Flatland quotes

Would not you have him locked up? Well, that is my fate: and it is as natural for us Flatlanders to lock up a Square for preaching the Third Dimension, as it is for you Spacelanders to lock up a Cube for preaching the Fourth.

Alas, how strong a family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanity in all Dimensions!

Points, Lines, Squares, Cubes, Extra-Cubes—we are all liable to the same errors, all alike the Slaves of our respective Dimensional prejudices, as one of your Spaceland poets has said—

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other Figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much …

The greatest length or breadth of a full grown inhabitant of Flatland may be estimated at about eleven of your inches. Twelve inches may be regarded as a maximum.

Our women are Straight Lines.

Our soldiers and lowest classes of workmen are Triangles with two equal sides, each about eleven inches long, and a base or third side so short (often not exceeding half an inch) that they form at their vertices a very sharp and formidable angle.

If our highly pointed Triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women.

For if a soldier is a wedge, a woman is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities.

Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.

Otherwise the angles might inflict on the unwary Feeler irreparable injury. It is essential for the safety of the Feeler that the Felt should stand perfectly still.

A start, a fidgety shifting of the position, yes, even a violent sneeze, has been known before now to prove fatal to the incautious, and to nip in the bud many a promising friendship.

Especially is this true among the lower classes of the Triangles. With them, the eye is situated so far from their vertex that they can scarcely take cognizance of what goes on at that extremity of their frame.

The result was that in the next generation the family brain was registered at only 58°, and not till the lapse of five generations was the lost ground recovered, the full 60° attained, and the Ascent from the Isosceles finally achieved.

And all this series of calamities from one little accident in the process of Feeling.

At this point I think I hear some of my better educated readers exclaim, “How could you in Flatland know anything about angles and degrees, or minutes?

That this power exists in any regions and for any classes is the result of fog; which prevails during the greater part of the year in all parts save the torrid zones.

That which is with you in Spaceland an unmixed evil, blotting out the landscape, depressing the spirits, and enfeebling the health, is by us recognized as a blessing scarcely inferior to air itself, and as the nurse of arts and parent of sciences.

But let me explain my meaning, without further eulogies on this beneficent element.

… experience, before you could move in a fashionable crowd without jostling against your betters, whom it is against etiquette to ask to “feel,” and who, by their superior culture and breeding, know all about your movements, while you know very little or nothing about theirs.

In a word, to comport oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon oneself.

Such at least is the painful teaching of my experience.

I speak now from the aesthetic and artistic point of view when I say that life with us is dull; aesthetically and artistically, very dull indeed.

How can it be otherwise, when all one’s prospect, all one’s landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness and obscurity?

It was not always thus. Colour, if tradition speaks the truth, once for the space of half a dozen centuries or more, threw a transient splendour over the lives of our ancestors in the remotest ages.

Therefore, concluded that illustrious philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame.

For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles?

Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?

but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may almost say, idiom.

“Love” then becomes “the anticipation of benefits”; “duty” becomes “necessity” or “fitness”; and other words are correspondingly transmuted.

Moreover, among women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are:

… into a position full in front of her mouth so as to intercept her motion, and loudly repeated my question, “Woman, what signifies this concourse, and this strange and confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and fro in one and the same Straight Line?”

“I am no woman,” replied the small Line. “I am the Monarch of the world. But thou, whence intrudest thou into my realm of Lineland?”

Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had in any way startled or molested his Royal Highness; and describing myself as a stranger I besought the King to give me some account of his dominions.

Once neighbours, always neighbours.

Neighbourhood with them was like marriage with us. Neighbours remained neighbours till death did them part.

Such a life, with all vision limited to a Point, and all motion to a Straight Line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary; and I was surprised to note the vivacity and cheerfulness of the King.

“Of Length,” I ventured to suggest.

“Fool,” said he, “Space is Length. Interrupt me again, and I have done.”

I apologized;

it must be that a Square of three inches every way, moving somehow parallel to itself (but I don’t see how) must make something else (but I don’t see what) of three inches every way—and this must be represented by 33.”

“Go to bed,” said I, a little ruffled by this interruption: “if you would talk less nonsense, you would remember more sense.”

So my grandson had disappeared in disgrace;

… my wife would not listen to the proposal that our august visitor should so incommode himself, and assuring the Circle that the hour of 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 third Millennium had begun.

I saw a Line that was no Line; Space that was not Space: I was myself, and not myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, “Either this is madness or it is Hell.”

“It is neither,” calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, “it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily.”

I looked, and, behold, a new world! There stood before me, visibly incorporate, all that I had before inferred, conjectured, dreamed, of perfect Circular beauty. What seemed the centre of the Stranger’s form lay open to my view:

Sphere. Well, then, to content and silence you, let me say at once, I would show you what you wish if I could; but I cannot.

Would you have me turn my stomach inside out to oblige you?

I. But my Lord has shown me the intestines of all my countrymen in the Land of Two Dimensions by taking me with him into the Land of Three.

he knows not length, nor breadth, nor height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing.

Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.

Now listen.”

He ceased; and there arose from the little buzzing creature a tiny, low, monotonous, but distinct tinkling, as from one of your Spaceland phonographs, from which I caught these words,

“Infinite beatitude of existence! It is; and there is none else beside It.”

“What,” said I, “does the puny creature mean by ‘It’?”