Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott: Part 1, Sections 1 - 3

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one, Sections one to three of Flatland. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to find out how you can volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Flat

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Land are Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot. Abbot
to the inhabitants of space in general and hc 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

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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 enlargement of
the imagined and the possible development of that most rare
and excellent gift of modesty among the superior races of

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solid humanity. Part one. This world, be patient, for the
world is broad and wide. Section one of the nature
of Flatland. I call our world flatland, not because we
call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you,

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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

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the power of rising above or sinking below. It very
much like shadows, only hard and 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,

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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,

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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 your tables

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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

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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 flatland citizen, 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

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thing would happen if you were to treat in the
same way a triangle or square, or any other figure
cut out of pasteboard. As soon as you look at
it with your eye on the edge of the table,
you will find that it seems to appear to you
a figure, and that it becomes in appearance a straight line. Take,

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for example, an equilateral triangle who represents with us a
tradesman of the respectable class. Figure one represents the tradesman
as you would see him while you were bending over
him from above. Reader's note. Figure one is a downward
pointing triangle with all sides equal. End of reader's note.

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Figures two and three 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 Reader's note. Fig.
Two shares a much flatter, downward pointing triangle, with the
top edge much longer than the other two sides, which
are of equal length. Fig. Three is flatter, still barely

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identifiable as a triangle at all end of reader's note.
And if your eye were right on the level of
the table, and that is how we see him in
flat land, 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

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discern some distant island or coast lying on the horizon.
The far off land may have bays, fallands, 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

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means of light and shade. Nothing but a gray, 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
sure shadows. We have none of the helps to the

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site that you have in spaceland. If our friend comes
close 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.

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You may perhaps ask, how, under these disadvantageous 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

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subject and say a word or two about the climate
and houses in our country Section two 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,

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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.

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Yet the hampering effect 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

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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

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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

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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 in 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

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from yourself. 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 investigated question, what is the origin of light?

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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

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alas I alone in Flatland, know now only too well
the truth 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

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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 houses.
The most common form for the construction of a house
is five sided or pentagonal, as in the next figure

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Reader's note. The figure shows a pentagon slightly skewed to
the right, with two sides marked R O and O F,
forming a point marked O to the north. The left
or western side, which has a large opening marked men's door,
is marked a R. The right or eastern side, which

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has a small opening marked women's door, is BF. The base,
or southern side, is marked ab end of reader's note.
The two northern sides R OOF constitute the roof and
for the most part have no doors. On the east
is a small door for the women, on the west

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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

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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
or triangular house residence might do serious injury to an
inconsiderate or perhaps absent minded traveler suddenly running again them.

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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
it is not desirable that the general public should approach
without circumspection. At this period, square houses were still everywhere permitted,

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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

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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 three. Concerning the inhabitants of flatland. The greatest length

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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

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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

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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

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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

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six sided figures or hexagons, and from thence rising in
the number of their sides, till they receive the honorable
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,

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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

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square is a pentagon, the son of a pentagon a hexagon,
and so on. But this rule applies not always to
the tradesmen, 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

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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 shut out, even from the Isosceles

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that his posterity may ultimately rise above his degraded condition,
for after a long series of military successes or diligent
and skillful labors. It is generally found that the more
intelligent among the artisan and soldier classes manifest the slight
increase of their third side or base, and a shrinkage

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of the two other sides. Into marriages 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 number of Isosceles births.

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Is a genuine and certifiable equal sided triangle produced from
isosceles parents. Footnote 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

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position will marry 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 end of Footnote. Such

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a birth requires as its antecedents not only a series
of carefully arranged into marriages, 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 developer of the Isosceles intellect through many generations.

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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

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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,

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by force of unconscious imitation, fall back again into his
hereditary level. The occasional emergence of an Isosceles from the
ranks of his serf born ancestors, is welcomed not only
by the poor serfs themselves as a gleam of light
and hope shared upon the monotonous squalor of their existence,

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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 a most useful barrier against revolution from below.
Had the acute angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely

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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

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that same proportion, their acute angle, which makes them physically terrible,
shall increase also, and approximate to the harmless angle of
the equilateral triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable
of the soldier class creatures almost on a level with
women in their lack of intelligence. It is found that

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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 this
law of compensation, and how perfect a proof of the
natural fitness, and I may almost say the divine origin

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of the aristocratic constitution of the states in Flatland. By
a judicious use of this law of nature, the polygons
and circles are almost always able to start rifle sedition
in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and
boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to

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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 irregular, and to admit
them at once into the privileged classes. A much larger number,

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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 honorable confinement for life. One
or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly
irregular are led to execution. Then the wretched rabble of

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the isoscelen, 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 suspicions skillfully
fomented among them by the circular party. They are stirred

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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 end of

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Part one, Section three, Recording by Ruth Golding