Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
_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 number of
different explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the theory of a
Fourth Dimension. Therefore, pray have done with this trifling, and let
us return to business.
_I._ I was certain of it. I was certain that my anticipations would be
fulfilled. And now have patience with me and answer me yet one more
question, best of Teachers! 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 angularity of the
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 insides of all 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 particle of his
interior pass through a new kind of Space with a wake of its 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 region of
Four Dimensions, shall we linger on the threshold of the 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
gates of the Sixth 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 voice of thunder, reiterate his commands of silence, and threaten me
with the direst penalties if I persisted. Nothing could stem the flood of
my ecstatic aspirations. Perhaps I was to blame; but indeed I was
intoxicated with the recent draughts of Truth 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
had of that 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-Cry of my approaching Wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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