Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
“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 proposal that our august Visitor should so
incommode himself, and assuring the Circle that the hour for her 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 second
Millennium had begun.
§ 16.—_How the Stranger vainly endeavoured to reveal to me in words the
mysteries of Spaceland._
As soon as the sound of my Wife’s retreating footsteps had died away, I
began to approach the Stranger with the intention of taking a nearer view
and of bidding him be seated: but his appearance struck me dumb and
motionless with astonishment. Without the slightest symptoms of
angularity he nevertheless varied every instant with gradations of size
and brightness scarcely possible for any Figure within the scope of my
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 voice of a Circle, had obtained admission somehow into the
house, and was now preparing to stab me with his acute angle.
In a sitting-room, the absence of Fog (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 trace of an 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 round him,
beginning from his eye and returning to it again. Circular he was
throughout, a perfectly satisfactory Circle; there could not be a doubt
of it. Then followed a dialogue, which I will endeavour to set down as
near as I can recollect it, omitting only some of my profuse
apologies—for I was covered with shame and humiliation that I, a Square,
should have been guilty of the impertinence of feeling a Circle. It was
commenced by the Stranger with some impatience at the lengthiness of my
introductory process.
_Stranger._ Have you felt me enough by this time? Are you not introduced
to me yet?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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