Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott
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Edwin A. Abbott >> Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott
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8 Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott
1884
To
The Inhabitance of SPACE IN GENERAL
And H.C. IN PARTICULAR
This Work is Dedicated
By a Humble Native of Flatland
In the Hope that
Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
Of THREE DIMENSIONS
Having been previously conversant
With ONLY TWO
So the Citizens of that Celestial Region
May aspire yet higher and higher
To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE or EVEN SIX Dimensions
Thereby contributing
To the Enlargment of THE IMAGINATION
And the possible Development
Of that most and excellent Gift of MODESTY
Among the Superior Races
Of SOLID HUMANITY
***
FLATLAND
PART 1
THIS WORLD
SECTION 1 Of the Nature of Flatland
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 like shadows--only hard
with luminous edges--and you will then have a pretty correct
notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago,
I should have said "my universe:" but now my mind has been
opened to higher views of things.
In such a country, you will perceive at once that it is
impossible that there should be anything of what you call
a "solid" kind; but I dare say you will suppose that
we could at least distinguish by sight the Triangles, Squares,
and other figures, moving about as I have described them.
On the contrary, we could see nothing of the kind,
not at least so as to distinguish one figure from another.
Nothing was visible, nor could be visible, to us,
except Straight Lines; and the necessity of this
I will speedily demonstrate.
Place a penny on the middle of one of your tables in Space; and
leaning over it, look down upon it. It will appear a circle.
But now, drawing back to the edge of the table, gradually lower
your eye (thus bringing yourself more and more into the condition
of the inhabitants of Flatland), and you will find the penny
becoming more and more oval to your view, and at last when you
have placed your eye exactly on the edge of the table
(so that you are, as it were, actually a Flatlander)
the penny will then have ceased to appear oval at all,
and will have become, so far as you can see, a straight line.
The same thing would happen if you were to treat
in the same way a Triangle, or a Square, or any other figure
cut out from pasteboard. As soon as you look at it with your eye
on the edge of the table, you will find that it ceases to appear
to you as a figure, and that it becomes in appearance a straight line.
Take for example an equilateral Triangle--who represents with us
a Tradesman of the respectable class. Figure 1 represents
the Tradesman as you would see him while you were bending over
him from above; figures 2 and 3 represent the Tradesman,
as you would see him if your eye were close to the level,
or all but on the level of the table; and if your eye were
quite on the level of the table (and that is how we see him
in Flatland) you would see nothing but a straight line.
When I was in Spaceland I heard that your sailors
have very similar experiences while they traverse
your seas and discern some distant island or coast
lying on the horizon. The far-off land may have bays,
forelands, angles in and out to any number and extent;
yet at a distance you see none of these (unless indeed
your sun shines bright upon them revealing the projections
and retirements by means of light and shade), nothing but
a grey unbroken line upon the water.
Well, that is just what we see when one of our triangular
or other acquaintances comes towards us in Flatland.
As there is neither sun with us, nor any light of such
a kind as to make shadows, we have none of the helps
to the sight that you have in Spaceland.
If our friend comes closer to us we see
his line becomes larger; if he leaves us
it becomes smaller; but still he looks like
a straight line; be he a Triangle, Square,
Pentagon, Hexagon, Circle, what you will--
a straight Line he looks and nothing else.
You may perhaps ask how under these disadvantagous circumstances
we are able to distinguish our friends from one another:
but the answer to this very natural question will be more fitly
and easily given when I come to describe the inhabitants of Flatland.
For the present let me defer this subject, and say a word or two
about the climate and houses in our country.
SECTION 2 Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland
As with you, so also with us, there are four points
of the compass North, South, East, and West.
There being no sun nor other heavenly bodies, it is impossible
for us to determine the North in the usual way; but we have
a method of our own. By a Law of Nature with us,
there is a constant attraction to the South;
and, although in temperate climates this is very slight--
so that even a Woman in reasonable health can journey
several furlongs northward without much difficulty--
yet the hampering effort of the southward attraction
is quite sufficient to serve as a compass in most parts
of our earth. Moreover, the rain (which falls
at stated intervals) coming always from the North,
is an additional assistance; and in the towns
we have the guidance of the houses,
which of course have their side-walls
running for the most part North and South,
so that the roofs may keep off the rain from the North.
In the country, where there are no houses,
the trunks of the trees serve as some sort of guide.
Altogether, we have not so much difficulty as might
be expected in determining our bearings.
