these visions arose from the thought -- you will not understand me -- from the brain; from the perturbed angularie Seer. 

I. Say they so? Oh, believe them not. Or if it indeed be so, that this other SPace is really Thoughtland, then take me to that blessed Region where I in Thought shall see the insidl solid things. There, before my ravished eye, a Cube moving in some altogether new direction, but strictly according to Analogy, so as to 

(

make every partics interior pass through a new kiace, with a was own -- shall create a still more perfect perfection than himself, with sixteen terminal Extra-solid angles, and Eight solid Cubes for his Perimeter. And once there, shall we stay our upward course? In that blessed regiur Dimensions, shall we linger at the threshoe Fifth, and not enter therein? Ah, no! Let us rather resolve that our ambition shall soar with our corporal ascent. Then, yielding to our intellectual onset, the gate Six Dimension shall fly open; after that a Seventh, and then an Eighth 

How long I should have continued I know not. In vain did the Sphere, in his voiunder, reiterate his commalence, and threaten me with the direst penalties if I persisted. Nothing could stem the flo ecstatic aspirations. Perhaps I was to blame; but indeed I was intoxicated with the recent draughuth to which he himself had introduced me. However, the end was not long in coming. My words were cut short by a crash outside, and a simultaneous crash inside me, which impelled me through space with a velocity that precluded speech. Down! down! down! I was rapidly descending; and I knew that return to Flatland was my doom. One glimpse, one last and never-to-be-forgotten glimpse I hat dull level wilderness -- which was now to become my Universe again -- spread out before my eye. Then a darkness. Then a final, all- consummating thunder-peal; and, when I came to myself, I was once more a common creeping Square, in my Study at home, listening to the Peace- C approaching Wife. 

* * * 

SECTION 20. -- How the Sphere encouraged me in a Vision. 

Although I had less than a minute for reflection, I felt, by a kistinct, that I must conceal my experiences from my Wife. Not that I apprehended, at the moment, any danger from her divulging my secret, but I knew that to any Woman in Flatland the narrati adventures must needs be unintelligible. So I endeavoured to reassure her by some story, invented for the occasion, gthat I had accidentally fallen through the trap-doe cellar, and had there lain stunned. 

The Southward attraction in our country is so slight that even to a Woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and well-nigh incredible; but my Wife, whose good sense far exceeds the averar Sex, and who perceived that I was unusually excited, did not argue with me on the subject, but insisted that I was will and required repose. I was gl excuse for retiring to my chamber to think quietly over what had happened. When I was at last by myself, a drowsy sensation fell on me; but before my eyes closed I endeavoured to reproduce the Third Dimension, and especially the process by which a Cube is constructed through the motiSquare. It was not so clear as I could have wished; but I remembered that it must be "Upward, and yet not Northward," and I determined steadfastly to retain these words as the clue which, if firmly grasped, could not fail to guide me to the solution. So mechanically repeating, like a charm, the words, "Upwaqrd, yet not Northward," I fell into a sound refreshing sleep. 

During my slumber I had a dream. I thought I was once more by the sie Sphere, whose lustrous hue betokened that he had exchanged his wrath against me for perfectly placability. We were moving together towards a bright but infinitesimally small Ppoint, to which 

(

my Master directed my attention. As we approached, methought there issued from it a slight humming noise as from our Spaceland bluebottles, only less resonant by far, so slight indeed that even in the perfect stillnee Vacuum through which we soard, the sound reached not our ears till we checked our flight at a distant from mething under twenty human diagonals. 

"Look yonder," said my Guide, "in Flatland thou hast liveneland thou hast received a vision; thou hast soarred with me to the heighaceland; now,, in order to complete the rany experience, I conduct thee downward to the lowest depistence, even to the reaintland, the Aby dimensions. 

"Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universy other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experienem; he has no cognizance eve number Two; nor has he a thougurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing. Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. Now listen." 

He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from our Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words, "Infinite beatituistence! It is; and there is nothing else beside It." 

"What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish peoplle who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speemselves 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 happineing!" 

"Can you not startle the little thing os complacency?" said I. "Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitatiointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is no easy task," said my Master; "try you." 

Hereon, raising by 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 effeur harangue on the Kiintland." 

The luste Monarch, who beamed more brightly than ever upon hearing my words, shewed clearly that he retained his complacency; and I had hardly ceased when he took up his strain again. "Ah, the joy, ah, the jought1 What can It not achieve by thinking! Its own Thought coming to Itself, suggesti disparagement, thereby to enhance Its happiness! Sweet rebellion stirred up to result in triumph! Ah, the divine creative powe All in One! Ah, the joy, the jing!" 

"You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own -- for he cannot conceiy other except himself -- and plumes himself upon the variets Thought' as an instaneative Power. Let us leave this Gintland to the ignorant fruitis 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 voi Companion pointing the mor 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 yethigher than those I had witnessed, shewing me how to construct Extra-Solids by the motilids, and Double Extra-Solids by the motitra-Solids, and all "strictly according to Analogy," all by methods so simple, so easy, as to be patent even to the Female Sex. 

