Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott: Part 1, Sections 8 - 10

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one, sections eight to ten of flat Land. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Ruth Golding.
Flat Land, A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot Abbot,
Part one, section eight of the Ancient Practice of Painting.

(00:24):
If my readers have followed me with any attention up
to this point, they will not be surprised to hear
that life is somewhat dull in Flatland. I do not,
of course, mean that there are not battles, conspiracies, tumults, factions,
and all those other phenomena which are supposed to make

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history interesting. Nor would I deny that the strange mixture
of the problems of life and the problems of mathematics,
continually inducing conjecture and giving the opportunity of immediate verification,
imparts to our existence a zest which you in Spaceland
can hardly comprehend. I speak now from the esthetic and

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artistic point of view when I say that life with
us is dull, esthetically 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.

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It was not always thus color, if tradition speaks the truth, once,
for the space of half a dozen centuries or more,
threw a transient charm upon the lives of our ancestors.
In the remotest ages. Some private individual, a pentagon whose
name is variously reported, having casually discovered the constituents of

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the simpler colors and a rudimentary method of painting, is
said to have begun by decorating first his house, then
his slaves, then his father, his sons and grandsons, lastly himself.
The convenience, as well as the beauty of the results,
commended themselves to all wherever chromatistes, For by that name,

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the most trustworthy authorities concur in calling him, turned his
variegated frame. There he at once excited attention and attracted respect.
No one now needed to feel him. No one mistook
his front for his back. All his movements were readily
ascertained by his neighbors, without the slightest strain on their

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powers of calculation. No one jostled him or failed to
make way for him. His voice was saved the labor
of that exhausting utterance by which we colorless squares and
pentagons are often forced to proclaim our individuality when we
move amid a crowd of ignorant isosceles. The fashions spread

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like wildfire. Before a week was over, every square and
triangle in the district had copied the example of Chromatistes,
and only a few of the more conservative pentagons still
held out. A month or two found even the Dodecadans
infected with the innovation. A year had not elapsed before

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the habit had spread to all but the very highest
of the nobility. Needless to say, the customs soon made
its way from the district of Chromatistes to surrounding regions,
and within two generations no one in all flatland was
colorless except the women and the priests. Here, nature herself

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appeared to erect a barrier, and to plead against extending
the innovation to these two classes. Many sidedness was almost
essential as a pretext for the innovators. Distinction of sides
is intended by nature to imply distinction of colors. Such
was the sophism, which in those days flew from mouth

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to mouth, converting whole towns at a time to the
new culture, but manifestly to our priests and women, this
adage did not apply. The latter had only one side,
and therefore, plurally and pedantically speaking, no sides. The former,
if at least they would assert their claim to be

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really and truly circles and not mere high class polygons
with an infinitely large number of infinitesimally small sides, were
in the habit of boasting what women confessed and deplored
that they also had no sides, being blessed with a
perimeter of one line, or in other words, a circumference. Hence,

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it came to pass that these two classes could see
no force in the so called axi about distinction of
sides implying distinction of color. And when all others had
succumbed to the fascinations of corporal decoration, the priests and
the women alone still remained pure from the pollution of
paint in moral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific call them by what

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names you will. Yet, from an esthetic point of view,
those ancient days of the color revolked with a glorious
childhood of art in flatland, a childhood alas that never
ripened into manhood, nor even reached the blossom of youth.
To live was then in itself a delight, because living

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implied seeing, even at a small party, the company was
of pleasure to behold. The richly varied hues of the
assembly in a church or theater are said to have
more than once proved too distracting for our greatest teachers
and acts. But most ravishing of all is said to
have been the unspeakable magnificence of a military review. The

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sight of a line of battle of twenty thousand Isosceles,
suddenly facing about, and exchanging the somber black of their
bases for the orange and purple of the two sides,
including their acute angle, the militia of the equilateral triangles
tricolored in red, white and blue, the mauve, ultramarine gamboge

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and burnt umber of the square artillerymen rapidly rotating near
their vermilion guns. The dashing and flashing of the five
colored and six colored pentagons and hexagons careering across the
field in their offices of surgeons, geometricians, and aide de camp.
All these may well have been sufficient to render credible

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the famous story how an illustrious circle, overcome by the
artistic beauty of the forces under his command, to rue
aside his marshal's battle and his royal crown, exclaiming that
he henceforth exchanged them for the artist's pencil. How great
and glorious the sensuous development of these days must have

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been is in part indicated by the very language and
vocabulary of the period. The commonest utterances of the commonest
citizens in the time of the Colour Revolt seem to
have been suffused with a richer tinge of word or thought,
And to that era we are even now indebted for