Yet in our more temperate regions, in which
the southward attraction is hardly felt,
walking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain
where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me,
I have been occasionally compelled to remain stationary
for hours together, waiting till the rain came
before continuing my journey. On the weak and aged,
and especially on delicate Females, the force of attraction
tells much more heavily than on the robust of the Male Sex,
so that it is a point of breeding, if you meet a Lady on the street,
always to give her the North side of the way--by no means
an easy thing to do always at short notice when you are
in rude health and in a climate where it is difficult
to tell your North from your South.
Windows there are none in our houses: for the light
comes to us alike in our homes and out of them,
by day and by night, equally at all times and in all places,
whence we know not. It was in old days, with our learned men,
an interesting and oft-investigate question,
"What is the origin of light?" and the solution of it
has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result
than to crowd our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers.
Hence, after fruitless attempts to suppress such investigations
indirectly by making them liable to a heavy tax, the Legislature,
in comparatively recent times, absolutely prohibited them.
I--alas, I alone in Flatland--know now only too well
the true solution of this mysterious problem;
but my knowledge cannot be made intelligible
to a single one of my countrymen; and I am mocked at
--I, the sole possessor of the truths of Space
and of the theory of the introduction of Light
from the world of three Dimensions--as if I were
the maddest of the mad! But a truce to these painful
digressions: let me return to our homes.
The most common form for the construction of a house
is five-sided or pentagonal, as in the annexed figure.
The two Northern sides RO, OF, constitute the roof,
and for the most part have no doors; on the East is
a small door for the Women; on the West a much larger
one for the Men; the South side or floor is usually doorless.
Square and triangular houses are not allowed,
and for this reason. The angles of a Square
(and still more those of an equilateral Triangle,)
being much more pointed than those of a Pentagon,
and the lines of inanimate objects (such as houses)
being dimmer than the lines of Men and Women,
it follows that there is no little danger
lest the points of a square of triangular house
residence might do serious injury to an inconsiderate
or perhaps absentminded traveller suddenly running against them:
and therefore, as early as the eleventh century of our era,
triangular houses were universally forbidden by Law,
the only exceptions being fortifications, powder-magazines,
barracks, and other state buildings, which is not desirable
that the general public should approach without circumspection.
At this period, square houses were still everywhere permitted,
though discouraged by a special tax. But, about three centuries
afterwards, the Law decided that in all towns containing a population
above ten thousand, the angle of a Pentagon was the smallest
house-angle that could be allowed consistently with the public safety.
The good sense of the community has seconded the efforts of the
Legislature; and now, even in the country, the pentagonal construction
has superseded every other. It is only now and then in some very
remote and backward agricultural district that an antiquarian may
still discover a square house.
SECTION 3 Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland
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 Class 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. Indeed when their bases
are of the most degraded type (not more than the eighth part
of an inch in size), they can hardly be distinguished from
Straight lines or Women; so extremely pointed are their vertices.
With us, as with you, these Triangles are distinguished
from others by being called Isosceles; and by this name
I shall refer to them in the following pages.
Our Middle Class consists of Equilateral or Equal-Sided Triangles.
Our Professional Men and Gentlemen are Squares (to which class
I myself belong) and Five-Sided Figures or Pentagons.
Next above these come the Nobility, of whom there
are several degrees, beginning at Six-Sided Figures,
or Hexagons, and from thence rising in the number of their
sides till they receive the honourable title of Polygonal,
or many-Sided. Finally when the number of the sides becomes so numerous,
and the sides themselves so small, that the figure cannot be
distinguished from a circle, he is included in the Circular
or Priestly order; and this is the highest class of all.
It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have
one more side than his father, so that each generation
shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development
and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon;
the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on.
But this rule applies not always to the Tradesman,
and still less often to the Soldiers, and to the Workmen;
who indeed can hardly be said to deserve the name of human Figures,
since they have not all their sides equal. With them therefore
the Law of Nature does not hold; and the son of an Isosceles
(i.e. a Triangle with two sides equal) remains Isosceles still.
Nevertheless, all hope is not such out, even from the Isosceles,
that his posterity may ultimately rise above his degraded condition.
For, after a long series of military successes, or diligent
and skillful labours, it is generally found that the more
intelligent among the Artisan and Soldier classes manifest
a slight increase of their third side or base, and a shrinkage
of the two other sides. Intermarriages (arranged by the Priests)
between the sons and daughters of these more intellectual
members of the lower classes generally result in an offspring
approximating still more to the type of the Equal-Sided Triangle.
Rarely--in proportion to the vast numbers of Isosceles births--
is a genuine and certifiable Equal-Sided Triangle produced from
Isosceles parents (footnote 1). Such a birth requires, as its
antecedents, not only a series of carefully arranged intermarriages,
but also a long-continued exercise of frugality and self-control
on the part of the would-be ancestors of the coming Equilateral,
and a patient, systematic, and continuous development of the Isosceles
intellect through many generations.