* * * 

SECTION 21. -- How I tried to teach the Theoree 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 whoatland. Even to Women and Soldiers should the Gospree Dimensions be proclaimed. I would begin with my Wife. 

Just as I had decided on the pl operations, I heard the souny voices in the street commanding silence. Then followed a louder voice. It was a herald's proclamation. Listening attentively, I recognized the wore Resolutie Council, enjoining the arrest, imprisonment, or executiy one who should pervert the minople 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 menti Revelation, and by proceeding on the pamonstration -- 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 at just that moment, I decided, after we had exchanged a few wormmonplace conversation, not to begin with her. 

My Pentagonal Sons were maracter and standing, and physicia 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 meaniree-to-the-third had met with the approve Sphere? Discussing the matter with him, a mere boy, I should be in perfect safety; for he would know nothie Proclamatie 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 heree Third Dimension. 

But the first thing to be done was to satisfy in some way the curiosi Wife, who naturally wished to know somethie reasons for which the Circle had desired that mysterious interview, ae means by which he had entered the house. Without entering into the detaie 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 quitely to her household duties without eliciting from me any reference to the Worree Dimensions. This done, I immediately sent for my Grandson; for, to confess the truth, I felt that all that I had seen and heard was in some strange way slipping away from me, like the imahalf- grasped, tantalizing dream, and I longed to essay my skill in making a first disciple. 

When my Grandson entered the room I carefully secured the door. Then, sitting down by his side and taking our mathematical tablets, -- or, as you would call them, Lines -- I told him we would resume the lesssterday. I taught him once more how a Point by motion in One Dimension produces a Line, and how a straight Line in Two Dimensions produces a Square. After this, forcing a laugh, I said, "And now, you scamp, you wanted to make believe that a Square may in the same way by motion 'Upward, not Northward' produce another figure, a sotra square in Three Dimensions. Say that againn, you young rascal." 

At this moment we heard once more the herald's "O yes! O yes!" outside in the street proclaiming the REsolutie Council. Young though he was, my Grandson -- who was unusually intelligent for his age, and bred up in perfect reverence for the authorie Circles -- took in the situation with an acuteness for which I was quite unprepared. He remained silent till the last wore Proclamation had died away, and then, bursting into tears, "Dear Grandpapa," he said, "that was only my fun, aurse I meant nothing at all by it; and we did not know anything then about the new Law; and I don't think I said anything about the Third Dimension; and I am sure I did not say one word about 'Upward, not Northward,' for that would be such nonsense, you know. How could a thing move Upward, and not Northward? Upward and not Northward! Even if I were a baby, I could not be so absurd as that. How silly it is! Ha! ha! ha!" 

"Not at all silly," said I, losing my temper; "here for example, I take this Square," and, at the word, I grasped a moveable Square, which was lying at hand -- "and I move it, you see, not Northward but -- yes, I move it Upward -- that is to say, Northward but I move it somewhere -- not exactly like this, but somehow --" Here I brought my sentence to an inane conclusion, shaking the Square about in a purposeless manner, much to the amuseme Grandson, who burst out laughing louder than ever, and declared that I was not teaching him, but joking with him; and so saying he unlocked the door and ran oe room. Thus ended my first attempt to convert a pupil to the Gospree Dimensions. 

* * * 

SECTION 22. -- How I then tried to diffuse the Theoree Dimensions by other means, ae result 

My failure with my Grandson did not encourage me to communicate my secret to othe household; yet neither was I led by it to despaccess. Only I saw that I must not wholly rely on the catch-phrase, "Upward, not Northward," but must rather endeavour to seek a demonstration by setting before the public a clear vie whole subject; and for this purpose it seemed necessary to resort to writing. 

So I devoted several months in privacy to the composititreatise on the mysteriree Dimensions. Only, with the viading the Law, if possible, I spoke nphysical Dimension, but 

(

of a Thoughtland whence, in theory, a Figure could look down upon Flatland and see simultaneously the insidl things, and where it was possible that there might be supposed to exist a Figure environed, as it were, with six Squares, and containing eight terminal Points. But in writing this book I found myself sadly hampered by the impossibiliawing such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose: furse, in our countatland, there are no tablets but Lines, and no diagrams but Lines, all in one straight Line and only distinguishable by differenze and brightness; so that, when I had finished my treatise (which I entitled, "Through Flatland to Thoughtland"I could not feel certain that many would understand my meaning. 

Meanwhile my wife was under a cloud. All pleasures palled upon me; all sights tantalized and tempted me to outspoke treason, because I could not compare what I saw in Two Dimensions with what it really was if seen in Three, and could hardly refrain from making my comparisons aloud. I neglected my clients and my own business to give myself to the contemplatie mysteries which I had once beheld, yet which I could impart to no one, and found daily more difficult to reproduce even before my own mental vision. 

