Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
At this moment we heard once more the herald’s “O yes! O yes!” outside in
the street proclaiming the Resolution of the Council. Young though he
was, my Grandson—who was unusually intelligent for his age, and bred up
in perfect reverence for the authority of the Circles—took in the
situation with an acuteness for which I was quite unprepared. He remained
silent till the last words of the Proclamation had died away, and then,
bursting into tears, “Dear Grandpapa,” he said, “that was only my fun,
and of course 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, not 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
amusement of my 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 out of the room. Thus ended my first attempt
to convert a pupil to the Gospel of Three Dimensions.
§ 22.—_How I then tried to diffuse the Theory of Three Dimensions by
other means, and of the result._
My failure with my Grandson did not encourage me to communicate my secret
to others of my household; yet neither was I led by it to despair of
success. 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 view of the whole
subject; and for this purpose it seemed necessary to resort to writing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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