The birth of a True Equilateral Triangle from Isosceles parents
is the subject of rejoicing in our country for many furlongs round.
After a strict examination conducted by the Sanitary and Social Board,
the infant, if certified as Regular, is with solemn ceremonial
admitted into the class of Equilaterals. He is then immediately
taken from his proud yet sorrowing parents and adopted by some
childless Equilateral, who is bound by oath never to permit
the child henceforth to enter his former home or so much
as to look upon his relations again, for fear lest the freshly
developed organism may, by force of unconscious imitation,
fall back again into his hereditary level.
The occasional emergence of an Equilateral from the ranks
of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor
serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon
the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by
the Aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes
are well aware that these rare phenomena, while they
do little or nothing to vulgarize their own privileges,
serve as almost useful barrier against revolution from below.
Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception,
absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might
have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks,
so able as to render their superior numbers and strength
too much even for the wisdom of the Circles.
But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that
in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence,
knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their
acute angle (which makes them physically terrible)
shall increase also and approximate to their
comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle.
Thus, in the most brutal and formidable off the soldier class--
creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence--
it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary
to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage,
so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.
How admirable is the Law of Compensation! And how perfect
a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say,
the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution
of the States of Flatland! By a judicious use of this
Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always
able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage
of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind.
Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally
found possible--by a little artificial compression or expansion
on the part of the State physicians--to make some of the more
intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular,
and to admit them at once into the privileged classes;
a much larger number, who are still below the standard,
allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled,
are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they
are kept in honourable confinement for life;
one or two alone of the most obstinate, foolish,
and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.
Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless
and leaderless, are either transfixed without resistance
by the small body of their brethren whom the Chief Circle
keeps in pay for emergencies of this kind; or else more often,
by means of jealousies and suspicious skillfully fomented
among them by the Circular party, they are stirred to mutual warfare,
and perish by one another's angles. No less than one hundred
and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor
outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-five;
and they have all ended thus.
Footnote 1.
"What need of a certificate?" a Spaceland critic may ask:
"Is not the procreation of a Square Son a certificate
from Nature herself, proving the Equal-sidedness of the Father?"
I reply that no Lady of any position will mary an uncertified Triangle.
Square offspring has sometimes resulted from a slightly Irregular Triangle;
but in almost every such case the Irregularity of the first generation
is visited on the third; which either fails to attain the Pentagonal rank,
or relapses to the Triangular.
SECTION 4 Concerning the Women
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.
But here, perhaps, some of my younger Readers may ask HOW a woman
in Flatland can make herself invisible. This ought, I think,
to be apparent without any explanation. However, a few words
will make it clear to the most unreflecting.
Place a needle on the table. Then, with your eye on the level of
the table, look at it side-ways, and you see the whole length of it;
but look at it end-ways, and you see nothing but a point,
it has become practically invisible. Just so is it with one of our Women.
When her side is turned towards us, we see her as a straight line;
when the end containing her eye or mouth--for with us these
two organs are identical--is the part that meets our eye,
then we see nothing but a highly lustrous point;
but when the back is presented to our view,
then--being only sub-lustrous, and, indeed,
almost as dim as an inanimate object--her hinder
extremity serves her as a kind of Invisible Cap.
The dangers to which we are exposed from our Women must
now be manifest to the meanest capacity of Spaceland.
If even the angle of a respectable Triangle in the
middle class is not without its dangers;
if to run against a Working Man involves a gash;
if collision with an Officer of the military class
necessitates a serious wound; if a mere touch from
the vertex of a Private Soldier brings with it danger of death;
--what can it be to run against a woman, except absolute
and immediate destruction? And when a Woman is invisible,
or visible only as a dim sub-lustrous point,
how difficult must it be, even for the most cautious,
always to avoid collision!
Many are the enactments made at different times in the different
States of Flatland, in order to minimize this peril;
and in the Southern and less temperate climates,
where the force of gravitation is greater,
and human beings more liable to casual
and involuntary motions, the Laws concerning
Women are naturally much more stringent.
But a general view of the Code may be obtained
from the following summary:--
1. Every house shall have one entrance on the Eastern side,
for the use of Females only; by which all females shall enter
"in a becoming and respectful manner" (footnote 1) and not
by the Men's or Western door.
2. No Female shall walk in any public place without continually
keeping up her Peace-cry, under penalty of death.
3. Any Female, duly certified to be suffering from
St. Vitus's Dance, fits, chronic cold accompanied
by violent sneezing, or any disease necessitating
involuntary motions, shall be instantly destroyed.
