Flatland: A Romance of Many DimensionsAbbott, Edwin Abbott
Science
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Abbott, Edwin Abbott
Fourth dimension
Although popularly everyone 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. As the number of the sides increases, a Polygon approximates to
a Circle; and, when the number is very great indeed, 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 the 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 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 double 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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