One day, about eleven months after my return from Spaceland, I tried to see a Cube with my eye closed, but failed; and though I succeeded afterwards, I was not then quite certain (nor have I been ever aftewardsthat I had exactly realized the original. This made me more melancholy than before, and determined me to take some step; yet what, I knew not. I felt that I would have been willing to sacrifice my life for the Cause, if thereby I could have produced conviction. But if I could not convince my Grandson, how could I convince the highest and most developed Circles in the land? 

And yet at times my spirit was too strong for me, and I gave vent to dangerous utterances. Already I was considered heterodox if not treasonable, and I was keenly alive to the dang position; nevertheless I could not at times refrain from bursting out into suspicious or half-seditious utterances, even among the highest Polygonal or Circular society. When, for example, the question arose about the treatmeose lunatics who said that they had received the poweing the insidings, I would quote the sayi ancient Circle, who declared that prophets and inspired people are always considered by the majority to be mad; and I could not help occasionally dropping such expressions as "the eye that discerns the interioings," and "the all-seeing land"; once or twice I even let fall the forbidden terms "the Third and Fourth Dimensions." At last, to complete a serinor indiscretions, at a meetir Local Speculative Society held at the palae Prefect himself, 

-some extremely silly person having read an elaborate paper exhibiting the precise reasons why Providence has limited the numbmensions to Two, and why the attribunividence is assigned to the Supreme alone -- I so far forgot myself as to give an exact accoue who voyage with the Sphere into Space, and to the Assembly Hall in our Metropolis, and then to Space again, a return home, aerything that I had seen and heard in fact or vision. At first, indeed, I pretended that I was describing the imaginary experiencficitious person; but my enthusiasm soon forced me to throw off all disguise, and finally, in a fervent peroration, I exhorted all my hearers to divest themselvejudice and to become believers in the Third Dimesnsion. 

Need I say that I was at onc arrested and taken before the Council? 

Next morning, standing in the very place where but a very few months ago the Sphere had stood in my company, I was allowed to begin and to continue my narration unquestioned and uninterrupted. But from 

(

the first I foresaw my fate; for the President, noting that a guae better solicemen was in attendancgularity little, if at all, under 55 degrees, ordered them to be relieved before I began my defence, by an inferior claor 3 degrees. I knew only too well what that meant. I was to be executed or imprisoned, and my story was to be kept secret from the world by the simultaneous destructie officials who had heard it; and, this beig the case, the Presdient desired to substitute the cheaper for the more expensive victims. 

After I had concluded my defence, the President, perhaps perceiving that soe junior Circles had been moved by evident earnestness, asked me two questions: -

Whether I could indicate the direction which I meant when I used the words "Upward, not Northward"? 

Whether I could by any diagrams or descriptions (other than the enumeratiaginary sides and anglesindicate the Figure I was pleased to call a Cube? 

I declared that I could say nothing more, and that I must commit myself to the Truth, whose cause would surely prevail in the end. 

The President replied that he quite concurred in my sentiment, and that I could not do better. I must be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; but if the Truth intended that I should emerge from prison and evangelize the world, the Truth might be trusted to bring that result to pass. Meanwhile I should be subjected to no discomfort that was not necessary to preclude escape, and, unless I forfeited the privilege by misconduct, I should be occasionally permitted to see my brother who had preceded me to my prison. 

Seven years have elapsed and I am still a prisoner, and -- if I except the occasional visi brother -- debarred from all companionship save th jailers. My brother is oe beuares, just sensible, cheerful, and not without fraternal affection; yet I confess that my weekly interviews, at least in one respect, cause me the bitterest pain. He was present when the Sphere manifested himself in the Council Chamber; he saw the Sphere's changing sections; he heard the explanatie phenomena then give to the Circles. Since that time, scarcely a week has passed during seven whole years, without his hearing from me a repititie part I played in that manifestation, together with ample descriptiol the phenomena in Spaceland, and the arguments for the existenlid things derivable from Analogy. Yet -- I take shame to be forced to confess it -- my brother has not yet grasped the naturee Dimensions, and frankly avows his disbelief in the existenSphere. 

Hence I am absolutely destitunverts, and, for aught that I can see, the millennial Revelation has been made to me for nothing. Prometheus up in Spaceland was bound for bringing down fire for mortals, but I -- poor Flatland Prometheus -- lie here in prison for bringing down nothing to my countrymen. Yet I existin the hope that these memoirs, in some manner, I know not how, may find their way to the minmanity in Some Dimension, and may stir up a rabels who shall refuse to be confined to limited Dimensionality. 

That is the ho brighter moments. Alas, it is not always so. Heavily weights on me at times the burdensome reflection that I cannot honestly say I am confident as to the exact shae once- seen, oft-regretted Cube; and in my nightly visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not Northward," haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx. It is pae martyrdom which I endure for the cauuth that there are seasontal weakness, when Cubes and Spheres flit away into the backgrouarce-possible existences; when the Laree Dimensions seems almost as visionary as the 

(

Lae or None; nay, when even this hard wall that bars me from my freedom, these very tablets on which I am writing, and all the substantial realitiatland itself, appear no better than the offspridiseased imagination, or the baseless fabrdream. 

THE