Take for example an equilateral Triangle-who represents with us a Tradesman of the respectable class. As soon as you look at it with your eye on the edge of the table, you will find that it ceases to appear to you as a figure, and that it becomes in appearance 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.

It will appear a circle.īut now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition of the inhabitants of Flatland), 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 edge of the table (so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlander) the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all, and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.

Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space and leaning over it, look down upon it. Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us, except Straight Lines and the necessity of this I will speedily demonstrate. On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind, not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another. In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is impossible that there should be anything of what 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. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said my universe: but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things. Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows-only hard with luminous edges-and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen.

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. Of that most and excellent Gift of MODESTY To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE or EVEN SIX Dimensions Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries

Romance of many dimensions