In some of the States there is an additional Law
forbidding Females, under penalty of death,
from walking or standing in any public place
without moving their backs constantly from
right to left so as to indicate their presence
to those behind them; other oblige a Woman,
when travelling, to be followed by one of her sons,
or servants, or by her husband; others confine
Women altogether in their houses except during
the religious festivals. But it has been found
by the wisest of our Circles or Statesmen
that the multiplication of restrictions on Females
tends not only to the debilitation and diminution
of the race, but also to the increase of domestic
murders to such an extent that a State loses
more than it gains by a too prohibitive Code.
For whenever the temper of the Women is thus exasperated
by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad,
they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands and children;
and in the less temperate climates the whole male population
of a village has been sometimes destroyed in one or two hours
of a simultaneous female outbreak. Hence the Three Laws,
mentioned above, suffice for the better regulated States,
and may be accepted as a rough exemplification of our Female Code.
After all, our principal safeguard is found, not in Legislature,
but in the interests of the Women themselves. For, although they
can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement,
yet unless they can at once disengage their stinging extremity
from the struggling body of their victim, their own frail bodies
are liable to be shattered.
The power of Fashion is also on our side. I pointed out that
in some less civilized States no female is suffered to stand
in any public place without swaying her back from right to left.
This practice has been universal among ladies of any pretensions
to breeding in all well-governed States, as far back as the memory
of Figures can reach. It is considered a disgrace to any state
that legislation should have to enforce what ought to be,
and is in every respectable female, a natural instinct.
The rhythmical and, if I may so say, well-modulated undulation
of the back in our ladies of Circular rank is envied and imitated
by the wife of a common Equilateral, who can achieve nothing beyond
a mere monotonous swing, like the ticking of a pendulum;
and the regular tick of the Equilateral is no less admired
and copied by the wife of the progressive and aspiring Isosceles,
in the females of whose family no "back-motion" of any kind
has become as yet a necessity of life. Hence, in every family
of position and consideration, "back motion" is as prevalent
as time itself; and the husbands and sons in these households
enjoy immunity at least from invisible attacks.
Not that it must be for a moment supposed that our Women are
destitute of affection. But unfortunately the passion of the
moment predominates, in the Frail Sex, over every other consideration.
This is, of course, a necessity arising from their unfortunate
conformation. For as they have no pretensions to an angle,
being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles,
they are consequently wholly devoid of brainpower, and have
neither reflection, judgment nor forethought, and hardly any memory.
Hence, in their fits of fury, they remember no claims and recognize
no distinctions. I have actually known a case where a Woman
has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards,
when her rage was over and the fragments swept away,
has asked what has become of her husband and children.
Obviously then a Woman is not to be irritated as long as she
is in a position where she can turn round. When you have them
in their apartments--which are constructed with a view
to denying them that power--you can say and do what you like;
for they are then wholly impotent for mischief, and will
not remember a few minutes hence the incident for which
they may be at this moment threatening you with death,
nor the promises which you may have found it necessary
to make in order to pacify their fury.
On the whole we got on pretty smoothly in our domestic relations,
except in the lower strata of the Military Classes. There the want
of tact and discretion on the part of the husbands produces at times
indescribable disasters. Relying too much on the offensive weapons
of their acute angles instead of the defensive organs of good sense
and seasonable simulations, these reckless creatures too often neglect
the prescribed construction of the women's apartments, or irritate
their wives by ill-advised expressions out of doors, which they
refuse immediately to retract. Moreover a blunt and stolid regard
for literal truth indisposes them to make those lavish promises
by which the more judicious Circle can in a moment pacify his consort.
The result is massacre; not, however, without its advantages,
as it eliminates the more brutal and troublesome of the Isosceles;
and by many of our Circles the destructiveness of the Thinner Sex
is regarded as one among many providential arrangements for suppressing
redundant population, and nipping Revolution in the bud.
Yet even in our best regulated and most approximately Circular
families I cannot say that the ideal of family life is so high
as with you in Spaceland. There is peace, in so far as the absence
of slaughter may be called by that name, but there is necessarily
little harmony of tastes or pursuits; and the cautious wisdom
of the Circles has ensured safety at the cost of domestic comfort.
In every Circular or Polygonal household it has been a habit
from time immemorial--and now has become a kind of instinct
among the women of our higher classes--that the mothers and daughters
should constantly keep their eyes and mouths towards their husband
and his male friends; and for a lady in a family of distinction
to turn her back upon her husband would be regarded as a kind of portent,
involving loss of STATUS. But, as I shall soon shew, this custom,
though it has the advantage of safety, is not without disadvantages.
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