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our finest poetry, and for whatever rhythm still remains in
the more scientific utterance of these modern days Section nine
of the Universal Color Bill. But meanwhile the intellectual arts
were fast decaying. The art of sight recognition, being being

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no longer needed, was no longer practiced, and the studies
of geometry, statics, kinetics, and other kindred subjects came soon
to be considered superfluous and fell into distribute and neglect
even at our university. The inferior art of feeling speedily

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experienced the same fate at our elementary schools. Then the
Isosceles classes, asserting that the specimens were no longer used
nor needed, and refusing to pay the customary tribute from
the criminal classes to the service of education, waxed daily
more numerous and more insolent, on the strength of their

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immunity from the old burden which had formerly exercised the
twofold wholesome effect of at once taming their brutal nature
and thinning their excessive numbers. Year by year, the soldiers
and artists Zans began more vehemently to assert, and with
increasing truth, that there was no great difference between them

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and the very highest class of polygons, now that they
were raised to inequality with the latter, and enabled to
grapple with all the difficulties and solve all the problems
of life, whether statical and kinetical, by the simple process
of color recognition. Not content with the natural neglect into

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which site recognition was falling, they began boldly to demand
the legal prohibition of all monopolizing and aristocratic arts, and
the consequent abolition of all endowments for the studies of
sight recognition, mathematics, and feeling. Soon they began to insist

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that inasmuch as colour, which was a second nature, had
destroyed the need of aristocratic distinctions, the law should follow
in the same path, and that, hence fourth, all individuals
and all classes should be recognized as absolutely equal and
entitled to equal rights. Finding the higher orders wavering and undecided,

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the leaders of the revolution advanced still further in their requirements,
and at last demanded that all classes alike, the priests
and the women not excepted, should do homage to color
by submitting to be painted. When it was objected that
priests and women had no sides, they retorted that nature

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and expediency concurred in dictating that the front half of
every human being, that is to say, the half containing
his eye and mouth, should be distinguishable from his hinder half.
They therefore brought before a General and extraordinary Assembly of
all the States of Flatland a bill proposing that in

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every woman, the half containing the iron mouth should become
colored red and the other half green. The priests were
to be painted in the same way, red being applied
to that semicircle in which the eye and mouth formed
the middle point, while the other or hinder semicircle was
to be colored green. There was no little cunning in

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this proposal, which indeed emanated not from any Isosceles, for
no being so degraded would have had angularity enough to appreciate,
much less to devise such a model of state craft,
but from an irregular circle, who, instead of being destroyed
in his childhood, was reserved by a foolish indulgence to

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bring desolation on his country and destruction on myriads of
his followers. On the one hand, the proposition was calculated
to bring the women in all classes over to the
side of the chromatic innovation. For by assigning to the
women the same two colors as were assigned to the priests,

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the revolutionists thereby ensured that in certain positions, every woman
would appear like a priest and be treated with corresponding
respect and deference, a prospect that could not fail to
attract the female sex in a mass. But by some
of my readers, the possibility of the identical appearance of

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priests and women under the new legislation may not be recognized.
If so, a word or two will make it obvious.
Imagine a woman duly decorated according to the new code,
with the front half i e. The half containing eye
and mouth red and with the hinder half green. Look

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at her from one side. Obviously you will see a
straight line, half red, half green. Reader's note. The following
paragraph makes reference to an accompanying diagram. The diagram shows
a circle or priestly figure. If it is visualized as
a clock face, twelve o'clock is marked M for the

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priest's mouth, three o'clock is marked B, and nine o'clock
is marked A. The diameter A B is drawn as
a dotted line and is extended outside the circle rightwards
to a point which represents the position of the observer.

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Dotted lines are drawn downward and rightward from M towards
this point, and upward and rightward from six o'clock to
this point. A broad vertical line C B D is
drawn between the dotted lines to indicate what the observer sees.

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CBD is bright at the center and darkens sharply towards
its ends. End of reader's note. Now imagine a priest
whose mouth is at M and whose front semicircle a
M B is consequently colored red, while his hinder semicircle

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is green, so that the diameter A B divides the
green from the red. If you contemplate the great man,
so as to have your eye in the same straight
line as his dividing diameter A B. What you will
see will be a straight line C B D, of

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which one half C B will be red and the
other B D green. The whole line C D will
be rather shorter, perhaps than that of a full sized woman,
and will shade off more rapidly towards its extremities. But
the identity of the colors would give you in an

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nemediate impression of identity, if not class, making you neglectful
of other details. Bear in mind the decay of sight
recognition which threatened society at the time of the color revolt.
Add too the certainty that women would speedily learn to
shade off their extremities so as to imitate the circles.

