Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
Although popularly every one 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 number of very small sides.
In proportion to the number of the sides the Polygon approximates to a
Circle; and, when the number is very great, 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 have shown above, Recognition by Feeling is unknown among the highest
society, and to _feel_ a Circle would be considered a most audacious
insult. This habit of abstention from Feeling in the best society enables
a Circle the more easily to sustain the veil of mystery in which, from
his earliest years, he is wont to enwrap the exact nature of his
Perimeter or Circumference. Three feet being the average Perimeter it
follows that, in a Polygon of three hundred sides, each side will be no
more than the hundredth part of a foot in length, or little more than the
tenth part of an inch; and in a Polygon of six or seven hundred sides the
sides are little larger than the diameter of a Spaceland pin-head. It is
always assumed, by courtesy, that the Chief Circle for the time being has
ten thousand sides.
The ascent of the posterity of the Circles in the social scale is not
restricted, as it is among the lower Regular classes, by the Law of
Nature which limits the increase of sides to one in each generation. If
it were so, the number of sides in a Circle would be a mere question of
pedigree and arithmetic, and the four hundred and ninety-seventh
descendant of an Equilateral Triangle would necessarily be a Polygon with
five hundred sides. But this is not the case. Nature’s Law prescribes two
antagonistic decrees affecting Circular propagation; first, that as the
race climbs higher in the scale of development, so development shall
proceed at an accelerated pace; second, that in the same proportion, the
race shall become less fertile. Consequently in the home of a Polygon of
four or five hundred sides it is rare to find a son; more than one is
never seen. On the other hand the son of a five-hundred-sided Polygon has
been known to possess five hundred and fifty, or even six hundred sides.
Art also steps in to help the process of the higher Evolution. Our
physicians have discovered that the small and tender sides of an infant
Polygon of the higher class can be fractured, and his whole frame re-set,
with such exactness that a Polygon of two 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 doubles at a stroke, the number of his progenitors and the nobility
of his descent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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