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It must then be surely obvious to you, my dear reader,
that the color bill placed us under a great danger
of confounding a priest with a young woman. How attractive
this prospect must have been to the frail sex may
readily be imagined. They anticipated with delight the confusion that

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would ensue at home. They might hear political and ecclesiastical
secrets intended not for them, but for their husbands and brothers,
and might even issue command in the name of a
priestly circle out of doors. The striking combination of red
and green, without addition of any other colors, would be

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sure to lead the common people into endless mistakes, and
the women would gain whatever the circles lost in the
deference of the passers by. As for the scandal that
would befall the circular class if the frivolous and unseemly
conduct of the women were imputed to them, and as
to the consequence subversion of the Constitution, the female sex

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could not be expected to give a thought to these considerations.
Even in the households of the circles, the women were
all in favor of the Universal Color Bill. The second
object aimed at by the bill was the gradual demoralization
of the circles themselves. In the general intellectual decay, they

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still preserved their pristine clearness and strength of understanding from
their earliest childhood, familiarized in their circular households with the
total absence of color. The nobles alone preserved the sacred
art of sight recognition, with all the advantages that result
from that admirable training of the intellect. Hence, up to

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the date of the introduction of the universal color bill,
the circles had not only held their own, but even
increased their lead of other classes by abstinence from the
popular fashion. Now, therefore, the artful irregular, whom I described
above as the real author of this diabolical bill, determined

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at one blow to lower the status of the hierarchy
by forcing them to submit to the pollution of color,
and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities
of training in the art of sight recognition, so as
to enfeeble their intellects by depriving them of their pure
and colorless home. Once subjected to the chromatic taint, every

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parental and every childish circle would demoralize each other. Only
in discerning between the father and the mother would the
circular infant find problems for the exercise of its understanding,
problems too often likely to be corrupted by maternal impostures,
with the result of shaking the child's faith in all

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logical conclusions. Thus, by degrees, the intellectual luster of the
priestly order would wane, and the road would then lie
open for a total destruction of all aristocratic legislature and
for the subversion of our privileged classes Section ten of

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the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition. The agitation for the
Universal Color Bill continued for three years, and up to
the last moment of that it seemed as though anarchy
were destined to triumph. A whole army of polygons, who
turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated

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by a superior force of Isosceles triangles, the squares and pentagons,
meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all, some of the ablest
circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by political animosity,
the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords

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with prayers to give up their opposition to the Color Bill,
and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered
their innocent children and husbands, perishing themselves in the act
of carnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation,
no less than twenty three circles perished in domestic discord.

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Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the
priests had no choice between submission and extermination. When suddenly
the course of events was completely changed by one of
those picturesque incidents which statesmen ought never to neglect, often
to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the

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absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies
of the populace. It happened that an Isosceles, of a
low type, with a brain little, if at all, above
four degrees, accidentally dabbling in the colours of some tradesman
whose shop he had plundered, painted himself or caused himself

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to be painted, for the story varies with the twelve
colours of a dodecahedron. Going into the market place, he accosted,
in a feigned voice a maiden, the orphan daughter of
a noble polygon, whose affection in former days he had
sought in vain, and, by a series of deceptions a

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need on the one side, by a string of lucky
accidents too long to relate, and on the other by
an almost inconceivable fetuity and neglect of ordinary precautions on
the part of the relations of the bride, he succeeded
in consummating the marriage. The unhappy girl committed suicide on

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discovering the fraud. To which she had been subjected. When
the news of this catastrophe spread from state to state,
the minds of the women were violently agitated. Sympathy with
the miserable victim, and anticipations of similar deceptions for themselves,
their sisters, and their daughters made them now regard the

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Color Bill in an entirely new aspect. Not a few
openly avowed themselves converted to antagonism. The rest needed only
a slight stimulus to make a similar avowal. Seizing this
favorable opportunity, the circles hastily convened an extraordinary assembly of

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the states, and besides the usual guard of convicts, they
secured the attendants of a large number of reactionary women.
Amidst an unprecedented concourse, the chief circle of those days,
by name Pantoshyclus, arose to find himself hissed and hooted
by one hundred twenty thousand Isosceles. But he secured silence

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by declaring that henceforth the circles would enter on a
policy of concession, yielding to the wishes of the majority,
they would accept the Colour Bill. The uproar being at
once converted to applause, he invited Chromatistes, the leader of
the sedition, into the center of the hall, to receive
in the name of his followers, the submission of the hierarchy.

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Then followed a speech, a masterpiece of rhetoric, which occupied
nearly a day in the delivery, and to which no
sun can do justice. With a grave appearance of impartiality,
he declared that as they were now finally committing themselves
to reform or innovation, it was desirable that they should

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take one last view of the perimeter of the whole,
subject its defects as well as its advantages. Gradually introducing
the mention of the dangers to the tradesmen, the professional classes,
and the gentlemen, he silenced the rising murmurs of the
Isosceles by reminding them that in spite of all these defects,

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he was willing to accept the bill if it was
approved by the majority, but it was manifest at all
except the Isosceles were moved by his words and were
either neutral or averse to the bill. Turning now to
the workmen, he asserted that their interests must not be neglected,

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and that if they intended to accept the color bill,
they ought at least to do so with a full
view of the consequences. Many of them, he said, were
on the point of being admitted to the class of
the regular triangles. Others anticipated for their children a distinction
they could not hope for themselves. That honorable ambition would

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now have to be sacrificed. With the universal adoption of color,
all distinctions would cease. Regularity would be confused with irregularity.
Development would give place to retrogression. The workmen would in
a few generations be degraded to the level of the

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military or even the convict class. Political power would be
in the hands of the greatest number, that is to say,
the criminal classes, who were already more numerous than the workmen,
and would soon outnumber all the other classes put together.
When the usual compensative laws of nature were violated, a

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subdued murmur of assent ran through the ranks of the
artisans and chromatistes in alarm attempted to step forward and
address them, but he found himself encompassed with guards and
forced to remain silent, while the chief circle, in a
few impassioned words, made a final appeal to the women,

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exclaiming that if the color bill passed, No marriage would
henceforth be safe, no woman's honor secure. Fraud, deception, hypocrisy
would pervade every household. Domestic bliss would share the fate
of the constitution and pass to speedy perdition. Sooner than this,

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he cried, come death. At these words, which were the
preconcerted signal for action, the Isosceles convicts fell on and
chansfixed the wretched chromatistes. The regular classes, opening their ranks,
made way for a band of women, who, under direction
of the circles, moved back foremost invisibly and unerringly upon

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the unconscious soldiers. The artisans, imitating the example of their betters,
also opened their ranks. Meantime, bands of convicts occupied every
entrance with an impenetrable phalanx. The battle, or rather carnage,
was of short duration. Under the skillful generalship of the circles.

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Almost every woman's charge was fatal, and very many extracted
their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter. But no
second blow was needed. The rabble of the Isosceles did
the rest of the business for themselves. Surprised, leaderless attacked
in front by invisible foes, and, finding eager dress cut

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off by the convicts behind them, they at once, after
their manner, lost all presence of mind, and raised the
cry of treachery. This sealed their fate. Every isosceles now
saw and felt a foe in every other. In half
an hour, not one of that vast multitude was living,

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and the fragments of seven score thousand of the criminal
class slain by one another's angles, attested the triumph of order.
The circles delayed, not to push their victory to the
uttermost the workingmen they spared, but decimated. The militia of
the equilaterals was at once called out, and every triangle

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suspected of irregularity on reasonable grounds was destroyed by court martial,
without the formality of exact measurement by the Social Board.
The homes of the military and artisan classes were inspect
in a course of visitations extending through upwards of a year,
and during that period every town, village, and hamlet was

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systematically purged of that excess of the lower orders, which
had been brought about by the neglect to pay the
tribute of criminals to the schools and university, and by
the violation of other natural laws of the Constitution of Flatland.
Thus the balance of classes was again restored. Needless to

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say that henceforth the use of colour was abolished and
its possession prohibited. Even the utterance of any word denoting colour,
except by the circles or by qualified scientific teachers, was
punished by a severe penalty. Only at our university, in
some of the very highest and most esoteric classes, which

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I myself have never been privileged to attend. It is
understood that the sparing use of color is still so
aanctioned for the purpose of illustrating some of the deeper
problems of mathematics. But of this I can only speak
from hearsay. Elsewhere in Flatland color is now non existent.

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The art of making it is known to only one
living person, the Chief Circle, for the time being, and
by him it is handed down on his death bed
to none but his successor. One manufactory alone produces it,
and lest the secret should be betrayed, the workmen are
annually consumed and fresh ones introduced. So great is the

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terror with which even now our aristocracy looks back to
the far distant days of the agitation for the Universal
Color Bill. End of Section ten recording by Ruth Golding